Recently President Obama honored a group of Vietnam vets who – nearly 40 years ago – were responsible for the rescue of a company of trapped fellow soldiers. The president hailed them as unheralded heroes who deserved national recognition, however long deferred.
In awarding the Presidential Unit Citation to Alpha Troop, the president referenced the Vietnam War’s controversy and tragedy — and an aftermath that infrequently included national gratitude for those who served. “And on days such as this, we resolve to never let it happen again. …And so I say, it’s never too late,” affirmed the president.
The context, however, was dripping with irony. The lessons of Vietnam are hardly limited to remembering those who served, however gallantly. The transcendent issue is why they served. Afghanistan now hovers like a geopolitical Damoclean Sword.
The perspective of history is a blunt reminder. Vietnam was an ostensibly strategic, Cold War domino. But its sovereign past was dotted with invader scenarios; its present with civil-war subplots. Who remembered why the French got out? Who recalled that Ho Chi Minh helped the Brits against the Japanese? Who remembered the rationales for supporting a corrupt South Vietnamese government? Who recalled American complicity in the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem? Who remembered what side did not agree to national elections? Who recalled what America’s track record was against insurgents? Who remembered that our only success was when WE were the insurgents? Who recalled the no-win reality of being an occupier? Who remembered the ineffectual absurdity that was the “Vietnamization” strategy?
First things first. Well done, Mr. President. Never forget those who have served, even in tragically unnecessary wars. Heroics are still heroics.
But now we are quagmired in Afghanistan as a result of the mismanaged, priority-shifting war of choice in Iraq.
Yes, 9/11 and al-Qaeda do not constitute Vietnam, the Sequel. Osama bin Laden is not Ho Chi Minh or General Giap. And Gen. Stanley McCrystal is not Gen. William Westmoreland, any more than Robert McNamara is Robert Gates or Lyndon Johnson is Barack Obama.
But we are talking chronic Kabul corruption, war lords, narco chiefs and moral misfits still trying to repeal the last millennium. And we are talking about a cause that has to be worth dying for – not patriotic platitudes justifying a face-saving holding pattern after George W. Bush ceded the 9/11 moral high ground internationally. Afghanistan has earned its reputation as the graveyard of invaders and occupiers the old-fashioned way. Eventually, even the Brits, the Soviets and Alexander the Great would understand.
You’re right, Mr. President. “It’s never too late.”