Pacification worker in Mekong Delta

A member of our American advisory team was killed on that very road in 1969. He was a Minnesotan with a family who had been my friend. Our Vietnamese district chief, Cpt. Le Minh Hoang, was killed during an operation in the northern part of the district. He had been a fine officer and friend to all of us Americans. Villages were attacked and bombed where dozens of civilians were killed or wounded. It was common to find dead civilians laid out along the road. An American plane dropped its ordinance on one of my villages, and I had to convey apologies and money to the survivors on behalf of our Government. Gradually it became clear that our war was going nowhere, and that America needed to leave Vietnam so that peace could be restored. 

In 2001, my sons Will and Tony accompanied me on a return visit to Vietnam. We started in China and rode trains, motorcycles and airplanes all the way south, ending up in my old town of Cai Be. The North Vietnamese had treated the southerners very badly after their victory in 1975, as corroborated by several conversations with former South Vietnamese soldiers who had survived "re-education camps." 

Nonetheless, it was obvious that the united Vietnam had done remarkably well and that considerable wealth had found its way down to common people in the villages. Thousands of new masonry homes were being built. Roads were re-opened, blacktopped and improved. The population had exploded, doubling in only a generation. Power lines, internet and cell phones had invaded in force.  

Most interestingly, most Vietnamese I met had not yet been born when the war ended. It was a forgotten interlude, their fathers' war, something not relevant to themselves. Vietnamese routinely traveled abroad, even to the United States. They spoke optimistically about their futures. 

For the Vietnamese, it seemed like our war never had happened. They referred to it as "hoi xua," meaning "back in the ancient time." The Vietnam that had lived in my memory for 25 years was gone and forgotten. That helped me realized that it the war really was over. In writing my memoir on Vietnam, I came across a number of recent authors who helped me put my experience into wider perspective. I now see the war as stemming from misunderstandings about actual conditions in Asia, our own political intrigues, and ill-based fear of threats from abroad.

A strong case can be made that Vietnam was a war America should not have fought. Wiser leadership could have nipped it in the bud in the 1940's, and surely could have extricated America from it by the early 1960's. Nixon's decision in 1969 to "bomb them into submission" was foolhardy and probably a war crime. 

Finally, I believe that Vietnam illustrates why it is so critical for Americans to be informed of world events and to insist on having a say in our government's decisions to go to war.