American Vietnam Vets Ending 40 Years in the Wilderness Contributed by Bill Faith
R J Del Vecchio emails:
Great summary on the war and the upcoming mass reunion of Vietvets at The Wall next week. I'm getting more and more up for this.
Del
Ron Winter
It has been 40 years, on average, since most Americans served in Vietnam, and for most American Vietnam veterans the last 40 years have constituted our own version of wandering in the wilderness.
Starting with the fighting in Korea, the so-called "Forgotten War," escalating to a fever pitch during Vietnam, and continuing right up through those currently fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, America's veterans have been relegated by many in our country to something far less than second-class citizen status.
Vietnam vets especially have been dealing with a country that never knew or understood the magnitude of our victories there. Our politicians cut our legs out from under us and our allies from South Vietnam, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and Thailand repeatedly, until ultimately the communists were able to take advantage of the political and military vacuum created by our Congress and overthrow the democratic south in 1975.
American and allied troops had left that country years before, after twice driving the communists to the edge of surrender, and twice seeing them bailed out by American politicians.
As a result, the communists gleefully signed a weak and unenforceable "Peace" agreement in 1973 that was negotiated by Henry Kissinger and approved by the US Congress. That travesty and the slaughter of some 4 million Southeast Asians by the communists in the years that followed have been falsely labeled a military defeat ever since by the media and the very politicians who caused it.
Those same politicians and the media also falsely claim the American military was not up to the level of previous generations, even though we were the best educated, best led and most effective ever and never lost a single major engagement.
As a result, many Vietnam vets labored for years in an atmosphere of distrust, misunderstanding and outright hostility from the very country we fought to preserve.
But that could all change on March 17, at the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. ...
We have wandered in the wilderness for far too long. It is time to come home. And home, the land of milk and honey, will be represented on March 17 by a tiny piece of land in our nation's Capitol where a black granite wall and two statues bear witness to the honor and sacrifice of more than 58,000 of our brothers and sisters.
We should stand shoulder to shoulder around those memorials to preserve the honor and dignity of our brothers and sisters, just as they stood shoulder to shoulder with us, 40 years ago.
Contributed by Bill Faith on March 10, 2007 at 01:44 PM in , , , , , , , , , |