The Last Man to Die for a Mistake
The talk of exit strategies for Iraq has me wondering. Who was the last man to die for what John Kerry called a mistake? Was it that American soldier whose name is the last name on the last panel of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington D.C.? Was it a soldier in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, whichever true believer didn’t strip off his uniform and desert in the end? The last of the 2 million Cambodian men, women and children to die in the Khmer Rouge killing fields in 1979? A Vietnamese boat person, thrown over the side when the pirates of the South China Sea took his money and his wife in the early 1980s? A suicidal, alcoholic or drug-addicted Vietnam veteran some years after that, finally succumbing to despair after his sacrifice and those of his friends had been reviled and rendered meaningless? The last man to die as a result of the decision to abandon Vietnam may not be dead yet.
So if we precipitously exit Iraq, who will be the last man, woman or child to die for that mistake? The mistake of abandonment. When, and where, and by whose hands will that person die?
Here’s my Boston Herald column on mistakes, and asking men to die for them.
Update: some highly relevant discussion at Firebase Argghhh!!!
Topics: Uncategorized
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 12:27 am on Sunday, November 19, 2006
20 Responses to “The Last Man to Die for a Mistake”
Leave a Reply
Trackback URLYou must be logged in to post a comment.
November 19th, 2006 at 5:58 am
What an incredibly depressing line of speculation. I volunteer at a local Legion post and as a witness to the human destruction caused by our abandonment of Vietnam and the Vietnamese (don’t get me started on the Montagnyards) I’m finding myself feeling like I’m in one of those dreams where you’re on a bus, heading for a cliff, with no way to stop it and worst of all, no one else seems to see the cliff coming.
November 19th, 2006 at 10:00 am
The irony is, like Kerry’s call 35 years ago, today’s calls for a quick exit from Iraq are in fact calls to create a mistake, which men and women will then be asked to die for.
Excellent point. And pretty much a summation of the left’s attitude to this war.
November 19th, 2006 at 5:00 pm
Having worked with homeless Vietnam vets for several years, I only met a couple who indicated their trauma was the cold shoulder they got coming home. The traumas most cited were from the horrors of combat in a country where they never were sure which of the Vietnamese was really on their side.
The order of casualties is meaningless, as you’re well aware. Far too many died in that war because of the determination of a stubborn president. Your eagerness to blame the Left for the failed leadership in Vietnam is typical revisionism. Although, if that includes the Left of LBJ, then the blame is deserved.
Every American death in Iraq is a wrongful death, unlike Vietnam, where the domino theory had universal support at the outset. The first will be as dead as the last, and each a life wasted because of dishonesty, and deliberately distorted intelligence.
But I’m used to having defeats pinned on those of us who refuse to buy the BS. Cowards unable to admit their own errors have always passed the buck that way.
And once again, long after the Right has abandoned these vets, we’ll be patching them up, keeping them alive and fighting the VA for their right to their benefits. Been there, done that; we know the tired routine.
November 19th, 2006 at 5:12 pm
The last sentence of a VC propaganda leaflet picked up on highway QL-1 near Duc Pho, Vietnam, sometime before October 1969: “Do try to avoid the unfortuante fate of the last GI killed in this war.”
Kerry was not even original. I often wonder how much of his persona was directly and so willingly instilled by the VC and NVA during his multiple visits with them in Paris in the early 1970’s?
It also amazes me how little has changed, and how few have learned the lessons of history.
November 19th, 2006 at 5:24 pm
Kevin Hayden, where to begin. How many Vietnam vets have you known who weren’t homeless and didn’t have problems fitting into society? I know tons of them, because I was an Army wife for ten years. They aren’t homeless, they aren’t drunks or drug-addicted, and some of them continued to serve honorably for many years after the war was over.
The reality is, the majority of Vietnam vets never even saw combat. Of those who came back with problems, some were the result of PTSD caused by combat, because there are always those in every war. But the majority were simple substance abusers whose problems stemmed not from their memories, but from their overriding desire to get and stay high. Claiming “Vietnam War Syndrome” is just another manipulation, and I don’t mean that as disrespect for the few who have genuine mental problems, but I’m damn sick and tired of the media-hyped portrayal of Vietnam vets as crazy losers.
