VETERANS DAY 1968… FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, 11 NOVEMBER 1968, OPED, Page 46… Quoted…
THE KILLING CENTURY
The stilled guns of November, 1918; of August, 1945; of July, 1953; and soon, we pray, of 1968. Fifty years ago on this day an armistice was declared in the Great War. A quarter of a century later, the world was in the throes of a greater war. Then less than a decade after that, forces of the United Nations were battling in Korea; Americans are still on guard there. And now there is the half-pause in South Vietnam.
On Veterans Day above all others in this so-called modern civilization, the men who run the governments of the world and the people who put them in command of their lives ought to ponder the alternatives: discussion, conciliation, peace versus war, destruction and death. It sounds so simple, yet in this killing century beastiality always has broken the stillness of the guns.
The supreme obligation to the veterans of these wars and to their children and their children’s children is for the nations no longer to lift up swords against nations. The Biblical injunction must be followed, in this age a more desperate necessity than ever before. The day must come, as Victor Hugo wrote, “when a cannon will be exhibited in public museums, just as instruments of torture is now, and people will be astonished how such a thing could ever have been.”… End quote…
VETERANS DAY 2018… Humble Host notes that contrary to the prayers of the New York Times Editorial Staff on 11 November 1968 that the “half-pause in South Vietnam” would lead to “stilled guns” in Southeast Asia, the fighting raged on, and on. On Veterans Day 1968–50 years ago– about 28,000 American men had been killed in combat in the quagmire called Vietnam. Before the half-pause for peace talks in Paris became a retreat from Vietnam five years later, another 30,000 brave warriors would pay the last full-measure fighting for their country in a land 10,000-miles from home. The Presidential promise of no American boys fighting another land-war in Asia had been shattered. Just as the Presidential promise that no American boys would be fighting in Europe fifty years before; and the Presidential promise twenty-five years after that, as Hitler marched into Poland in 1939.
Promises made, promises broken. And the resultant lessons paid for in the blood of the brave in those wars go ignored by one generation after another. “Only the dead have seen the end of war,” wrote Plato. What Plato did not say was: “Those who are ready to fight a war, have the best chance to deter war and a much better chance to fight a short war, if deterrence fails.”
With the experience of surviving the “Killing Century,” and the lessons of those experiences and World History 101, one can only marvel at how our nation has fumbled it’s way into another quagmire more muddy than Vietnam, and has spent 17 of the 18 years of the 21st Century fighting a land war where there are no vital national interests. In fact, Afghanistan is where powerful nations go to die. And, of course, countless American warriors perish in the pursuit of wars with little or no cause. And the wars go on even when they are lost, in a fruitless attempt to avoid the unavoidable–the conclusion that the war was both fought and lost in vain.
Today, as you remember the fallen in our wars– “Lest we forget”– Humble Host suggests three actions. First, take a tour of the American Battle Monuments and the cemeteries of the warriors who remain on the battlefields where they fell. …Start the tour at…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Battle_Monuments_Commission
Second, contact the White House and remind our President that he too made a promise two years ago that he would end American interest and commitment to the quagmire of 17 years of national embarrassment and misspent blood and treasure. End the American participation in the endless and hopeless case of peace among the tribal interests of that ungovernable land mass. While you are at it, remind the President that his first responsibility is the future and safety of the United States, and the surest way to fumble America into a war with a world power is to be unprepared to deter our enemies from challenging our readiness and will to fight. You might want to ask the President what he meant when he said this weekend that he “will never forgive President Obama for what he did to our military posture and readiness.” The implication is obvious– we are unprepared to fight and win. That is an invitation for our enemies to try us out. The President and the Congress regularly boast about our “Greatest military in the world, greater than at any time in the past.” If that was true, then President Obama must have been doing a good job during his eight years as Commander-in-Chief. President Trump can’t have it both ways. A one year, modest increase in Defense spending is a drop-in-the-bucket considering the lengthy lists of unfunded requirements our services have identified for funding by Congress, and our demonstrated readiness and deferred modernization. With the economy booming the all-volunteer force is an increasing problem. The sum of the force level, readiness, modernization and personnel problems should be of major concern to every American, “globalists” included. Contact the President at
https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
Finally, spend a few minutes surfing the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency web site. Check out the Vietnam-Era Statistical Report. As of 12 October 2018 we are still missing 1,592 warriors in Southeast Asia as a consequence of the Vietnam war fought fifty years ago. That’s 1,592 of our mates who remain where they fell and nobody knows where that may be. Gone… Who will remember those American fighting men on this Veterans Day? They never even got the opportunity to be veterans. Here’s what you can do to remember a few of them.
While you are on the DPAA site, find the names of the missing from your home state. Jot down a few names. Go to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund site and punch in the names of the missing from your home state… Take advantage of “Leaving a Remembrance” that the VVMF has created for “remembering the fallen” from our war… That is what Veterans Day is for, and every day…
This range of suggestions for keeping your mind on the subject is an excellent way to avoid watching NFL kneelers… just a thought…
Lest we forget… Bear…
Tomorrow: COMMANDO HUNT and ROLLING THUNDER REMEMBERED… A summary of the air war in Vietnam for the period 1-11 November 1968, the first of weekly posts reporting the eight air campaigns under the COMMANDO HUNT umbrella conducted between the 1 November 1968 end of ROLLING THUNDER and LINEBACKER operations Christmas 1972 and in the Spring of 1973… “The truck war” continues with road cuts and truck parks the targets in lieu of the bridges and SAM sites in the Panhandle of Route Packs I and II… The same guns will be there: we move the bombing, they move the guns… fight’s on… COMMANDO HUNT I coming up…
COURSE PREP/HOMEWORK… Read at;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Commando_Hunt
Lest we forget… Bear