The two great wars had to be fought because the world faced dire peril. Americans simply could not stand by and allow tyranny, genocide and terror to run rampant across the globe.
Just five years after the second Great War, we began to lose sight of that guiding principle, and with almost no public dissent, we sent our young men to fight what was basically a civil war in the tiny county of Korea. A country that few Americans in 1950 hardly knew existed. Three years later, 36,616 American parents buried their sons, except for the 8,175 MIAs never found. More than 92,000 were wounded. When we brought what was left of our boys home in 1953, we had no clue as to why we had sent them to this hellhole in the first place. Even now, we do not know.
Nightly our television screens were filled with the nightmare of Vietnamese children fleeing their bombed hamlets, clothes ablaze with burning napalm. Only after our college campuses erupted into virtual battlegrounds, with four students killed by our own National Guard at Kent State University, did we begin to pull back from the carnage.
By the time we finally admitted defeat and brought the last of troops home in 1975, more than 58,000 young Americans were dead, as were more than 3 million Vietnamese, North and South. Hundreds of thousands horribly wounded. And for what? To this day, not one living soul can answer that question.
We swore, never again. But in 2003, we allowed old men who hid from Vietnam as young men to send our children where they would not send their own children. But this time, for the first time in world history, a call to fear by the few was met with protest and defiance by the many.
From September 2002 through February 2003, in 800 cities around the world, we saw the largest peace protests ever held before a war actually started. The 2004 Guinness Book of Records listed these protests as the largest protests in human history. It was clear to the entire world from the beginning that this Third World county with no air force or naval capability posed no viable threat to the U.S.
But once again fear and ignorance won out. Now, five years later to the month, we find ourselves with nearly 4,000 of our young men and women dead, tens of thousands wounded, and several hundred thousand Iraqi civilians killed. Where there were no terrorists, we have created a terrorist haven. And again, no one can coherently articulate why.
We can never undo what has been done, but we can begin the process of atonement. In November, we will know if we still have it in us to listen to our better angels. The differences could not be more stark. We will either elect a president who is a nicer version of what we have now, or we will make history and come together, conservative, liberal and independent alike, and elect one who asks us all to be the best that we can be.
Maybe once again we will be the shining beacon of hope in the world that is our birthright.
James C. Lockwood is a Vietnam veteran who lives in Whitefish.
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