As for getting their rights and benefits from VA, that’s always going to be a problem as long as it’s a giant government bureaucracy. Name one other government agency that isn’t dinosaur-slow. My husband deals with them regularly, and it’s not as impossible a task as you suggest, and best not left to touchy-feely military-hating “helpers”.
November 19th, 2006 at 5:55 pm
Mistakes are mistakes, and people shouldn’t die for them!
I don’t understand the point of this post. You seem to be so emotionally offended by the idea that Americans are dying in vain that you simply will not accept it.
News flash: Americans are dying in vain. In vain. Their deaths are for nothing. Their deaths are for nothing. Their deaths are for nothing.
They are pawns in a game. And, this time, their bosses lost. So they die for nothing.
And that’s a great tragedy.
November 19th, 2006 at 6:34 pm
Among others, Rebecca, there was my Dad. And the guys in his unit. None homeless, none that I’m aware with PTSD.
I don’t stereotype our vets. I have an enormous respect for what they do and have done.
Iraq is not Vietnam; the differences are manifold. My complaint is not with the military. It’s with the leaders of our intel agencies and our political leaders.
We haven’t had a combat vet at the top in too many years and I think that’s a big part of the problem. War is too easily accepted by those who know the least of it.
All the problems in Iraq were foreseen during the Gulf War. And the worst part is that we won the war to topple Saddam. The losses since are about cronyism, war profiteering, the lack of postwar planning, and the top down promotion of torture and abuse that turned the majority of Iraq against our occupation.
November 19th, 2006 at 8:31 pm
Don’t be so foolish to think that we can just walk away without suffering the consequences. It will be perceived as a defeat for us, a win for the Islamic fascists. It doesn’t matter how it is portrayed in the New York Times or the Washington Post. The residents of the Muslim world will see that the Great Satan has been defeated by the heroic mujhadeen just as they defeated the Russians in Afghanistan. That will encourage more attacks in other places, not necessarily in the Middle East, since we will have shown how we can be beaten. Our credibility as a world power will be shot. No one will believe any American President, Democrat or Republican, when he warns a country like North Korea or Iran about anything. Why should they? They’ll no that any such announcements are just empty puffery. There is no price to be paid for opposing us.
November 19th, 2006 at 8:49 pm
There are long term consequences to defeat. Letting an ally that we had sworn to protect twist in the Communist winds exposed two other Nations that depended upon the North Vietnamese being pre-occupied by the US. With the dissolution of American resolve and leaving one Nation, three went down to totalitarianism. Millions dead in those three Nations because we could not take the slight heat of that place.
Then the hundreds of thousands of refugees known as ‘the boat people’ fleeing repression that rolled in with Our departure. Because we would not do what was necessary to actually take and hold territory and push enemies back. Yes, that was not a good strategy, but it did one salient thing that we do forget… it kept the industries and attention of the USSR focused on a far off Nation that it had to heavily resupply. Tanks and aircraft and ground vehicles and weapons and ammuntion did not materialize out of thin air. Stripping through two complete NVA Armies required a long term and heavy toll upon the USSR that we never heard about, because loss of ability to lead a decent life was not allowed to fully escape from there as ‘news’.
How much closer would the USSR have been from having to abandon *its* ally because its ancient industry was unable to keep up with all of the needs of everything it was trying to do? How many millions of lives *saved* if we had stuck by an Ally and kept to our word as a Nation?
Running caused the USSR to see that there was a way to defeat the US because we had put an upper price on supporting friends and allies. We were not serious about keeping our word. And so we were pressed heavily as our ability to make war decreased. Relieved of that pressure the USSR expanded outwards causing many small brushfire wars of the 70’s and 80’s. A little place called Afghanistan that we could only *protest* and do nothing about. Iran turns on the US and our military could not pull off a rescue mission as it had lost much of the skill and morale necessary for that sort of operation.
We may see those now as additional costs to running. As they gave us a *new* enemy… one that was not Rational in how it ran a Nation in Iran. And another formed that is no Nation at ALL and vexes us because we have forgotten how to *fight* THAT kind of war. And both plan for Empire. Both use non-Nation State abilities to vex us with terrorists and Foreign Legions that now spread even to this Nation as members of Hezbollah have been picked up, arrested and prosecuted.
