I am a little older than you. Turned 80 this year. Growing up in the 1940s and 1950s the threat of communism was real and pervasive. Duck and cover drills in school. McCarthy hearings on TV. The Hungarian Revolution put down by the Soviets. The erection of the Berlin Wall and JFK’s famous speech in Berlin.
The Navy paid my way through college and I served 8 years as a naval officer including serving in Vietnam for a year (1967-68 during the Tet Offensive) after spending two years on an LPH that carried a Marine battalion, which made landings up and down the coast of I Corps in Vietnam. We spent 8 months off the coast as part of a 10 month WESTPAC deployment. We had a full surgical team onboard that handled hundreds of casualties.
We were in Vietnam to stop the spread of communism. It was called the Domino theory using similar arguments that we now see in Ukraine. We must stop the Russians in Ukraine so they don’t invade Poland and the rest of Europe. LBJ used the manufactured Gulf of Tonkin incident to get us fully involved in the conflict. We won the war and lost the peace.
After Vietnam I was assigned to a NATO command in Italy-1968-70. There were 500,000 US military personnel in Europe facing the Soviets and the fear they would flood thru the Fulda Gap. At the time the Soviets and the Warsaw Pact countries were real threats conventionally and as a nuclear power. Russia today is not the Soviet Union. It is not even close.
After the Navy I joined the State Department as an FSO. My various assignments abroad provided a front row seat to history. I was in Warsaw during the days of Solidarnosc and martial law. Living in a communist country offered a unique perspective on what life is like living in a police state, something we are now starting to become.
After Warsaw, I was posted to West Berlin for four years. I traveled to East Berlin frequently. Technically, Berlin was still an occupied city with British, French, American, and Soviet sectors. We had the Berlin Air Safety Center manned by the four occupying powers including the Soviets. They cleared all flights in and out of Berlin thru the designated corridors. I was present for Reagan’s 1987 visit to Berlin and his “tear down this wall” speech.
After Berlin it was off to Riyadh for five years including during the entire Desert Shield/Desert Storm war. I was able to travel to Kuwait a day after the war was over flying over and riding through the burning oil fields.
I was also assigned to Tehran 1977-79 and witnessed first hand the fall of the Shah and the rise of Khomeini. I was at the Embassy the first time we were overrun on Feb 14, 1979.
I have grown cynical in my old age. I have seen firsthand the ravages of war and the sacrifice of blood and treasure that accomplished very little. Our political leadership has not served us well. And I sure as Hell don’t trust Joe Biden and the fools and knaves who surround him.
This war could have been avoided. It was a failure of diplomacy. The same crew that started the war in 2014 are back in place to finish what they started. The Ukrainians are just pawns in a proxy war. Prolonging the senseless death and destruction is inexcusable. Having witnessed firsthand the impact of war, I have a hard time justifying our participation in it.
We can’t afford these endless wars. We are the world’s biggest debtor nation. This fiscal year will see a trillion dollars needed to just pay the annual debt servicing costs on the national debt. It will be more than we spend on defense.
I am America First. It has nothing to do with supporting Putin who is just a former KGB thug. The defense of the sovereignty of Ukraine has nothing to do with our strategic national interests.
There are no words
Thank you
I remember some of that and, as the youngest son of much older parents, I grew hearing the stories from my elders, some who lived through the same times as you and my parents and their friends who fought in WWII. That was my parents war. Vietnam was my sibling’s war.
There have been major changes in America and in our media from the one to the other and even more changes to us now and none of it in a good way.
As such, I share your cynicism and had given up on us/US by obama’s second term. If Hillary would have become POTUS, we were done. I was certain of it.
To me, it was a miracle that Donald J. Trump won instead. A miracle and a blessing from God, I believe.
And yet, here are once again with oBiden, and perhaps even worse off now than when obama was president.