Snood,
You and I have bumped heads a few times on other threads, but on this one we are 100 percent in sync.
My military career was from 59 thru 79 which covered the entire Viet Nam era. That was another time when the country was very divided over a war and one in which the civilians micro-managed the military until we were into an impossible situation.
Back then they had a term called Vietnamization. That was the plan for our exit strategy from Viet Nam. After most of our troops pulled out it did not take long before the South fell. I was on Guam at the time. It was April of 1975. A refugee rescue effort called
Operation New Life was begun, C141's were coming in round the clock for days loaded with refugees. We had to help save those that worked with us. My wife was a volunteer helping to care for the refugees. In the first days churches and school gymnasiums were used for temporary quarters. After the planes slowed down, then came the ships loaded with even greater numbers of refugees. Guam had more than a hundred thousand refugees temporarily housed there before being sent to the mainland.
It was a very sad time for the military, the country, and the Vietnamese. It was something that we vowed should never be allowed to happen again.
It pains me greatly that this administration could nor foresee our current situation when it was so glaringly obvious. I see our current situation as eerily similar to the Vietnamization plan of Nixon. I hope I am wrong.
One lesson that so far at least seems to have been learned from that war, is not to take it out on the military members. That is I suppose part of the reason we see so many of those magnetic yellow ribbons on vehicles. The problem that I have with those ribbons is that many people also take them to mean support of the war and the administration. I solved that problem by modifying the ribbon on my vehicle. It reads;
Support our troops
Impeach Bush
I wish you well.
