The Vietnamese communists won their long, hard, cruel, bloody war thirty years ago today. The United States suffered its most humiliating defeat. Hundreds of thousands of Americans had fought, and tens of thousands of Americans had died, for a failed cause. These Americans had been ordered to kill, and they had killed millions in that same failed cause. They had been betrayed by their government and their commanders and by the people who supported their enemies, and by those who shunned them or despised them upon their return.
The Cold War, a real war, a war we could have lost, was at its nadir.
I remember the day. I was 12. My mother cried. The American leftists on TV cheered and put their fists in the air. They were smug. This was their victory, too.
The fall of Saigon is not an event in the distant past. It is not yet history. It was yesterday. It is part of now.
I tried repeatedly over the last few days to type up a coherent and thoughtful and analytic post on this topic. But after three tries I am giving up. All I do is type an angry rambling rant and elevate my pulse rate.
It is bad to hate. But as I contemplate this day, and what it meant, and how and why it happened, and those who want it to happen again, that is the only emotion I feel.
Like a fire in a coal seam, the rage never dies. I left Viet Nam 37 years ago with a lot of bad memories, scars, and two purple hearts – and immeaserable pride in the magnificence of the American soldier. Unlike combat injuries, the betrayal of the American Left is a wound that scabs over, but never heals. I never think about Jane Fonda, but if I came on her unexpectedly, the rage would surface. I would hope I could refrain from spitting, but its best if she and her ilk stay away from me.
Two million Americans and Southeast Asians dead and the blood is on their hands. Never forgive. Never forget. And never let them destroy others again.
You’re wrong about one thing. This is a good post.
James
Cabana Boy would have doomed my child to the same 2 decades-long stench of failure that he did to my generation.
Lex,
That first paragraph is the pithiest and about the best lookback to the Vietnam War that I have read. Thanks.
No going back. Best to fold it up and put it away. Pity the souls who still have MIA’s in that cursed land.
Vietnam proved the ebbing of communism’s tide along with Cambodia. By the time eastern europe pissed on communism, anyone with an IQ over 65 had already figured out it was a fool’s ideology.
Iraq and Afghanistan stand to serve the same purpose for jihadism, with presumably happier results for the people of those countries than what the cursed people of Vietnam must still suffer.