When does America *stop* running?
When the butcher reaches your doorstep is just a bit too late for my taste.
Run this time and you are going to be getting a fight we have forgotten how to fight and win as it goes back beyond the 20th century. Continue fighting like it is *still* the 20th century and we shall surely be the last victims of it. The last to die for an awful century… because we cannot remember what it means to be a vibrant Nation to face down enemies National and non-National with all the Powers our founders spelled out for us.
Who will be the last to die for that horrid century? For the cost of a Nation of Free People unwilling to bear the cost of Freedom?
The young Republic could easily understand these foes we now have and survive and thrive in this atmosphere. What we have today, sadly, cannot.
November 19th, 2006 at 11:12 pm
News flash: Americans are dying in vain. In vain. Their deaths are for nothing.
What about all the oil we’re supposed to be stealing? I was promised this hegemony/imperialist thing would be beneficial and now you’re telling me its a crock?
Wassupwitdatshit?
November 20th, 2006 at 12:15 am
So…if our soldiers in Iraq are “dying for oil”…where is it? If we are trying to take land and be “conquorers”, why aren’t more resources being committed so the Iraqis will be subject to our rulership?
Sorry. I just don’t see the truth of those accusations…
November 20th, 2006 at 7:29 am
I’m pretty sure purple avenger was being sarcastic/ironic.
oz, you can repeat false statements as often as you like, they’ll still be false.
A powerful non-belligerent democratic state in the middle east is “nothing”? What a twisted reality you must live in.
November 20th, 2006 at 9:11 am
News flash: Americans are dying in vain. In vain. Their deaths are for nothing. Their deaths are for nothing. Their deaths are for nothing.
This is defeatism of the worst sort, and totally unforgiveable.
November 20th, 2006 at 9:49 am
A huge point that Kevin neatly glosses over is that (I think) one thing Jules is saying is that soldiers who came home and were told their service was either dishonorable or useless (due to us giving up) had a harder time coping with the psychological and physical aftermath of that service. Humans can bear an amazing amount of suffering if they believe it is a result of something noble or admirable, but being told they suffer for nothing good can literally make it harder to cope.
Rebecca is right: the vast majority of Vietnam Vets did very well. But even the healthiest of mind and body had to deal with the repurcussions of everything from combat to years away from home. And watching it all be for naught (and that being reinforced by their comtemporary society) made healing all the harder. This is why one of the most powerful things you can say to a Vietnam vet is “thank you for your service” and why that is what they say to their younger brothers they now visit in hospitals and whose ceremonies they are careful to attend.
November 20th, 2006 at 10:21 am
It is unfortunate that our own sense of “humanity” prevents us from excercising our military might in a fashion that our enemies would use, if they had the option.
Why not in fact, put the entire region under the threat of nuclear hellfire?
We are as much as war against an evil ideology, and an evil, satanic “religion” as Communism was in the 20th century.
Our enemy today is the brute beast of “Islam”. It knows no mercy, and it savages its people under ignorance enforced by an ecclesiastic elite. It teaches its followers to besiege and wait to ambush” thier adversaries (Quran 9:5)
We should not restrain ourselves from extirpating this evil from the face of the earth; it is an evil that plots against American lives unceasingly in broad daylight, much less in the darkest corners of Baghdad and Tehran.
I only regret that our leaders did not boldly choose to subdue our enemies with a fist of iron, and pursue them with an outstretched arm bearing the terrible sword of justice: the souls of the hundreds of thousands who perished in the LeMay firebombing raids in Japan and “Bomber Harris” over Dresden and Koln and Berlin who suffered under a stubborn and evil Reich deserve no less satisfaction than to see Sadr City reduced to smoldering embers, or other trouble spots destroyed.
As for Iran and the DPRK, they wish to toy with the power of the Atom to terrorize and bully others into submission; as the authors of the legacy of nuclear power, we should not hesitate to inform Messrs. Ahmadinejad and Kim that we are more than willing to reduce thier nations to glassy fields if they think that they can endanger us with thier rudimentary nukes.
In fact, in the case of the Islamists, we should not hesitate to target Mecca, Medina, Qom, and several other noted Islamist holy sites for nuclear retaliation.
