By virtue of serendipity and the bizarre draft lottery in place at the time, I was not conscripted and did not serve in Vietnam. But like so many millions of other American boys of that era, I was certainly caught up with the anxiety, the dread, the sense of a country falling apart, and, of course, the loss of classmates who did not return from that morass in Indochina that has left us with national scar tissue and a certain self-loathing.
The verdict of history is relatively clear: President Lyndon B. Johnson, the unlikely, foul-mouthed Southerner who (in an uneasy partnership with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) pushed for and achieved the seismic Civil Rights and Voting Rights legislation of the mid-1960s, nevertheless listened to all the wrong people and ignored all the right people and sent the flower of this nation’s youth to an extended nightmare and a bitter defeat in Vietnam. 57,000 American service people died, hundreds of thousands were wounded or maimed; the number of Vietnamese civilians destroyed in the conflagration remains incalculable.
Yes, we still can, Mr. President, if you just realize that no, we shouldn’t.
It must be stated that the overwhelming majority of American soldiers, seamen, and pilots served with honor in a situation they did not seek out and that they themselves were treated shabbily by the public because we were so repulsed and humiliated by the effects of the war. This remains a matter of national shame.
The moral injury of Vietnam may be rehearsed now in President Obama’s strange and futile escalation of the war in Afghanistan. What we did not learn from the French disaster in Vietnam before our own futile adventure, we apparently have not learned from the Russians’ more recent debacle in Afghanistan.
The columnist Bob Herbert, writing in today’s edition of The New York Times, points out that the president, who is generally admired as a good listener, is not heeding his own vice president, Joe Biden, on this one, calling Obama’s deaf ear on this “tragic.” What is compelling here is that Herbert has been a vociferously strong supporter of Barack Obama since the former senator’s early days on the campaign trail. Herbert points out that this war in Afghanistan, “hopelessly botched by the Bush crowd, has now lasted nearly eight long years, longer than our involvement in World Wars I and II combined. There is nothing even remotely resembling a light at the end of the tunnel. The war is going badly and becoming deadlier. July and August were the two deadliest months for U.S. troops since the American invasion in October 2001.”
It’s a little scary: Obama has requested a new deployment, which will raise the number of US troops in that unforgiving, hopelessly unwinnable environment to almost 70,000 troops. For anyone who lived through the 1960s (and I cannot claim any badge of honor because I did not serve in any front line), this is a discomfiting déjà vu. We also had a president then who was truly committed to social justice but became obsessed with bleak war games in a far-off place that drew only blood and remorse.
Yes, we still can, Mr. President, if you just realize that no, we shouldn’t.
Comments
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One has to wonder what would have happened if LBJ and Hoe Chi Minh could have met and toured the country. Ho, of course had worked as a cook in Brooklyn and could have given LBJ a tour of his own country. LBJ in turn of given Hoe a tour of the south & what he was trying to do for this country. Hoe could have pointed out that many of his ideals came, not from Das Capital or other writings from Marx, but from our founding fathers.
The saddest commentary about Vietnam is that it was a racewar. The Catholic establishment was seen by Vietnamese as European, however Vietnamese their faces. LBJ did so well fighting the racewar in the south that he could not see the same thing in Vietnam. They could have come to common ground, ended the war, & rebuilt the nation.
The Mid-east also is a racewar, the west against the east, again. The solution, is for the west to try & see the world via the eyes of the east & help them help themselves. Here we go again. Obama is otherwise a great President
It does seem worrysome. Such a great president, pray he doesn't go the way of LBJ.
Rabbi Ben: You are quite right. One doesn't have to serve to see and feel the repetition of errors in our current involvement and Vietnam & Iraq. As you know, I served in WW II. I was ready to send my son to Canada if he had been called in the Vietnam War....and I would do the same if it looked as though
my Grandson could possible be called for Afghanistan. Each announcement of another loss of life is so painful.
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