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The pictures of Afghans running along side of and clinging to an Airforce C-17 preparing to take off brought back memories of the pictures of Vietnamese trying to get on a Boeing 727 during the fall of Da Nang in 1975.
I served as an artillery officer in Vietnam from 1969 to 1970 and even in those days most of us knew that the war was not going well as the Nixon Administration sought to find a "honorable" way to get out of the war in the face of protests across the nation along with dwindling congressional support. I sometimes had the feeling that by this time the war was a show continued by generals who knew it was lost but wanted to advance up the career ladder by participating in the only war in town. Sadly, a lot of young people died in the process.
The spirit of the Army was broken by the war. Troops did their jobs and looked out for each other but most hoped that they wouldn't be one of the final casualties in a war that was lost. I can remember being driven to the Phu Bai airport on my way home and thinking that everything I saw would one day be controlled by North Vietnam.
Still, five years later when it all ended, I experienced mixed feelings with a sense of loss and even betrayal for the way it ended. For me, the war had ended five years before but I remembered those young people, many of whom were draftees yet fought with skill and dedication who died or were maimed physically and mentally by the war. How would they come to be remembered?
Before the end politicians, in the face of nonexistent popular support for the war, had declared the war won and told the armed forces to pack up and go home because the South Vietnamese could do it on their own. Anyone who fought there knew the South Vietnamese wouldn't be able to survive without our help and that things would end badly.
In the end we remember Da Nang and the fall of Saigon as Americans were airlifted off the Embassy roof while Vietnamese who had worked for us sought to storm the embassy gates and escape to freedom. Meanwhile at sea South Vietnamese helicopters bearing soldiers and their families crash landed on our carrier decks.
Now forty-six years later we see the same scenes being repeated in Afghanistan. We've seen scenes of desperate Afghans fighting to board that C-17 already jammed with over six-hundred persons, scenes of Afghans rushing to gain access to the airport and of helicopters landing at our embassy to evacuate the American staff. Then there are the shots of Taliban fighters roaming the streets fully armed and stopping and questioning people. If some veterans of the war or Gold Star Families are disturbed by this, I fully understand their feelings
We should have stuck to our original mission of denying Afghanistan to Islamic terrorists but instead we were sidetracked into attempting to create a modern secular democratic society. These are admirable goals but we should have known from our Vietnam experiences that armed forces are better at killing and breaking things then they are in nation building, particularly in what is basically a tribal society.
In the beginning we should have clearly stated we were in Afghanistan to protect the United States and stuck to it. I think the American public grew weary after twenty years of war and nation building but might have supported the goal of denying its use as a base for terrorists.
Having said that, after twenty years of spending our lives and treasure we needed to get out but the way Biden did it unleashed our current problems. Biden should not have announced an absolute date for withdrawal without any preconditions and should not have done it during "fighting season" or what passes for spring and summer in that part of the world. He should have also stated that we would leave a small force behind to support the Afghan Airforce, and to give logistical and training support to other forces. Things didn't happen that way so now let's get our people home along with all those Afghans who aided our efforts.