November 20th, 2006 at 12:32 pm
RebeccaH & fbL
As a combat medic and Vietnam Veteran who is 100% disabled due to PTSD, I can confirm the general point you make. It was not until five or six years of therapy, peeling away all the layers of horror from the war, that the final root of my problems was revealed. The worst trauma was in coming home, by far, and by far it the hardest to see, and the most painful to admit.
LTC David Grossman, in his book, “On Killing” describes a diagram of concentric circles, which he calls the post-war “six rings” of a soldier’s support network:
1. Comrades
2. Leadership
3. Unit
4. Family
5. Town
6. Society
Because of the way the replacement and tour-of-duty system was set up during Vietnam, those first three rings of support were lost to the soldier of that war. You came and went alone. The last three rings were systematically stripped away by incessant propaganda. The result was the reeducation of the American people to defeatism and self-loathing, plus the bonus of perpetual and aggressive anti-government bias by a triumphalist and narcissistic Marxist media.
The military learned the lesson of Vietnam regarding the first three rings, and now deploys and rotates only entire units. The media learned the lesson of Vietnam, and now incessantly propagandizes against the war, the government and the military. Today, thankfully, there are alternate news resources and other voices, but their effect is still minimal.
The worst thing that ever happened to me was coming back to my country and finding that it was no longer my home. My cousin, four months older than me, served in another part of Vietnam at the same time I did. We first spoke of the war last year - the first time ever.
A nation cannot ask normal human beings to engage in warfare unless that nation, top to bottom, validates what they have to do in such extremities. Normal human beings cannot remain psychologically whole, believing that their behavior was immoral - and all warfare is internally recognized by any soldier as profoundly immoral unless it is validated by a “higher power” outside the individual soldier.
This is also why the whole pose of “support the troops but oppose the war” is so insane and naive, if not deliberately and hypocritically self-serving. The “support” that counts, the only support that counts, is moral validation. If you oppose the war, you are withholding that very validation. You are destroying the soldier’s soul.
What happened in this country during the Vietnam war was a deliberate psychological warfare operation, rooted abroad and aided and abetted by the left in this country. The very same thing is happening now.
It was and is an unbelievably frustrating horror for me to watch it unfold. Again. I wish on many a day I had died in Vietnam, rather than live to witness, and now re-witness, this existential vandalization of the greatest country and civilization the world has ever known.
Does anyone ever consider how World War II, with its exponentially greater horrors and crimes by every standard of measure, on all sides, is celebrated as the “Good War” conducted by “The Greatest Generation?”
It is all in how we are taught to look at it, isn’t it?
November 21st, 2006 at 11:13 am
NAMedic,
Thank you for sharing your experience and perspective in that comment. It finally provided me the words for something I’ve long known in my heart and inspired this post on my blog.
November 21st, 2006 at 12:04 pm
If this comes true, the last man to die for the mistake will be an Iraqi, and will be the last of a whole damn lot of Iraqis.
Just like Vietnam.
November 21st, 2006 at 5:01 pm
To white liberals. it’s OK that the Vietnamese and the Iraqi people die. They’re not even white! No white blood spilled for non-white people, say the Kerry’s and the Murtha’s of the world.
December 4th, 2006 at 7:12 pm
I don’t see much written about what violence does to war fighters.
I served as a marine rifleman in Viet Nam, 1968-69. I’ve read much Viet Nam war literature and published a collection of war poetry, On The Way to Khe Sanh, (three of which appeared in The Iowa Review, Spring 2005), and a memoir, Nam Au Go Go - Falling for the Vietnamese Goddess of War.
Nam Au Go Go is different. It talks about something no one I can find has written about - what violence does to war fighters. How, if combat soldiers and marines see too much, do too much, they can cross a threshold into an adaptation to violence and become addicted to it. When your emotional self is killed off by the insanity of war, survivors of this addiction have a hard time re-connecting with society. Combat is a one-way door. Once you go through, you cannot go back. You are changed.
For a glimpse, go to http://www.johnakins.net
Find Nam Au Go Go on booksellers’ websites.
e: jacolesdad@comcast.net
John Akins
Auburn, WA