Sailing Inrto Oblivion: June 16, 2017

Shakespeare said it, “… for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” We see it already in this week’s tragedy. Various political viewpoints are already beginning to view it through the prism of their own belief structures. I see it simply as a further step into collective madness. When will it stop?

We see it through the scope of history as well. On January 30, 1068, Viet Cong and NVA forces launched a massive attack on cities throughout South Vietnam. I was just outside of one of those and can testify that it wasn’t a pleasant time.

By all accounts, American and South Vietnamese forces were victorious. The Viet Cong never recovered from their losses and it took a long time for the NVA to regroup. For the otherwise hapless South Vietnam forces, it was their finest hour. They fought like demons alongside us. I saw piles of dead bodies, purportedly Viet Cong, piled like tree branches along key intersections, warnings I suppose.

It didn’t matter. The press, tired of the reports from our generals that all was going according to plan, was incensed that an attack of this scope could occur under the very noses of those generals. Their voices, thereafter, ranged from wariness to opposition.

The American people, quite frankly, war-weary already, began to realize that too many of their young men would die in that far-off place. It was time to bring them home.

Even the ones fighting wondered what was happening.

In North Vietnam, they treated it as a setback and regrouped. The VC melted into the jungles and dug in to wait.

In Washington, men just scratched their heads, and a president decided to call it quits.

Why was I involved in this mess? I don't recall having ever believed the reasons they me.

Each actor in the event viewed the results differently. There is even the lingering belief by some Americans that we could have “won” that war. In the words of Ernest Hemingway, “Isn’t it pretty to think so.”

How sad. As hard as we might believe in the successes, it didn’t matter. Had we stayed another 20 years, the VC and NVA would still have been fighting us, just as the Taliban will be fighting us in Afghanistan 20 years from now.

It just doesn’t matter what we believe. The facts don’t care. They flow beneath our loyalties, prejudices, and predispositions like a weary river, “headed somewhere safe to sea.” No, the facts don’t care what we think. Nor, anymore, do the victims.           

That time of our living greatly? It sure as hell wasn’t 1968.

The photograph that proved violence
is not always effective, That it can prove
to be counter-productive, in fact.