181.366 - 2016 project and Vietnam, 1954-75

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

Vietnam, 1954-75

oh man!  the great ugly poison clot in our bloodstream.  possibly the stupidest war we have ever fought.  possibly the first of many.  we leapt in without thought, horrified by Dien Bien Phu.  well, I can't prove that.  but as a twelve year old boy lost in a new country that people told him was his home, I knew when I read about Dien Bien Phu that we couldn't not jump in.  we had a myth.  nobody defeated John Wayne!  and we were John Wayne.  and little brown men did just that, they pounded John Wayne into the dirt at Dien Bien Phu.  we had to prove it was a fluke.  we tried for twenty-one years.  one of the problems was we never knew - or could never say - what we were fighting for.  white supremacy?  unspeakable.  the white race's right to colonize any damn where they pleased?  we couldn't say that in 1954 and we damn well couldn't say it in the 70s.  but what else were we fighting for?  oh yeah.  against communism.  right.  except that's not a for.  how can you ever tell you won that one?  eventually the Berlin wall would come down and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics would break up.  could we say we won then?  is having Putin rule Russia a win?  okay, then we won.  yippee.  and I guess we can retroactively say we won in Vietnam too.  the world didn't topple into Communist rule like people promised us it would if we didn't win in Vietnam.  blah.  we didn't win there.  we never knew what we wanted there.  or we did, but it changed with every new set of Presidential advisers.  and we never had a translation from what the Presidential advisors thought we fought for to military objectives, things our soldiers could do, other than fight courageously, and die, and come home maimed.  it was terrible.  it was stupid.  it was disgraceful.  and it haunts us forty-one years later.  well, it haunts some of us.  maybe when those of us who were alive in 1954-75 have died, maybe no one will care any more.  maybe no one will notice any similarities between Vietnam and Afghanistan and Iraq.  maybe there aren't any except for those of us still haunted.  I am one of the haunted.