As we think about the absolute morass of stupidity that has led us to the war in Iraq, we might do well to think in terms of what Vietnam has taught us about getting out. At the time seeing the helicopters on the roof of the American Embassy is a picture seared into our brains. Yet, now 30 or so years later, looking at how we left Vietnam is maybe what we should do about Iraq. JUST LEAVE!
I was touched by the story I read sometime ago about a soldier who was in Vietnam and probably had a supply clerk's job. He was concerned about the women who did his laundry and cleaned their hooches, as the thrown together huts in the rear were called. His point had been that he wondered about them, what had happened.
Many veterans still feel a deep shame and guilt at abandoning so many people who had come to trust and depend on us. Even the president has evoked memories of boat people, reeducation camps and the killing fields to argue against withdrawing from Iraq.
There is a legacy of Vietnam. Most of us who returned from Vietnam realized that Vietnam meant something entirely different from those back home. We had to fight the war over and over in the sense of having literally been a part of it.
It is hard to know what the war in Vietnam meant to many Americans. Even today, I hear over and over that protests stopped the war. Maybe? But, it wasn't the war as much as a philosophy of war, it was the draft, it was more a domestic conflict than anything. Many Americans at the time honestly harbored thoughts that the Vietnam vet was too stupid to get out of the draft or else he wouldn't have been in Vietnam anyway. It was Jane Fonda who became synonymous with how confused the whole experience was for us.
To be honest, I am utterly amazed that we don't deal more with Vietnam and how it relates to our present wrong headed approach to war than we do. It can be summed up with one word, denial.
The Vietnamese Americans are probably the most successful immigrant story ever. When I read of a Vietnamese success story in this country, I get teary eyed. Honestly, they come so often. Recently, I read, A refugee's odyssey. Christopher Do arrived in San Rafael, California on September 2, 1975, then five, and is now a VP with Merrill Lynch, San Francisco. He was one of those airlifted to safety from the roof of the U. S. Embassy in Saigon in April, 1975. To our country's credit, when there appeared to be widespread opposition to America's role in taking in so many Vietnam refugees, the sight of them getting off the buses, quelled the opposition immediately.
THINK ABOUT IT
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