Forty years since my Vietnam |
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| Steve Rose Memo Archives | |||
| Written by Steve Rose, Publisher | |||
| Wednesday, 01 July 2009 00:00 | |||
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Several years after I left in 1969, North Vietnam swept into South Vietnam and conquered it. Today, four decades later, not only did Southeast Asia not fall to the Communists - which was the "Domino Theory" -- but America has become Vietnam's number one trading partner, and Southeast Asia has become a capitalist juggernaut. This would be laughable, had we not lost 50,000 young Americans in a war that apparently was a gigantic blunder. A well-intentioned blunder, but a blunder, nonetheless. Which brings us to Iraq. In 2049, some veteran of Iraq, who returned on the Fourth of July 2009, will look back on his war and ask himself, was this the right war for America to fight? Or was this a blunder? How this will turn out is anybody's guess. So, I will guess. My hunch is, the war in Iraq will prove to be a very important, successfully strategic war that accomplished three things: One, it freed a nation enslaved by a ruthless dictator. Of that, there can be no doubt. Two, by injecting Americans into the region (who will remain nearby for decades to come), it protected our oil supply. And three, the war perhaps brought democracy to Iraq, which could translate into other regimes in the region becoming democracies, using Iraq as a role model. Of course, this may all be wrong. We could leave Iraq, and everything we accomplished in eight years could be reversed. There could be chaos, new dictators, and our oil supply may be interrupted. But today I would put my chips on today's unpopular war being, in history's eye, a very significant war that did, indeed, protect and enhance America's interests. We do not have the 40 years of hindsight to know which scenario is accurate. Things could unfold entirely differently from what we imagine now. Who would have guessed, four decades ago, that a unified "Communist" Vietnam would be exporting its goods to its favorite importer, the U.S.A.? Perhaps Iraq may become one of our staunchest allies in the world. Whatever the outcome, just as with Vietnam, we know this: The Iraq war was well-intentioned. We never sought to conquer. That is worth remembering on the Fourth of July. Corny as it sounds, we live in a nation that tries to do good for our people and for people around the world. Whether you agree or not with the Vietnam War or the Iraq War or any other war in our history, at least we should be able to agree that our intentions are admirable.
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The Fourth of July is somewhat of a personal anniversary to me. It is the 40th anniversary, to the day, of my return from Vietnam.
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We are discussing a war that was started on fraudulent grounds, that killed about one million innocents and cost enogh money to destroy our economy. It is hard to see how an honest cost benefit analysis can ever come to the conclusion that it was a net benefit.
Of course, since we are morphing into a police state tyranny pretty rapidly, future historians may all work for the government and not be free to think for themselves. In that case, any war can be rehabilitated.