2 September 2007
Stephen T. BankoTelling a "Story" Doesn't Alter the Facts
President Bush has attempted to link continued prosecution of the war in Iraq to some specious notion of lessons he gleaned from the Vietnam War.
Forget for a second that the president talking about the lessons of the Vietnam War is roughly akin to Benedict Arnold talking about patriotism or Alberto Gonzales taking an oath to tell the truth.
Forget that the president’s effort to connect the Cambodian killing fields with American withdrawal from Vietnam would be laughable if not so lethal.
Forget that the war the president now cited last week to justify his current folly is attracting a lot more attention from him now than when it appeared it might have to serve in it.
Let’s focus instead on the real lessons of Vietnam. Let’s focus on the immutable facts of that war. Let’s focus on reality instead of White House fantasy.
More than 58,200 Americans died in the Vietnam War. More than 300,000 Americans were wounded badly enough to be evacuated from the battlefield. More bomb tonnage was dropped on Vietnam than was dropped on Germany and Japan during all of World War II. We started taking American casualties in 1959 and didn’t end our involvement in the war until 1975. The 16-year span of casualties and combat makes the Vietnam War our longest by far. Not even an administration that has gone on record saying “we create reality” can mangle those truths badly enough to propagate the myth that we left Vietnam too soon without having done enough to “win.”
If the American investment in blood and money in Vietnam over those 16 years wasn’t enough, perhaps the president could explain to us how much might have been “enough.” How many more men and women needed to die? How many more Vietnamese needed to be kill? How many more bombs needed to be dropped? And for what?
From a safe seat on the sidelines, he saw something to be won while guys like me endured something to be survived. Or at least that’s what he now imagines he saw. He didn’t see the transformation of boys who became men and men forced to be killers. He didn’t witness the chaotic horror of men in battle. He was spared the unspeakable pain of wounds and indelible branding of killing. He never saw his friends scrambling for cover from enemy bullets. He never had to pick out targets to kill from ambush. He never held the hand of a dying comrade who, ten minutes ago, fought like Achilles but now moaned a mournful plea to see his mother. It was not for him to feel the reality of battle. He would content himself to defend its theory.
The simple truth of Vietnam was that there was no simple truth. Each soldier’s war was personal. Each soldier’s experience differed. That experience strengthened some of us, even as it killed others. The singular constant was the unwavering devotion of each soldier to every other soldier. The mission could be redefined and restated but none of that mattered. What mattered was getting home as whole as possible and bringing as many others home as we could. It remains a national disgrace that our country could not recognize our service, our sacrifice, our suffering. It is no less a disgrace that our experience should be a disguise to mask the folly of our current war. The story can be re-written but the facts cannot. It would take a larger intellect than that of our president to redefine our war for its warriors. What should have been learned from Vietnam was that the point of a gun cannot dictate political discourse. Bombs can change the landscape but not the minds of a people. An occupying army, no matter how noble its intentions, remains an alien force to the indigenous population.
The president says we didn’t sacrifice enough in Vietnam and that we should have sacrificed more. He doesn’t define “we,” however. I contend we sacrificed too much in seeking ends that would never be worth that sacrifice. In the end, it is improbable that a single mother on either side would say “this that we won was worth my son.”
That’s the real lesson, the real truth, the sad reality of Vietnam.
Copyright 2007 by Buffalo Report, Inc.