Tag Archives: Viet Nam

In Observance

This year we have the sad duty to observe Memorial Day in remembrance of two generations of American soldiers whose lives were thrown away on distant battlefields by American politicians:  In Viet Nam and Iraq.

As Richard Fernandez explains: “The collapse in the Middle East feels like Black April, 1975, the month South Vietnam fell. And it should, because just as the collapse of Saigon did not happen in Black April, but in a political American decision to allow South Vietnam to fall after a ‘decent interval’, so also is the ongoing collapse rooted, not in the recent tactical mistakes of the White House, but in the grand strategic decision president Obama made when he assumed office…”

Militarily, the good old USA is not what it was and may never be again. Nobody, certainly not in the Middle East, trusts us anymore. Nor should they. Today, only about one half of 1 percent of the American population serves. Soldiers have no political clout whatsoever.

Indeed, joining the micro-managed, all-PC American military today—for any reason other than to repel a direct attack on the homeland—really isn’t advisable. It’s just slow-motion suicide. Deployment, perhaps, to the latest short-lived “commitment.” Some civilian flag-waving back home for a minute or two and then…forgotten.

Via ChicagoBoyz & Belmont Club.

UPDATE:  Kept hearing Happy Memorial Day Weekend, a civilian salutation bespeaking bar-b-ques and whatnot. Memorial Day really is about dead soldiers. So it’s like hearing Happy Dead Soldiers day. Disgusting.

Rule 5: Ha Kieu Anh

Miss Viet Nam of 1992. Holding up rather well twenty-one years and at least one child later.

Image

Le Hoang Bao Tran: Rule 5

World’s biggest cave

I’ve been in a few, from Shenandoah Caverns in Virginia to Inner Space under I-35 north of Austin. But this, apparently, is the largest found to date. It’s in Viet Nam, oddly enough. Another tourist attraction for a country that can always use another one.

Via Naturography.

Adios, UH-1

This seems to be it, as far as the American military is concerned, for the UH-1 Huey, the workhorse troop- and casualty-mover of the Vietnam war. Course the feeling of the nose-down takeoff, the wind roaring through the open side doors, and the distinctive sound of the rotor blades from the ground as one passes over will live on in memory, until the last veteran passes on. Few of them ever even knew it was, officially, called the Iroquois.

Combat in Afghanistan

"The Taliban are very brave, but they are ignorant brutal men who murder locals who do not support them, and brave doesn’t stop bullets." Michael Yon

Sounds like the Viet Cong. Hope they don’t have the Cong’s tenacity. So far they seem not to have. But this "good war," as the Dems used to call it, to distinguish it from their "bad war" in Iraq, has a long way to go. Yon’s piece shows why. Amazes me, though, that the Brit troops have women medics and rifles. These women aren’t inadvertently in combat. They are in it on purpose. Revolutionary.

Our War Dead

These are the men of 60th Company, Infantry Officer’s Candidate School, at Fort Benning, Georgia, a class dubbed 504-68, who were killed in Vietnam. We hundred and ten graduates (all but one of whom also served in Vietnam) remember them on Memorial Day: 
 
One graduate:   1LT Jacob Lee Kinser
 
Two tactical officers: CPT Reese Michael Patrick
                             1LT Daniel Lynn Neiswender
 
Four drop-outs: CPL Sherry Joe Hadley    
                       SP4 Reese Currenti Elia, Jr.
                       CPL Robert Chase
                       SP4 Jeffrey Sanders Tigner

Not that we don’t remember and appreciate the dead of both older and more recent American wars and campaigns. We just tend to think of our own first.

Soldier, rest, thy warfare o’er, 
Dream of fighting fields no more.
Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking,   
Morn of toil, nor night of waking.

                       –Sir Walter Scott