History Repeating Itself: When Will We Ever Learn?

What makes me sad…

For my friends and colleagues who gave their lives their futures so that all of South East Asia wouldn’t become part of the “falling dominoes…” I wrote this little essay.

I am writing it because I had to; because it brings back all kinds of troubling thoughts that you would have thought we learned from; but it is now clear that we learned nothing…

Every time I read about the new Vietnam, I think about “the Wall,” and the exercise of American power. I torture myself by realizing that if we hadn’t manufactured a problem, and simply stood on the sidelines, probably nothing would have changed…and all of these young men and women, our very best, would still be alive—doing all of the things that young people do, make families, work or teach, contribute to the community and make our society strong.

But we didn’t and they are lost to us for all time. So we shall never know what might have been…


Were they alive to see Vietnam today, they would be very surprised. Most of them realized that it was a senseless war in the first place, but also understood that they were part of the American mission to keep us free of communism…so they stood the course!...

Were they alive, they would have to look hard to see any signs of communism in a country that has become one of the strongest economic powers in the world, in Asia second only to China in the tons of goods shipped to the US.

When you think about it, it seems that the prevailing mantra then was “communism;” today it is “terrorism.” I see a kind of similar story in Iraq; only this time we messed up the country so bad that all that might come of this place is a new wasteland that we helped create—a national desert that comes from hate and a lack of understanding that may stand as a tribute for all time to our unwarranted interference into the affairs of others….

What might have happened if we didn’t hang on Saddam responsibility for being the terrorist de jour? If we had stayed out the Sunni and Shia might not be killing each other off, the streets would have lights, there would be running water and electricity.
And it would be safe for the Iraqi’s to send their kids to school without having to worry about car bombs… If only we had done our homework and not let our outsized egos supersede our good sense…

People might not have democracy but who says they wanted it in the first place. They seemed perfectly happy to live their Muslim lifes according to their Muslim traditions without American interference.

Today, we are dealing with the aftermath of a wrong-headed war forty years after the fact. Why didn’t we learn anything when it was writ so clear before our eyes? Where we too preoccupied with our own priorities to see the truth?

Will we forty years from today be asking the same questions we asked in Vietnam?
Why were we here? Why did we squander the nation’s riches and youth on such an unproductive way? Where were the voices of reason?

Why did we listen to the hawk, Novak, instead of the words of Walter Lippmann who saw the tragedy of Vietnam unfolding before our eyes like a Greek Tragedy…

Why are we doing the same things now that we did then? And when if ever will we learn?

What we need is the inexorable force to take on the inertia that keeps us committed to a war that was unjustified in the first place and ongoing for reasons not entirely clear that seem to have more to do with ego and stubbornness than good sense. For why would we perpetuate a lie when we are not improving things and the only outcome over time is more dead at a cost we cannot long afford.

It makes you wonder.

The memory of 50,000 dead is still fresh and we are already on our way to reliving the past….

What a sad country this has become…

Les Aaron