Tag: Vietnam

This piece is appearing this week and next week in newspapers in my very red congressional district (VA-06). ***************************** “To err is human.” So we all...

This piece is appearing in newspapers in my very red congressional District, VA-06. *************************** For the entire history of human civilization, the international system has been...

It's no longer widely understood - now that war is kept largely out of sight and out of mind - just how dreadful warfare is, and the profound effect it has on the participants and their loved ones.

Those words are from the middle of a Bob Herbert column this morning, with the title An Overdue 'Welcome Home', in which he discusses a a "moving" documentary produced by Wisconsin Public Television, the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs and the Wisconsin Historical Society, "Wisconsin Vietnam War Stories."  It will shortly be shown at Lambeau Field with tens of thousands of veterans and their families expected to attend.

You can, and should, read the column.  I want to focus on a few expressions, starting with the one at the beginning of this posting.  

We are now looking back 35 years.  Tomorrow, April 30, is the anniversary of the Fall of Saigon, the images in our mind stark.  The evacuations by helicopter, as shown above.   And this, the image of those helicopters, like one might say of the mission in country, being abandoned, pushed overboard or ditched in the ocean: