Vietnam resurrected

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The current presidential election has spent an amazing amount of time focusing on the ghost of the Vietnam War due to the controversy over the war service records of Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry. Tearing open old wounds, which scarcely are hidden under the skin of my generation’s national psyche, this revisiting of that nightmare has not been pleasant. Wherever we stood then, and wherever we stand now in retrospect, one thing is for sure: None of us who went through the national drama and trauma want to see it happen to the United States again.

Yet, here we are again. We are caught in a war we may not be able to “win,” if “winning” means the bringing of it to an honorable, desired conclusion. Our old “Remember the Alamo” dictum after Vietnam became: “Never engage an indigenous land war in the jungles of Asia.” Today the current situation may lead to a new, harder-won conclusion: “Never engage in an indigenous religious civil war in the desert either.”

At this point, from my vantage, only God knows what we should have done in Iraq, or how we should have done it. And the Almighty ain’t talking, despite some people’s impassioned opinions on both sides of the issue. We removed a dictator. We have a tiger by the tail. We may or may not have the resolve to finish the job. Enough Iraqis may or may not be with us. More troops may or may not make a difference. A civil war may or may not follow the elections in Iraq, if they are held. We may or may not have to restart a national military draft. Here we are again, stuck in a national crapshoot. Is this 1964 or 2004? It smells uncomfortably similar to me, and I’ve lived in the passions of both situations as a fairly politically self-conscious critter.

Some time back I said in The Bottom Line that living in God’s judgment is characterized by having no good choices. In other words, go left you’re had or go right and you’re had. The only good choice is to repent and go back to where you went wrong. For the United States, that is a tough one, since we’ve made so many nationally anti-God choices over the last fifty years or so. Is it Roe v. Wade? Is it the race eviscerating choices of the “war on poverty”? Is it Kennedy’s turning the White House into a one-night-stand Palladium? Is it slavery? Is it pride and cultural imperialism? As countries go, I love and honor America despite our sins.

Comparatively, in a historical sense, we have used our power kindly as a world power. Nevertheless, I hear the 1960’s echoes faintly in my ears of, “Hell no, we won’t go.”

Somebody wake me up.

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Visit Dennis Peacocke at www.gostrategic.org or contact him.