Time heals all wounds. Even our self-inflicted wounds of declaring defeats.
Did America just win the Vietnam War?
Over 50 years since America’s withdrawal from the Vietnam War, history has legitimized and vindicated its sacrifice in the Vietnam War.
While few Americans have noticed, Vietnam’s new General Secretary of the Communist Party, To Lam, has replaced Marxist-Leninism as the Party’s governing ideology with something more authentically Vietnamese: Truong Ton Dan Toc, or “Vietnamese nationalism.”
That is a bombshell. Hanoi has just abandoned its Communist ideology, which governed it since 1954 and sustained it in its wars against the United States and its ally South Vietnam, and with its Communist neighbors, Cambodia and the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
Well, look narrowly at the Korean War. So I'm open to that line of inquiry regarding the Vietnam War.
But the "wars" America and allies fought in Vietnam and Korea were really hot campaigns in the broader Cold War. We won that Cold War even if specific campaigns aren't reassessed.
Still, there's a long list of post-World War II American"defeats" that could be reconsidered as time goes on. And heck, if World War II was judged the way we have judged recent wars, there is no way it would be enshrined as the "good war."
So thanks and congratulations to my brothers who served during the Vietnam war (one was sent) who received no parades for their sacrifice when their terms were over. And to all the other veterans who helped in their campaigns to win the bigger wars.
Fingers crossed about Afghanistan.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
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NOTE: Image from Pinterest.
