The Sad Threads of Life

Yesterday, many Americans mentally relived the horrors of September 11, 2001, some more directly than others. It’s a game we humans play, called, “Where were you when … ? As, perhaps, our greatest American commented about another remembrance, “It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.” It would pose a sacrilege should we forget, or allow others to forget, the devastating legacy of 9-11.

Me? I took some quiet time to reflect. I looked up other events that shaped our country on this date in different years. Did you know, for example, that on September 11, 1965, the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) began to arrive in South Vietnam, bringing U.S. troop strength there to more than 125,000. Before the year was out, one of its units, the U.S. Army 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment (yeah, Custer’s unit) defeated a much larger NVA force and America took over the war. The country would never again be the same.

 By the time of my paid vacation there in 1968, the number of US troops in that unfortunate country was an admitted (our military commander there had a slight problem with honesty) 549,500. The year was the most expensive in the Vietnam War with the American spending $77.4 billion ($557 billion in today’s dollars) on the war.

Yes, 1968 was a bad year. Trust me.

Of those United States troops, the war in Vietnam killed 16,592 that year alone, and wounded 87,388 more.

The war killed 27,915 South Vietnamese troops and wounded 172,512 more.

Although figures remain unreliable, the North Vietnamese records state that the war killed 44,842 and wounded, perhaps, another 66,464.

Why bring this up now? I simply believe that we must, if we are to survive as a species, understand how facts are related. Did, somehow, our nearly 20-year misadventure in that sad country, a nation that had never harmed or threatened us in any way—in fact had allied with us in defeating the Japanese— bear on the thinking of the 911 murderers?

And, sad as it must be to contemplate, how germane, on September 11, 2001, was the fact that the American CIA and the United Kingdom's MI6 orchestrated the overthrow of the democratically elected Mohammad Mosaddegh, the 35th prime minister of Iran in 1953? Is it true what they say about Iranians respecting America, before that event, our country for its record on human rights?

How important will it be in our future that the warmonger who helped push America into the invasion of Iraq in 2003, leading to further destabilization of the Middle East, was removed from national office day before yesterday, but remains at large?

I mention all this because of the fact that all day yesterday, I heard or read about all sorts of things Americans were doing to commemorate the tragedy of that sacred day in 2001. Mostly, they were performing acts that they enjoyed doing in the first place, riding motorcycles, climbing steps in a stadium, singing, etc. I condemn them not. We must mourn, each of us, in our own way.

It’s odd though, isn’t it, that I heard not a soul say that, in honor of the victims of such a tragedy, and the lost or damaged lives of those who tried to save them, “I pledge to turn off social media, Fox ‘news,’ and my cell phone while I read a book of history and think about why such tragedies occur?”