LETTER: We learned nothing from the Vietnam War
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We learned nothing from the Vietnam War
Like millions of others, I have been watching the unfolding events in Afghanistan.
I can’t watch it anymore.
As a youth of the 1970s, I ask: How can this be happening again? Our country has again squandered money and lives fighting an ideology that can’t be beaten. We see thousands of frantic people being evacuated, but we all know that millions will be left behind to deal with the savagery of the terrorist regime. We propped up a culture, gave it hope for positive change, then abandoned it for slaughter. The dreadful carnage is only beginning.
How can we live with this?
There is no positive spin, and we may never know what the true total loss of lives and money will be. For political reasons, I think these humiliations will never be acknowledged. That’s how we do things these days.
At the very least, our soldiers sacrificed big chunks of their lives to serve their country, with many wounding their minds as well as their bodies, changing their lives forever. For thousands of other families associated with the military, their price, my price, was higher than that. My 20-year-old nephew died in Afghanistan. His father spiraled into an abyss of depression from which he never recovered. He was young, fit, with no medical problems, but died suddenly.
My nieces and I know what killed him. He died of a broken heart.
So, now, where does this leave us? Our country, too, has a broken heart. Those words echoing from another generation, “Never will we have another Vietnam,” ring hollow, now, for we have learned nothing.
Sally Brown-Pawlosky
Hickory