A Conscience is a terrible thing to ignore…

This story in FrontPage Magazine caught me by surprise (one by its story line and the other is that I generally don’t read FrontPage).

For years I have maintained that one of the worst things that have ever happened to this country was the Sixties. While most youth go through a stage of "rebellion” against their parents, this movement (the hippie, radical student mentality) morphed into a "question ALL authority (whether needed or not) and toss all traditions" mentality that later solidified into a general distrust of this country as a whole; always looking for the bad rather than the good. And now it has become all but a staple of the Left.

This story is about one such individual that protested “The War” (Vietnam), but came to realize that compared to his fellow students, he had chosen a path now regretted. Some may see this as a story of someone that has come to his senses; others of principles betrayed. I took his story as a quiet adult  rebellion against that of a youthful angry one (something that I will never share, as I never took part of that subculture that complained incessantly about US policy and history).

I have found with the passage of time that I now understand and view things going around me and in society that I would not have in my youth; call it experience with perhaps a dash of wisdom. I think this gentleman has discovered this as well. In it, he tells his story in terms of interviewing an old college basketball teammate, Al. The author protested; Al became a POW in Vietnam when his plane was shot down:

When Al awoke, he couldn’t move. …[snip]…When he was well enough to get to his feet …[snip]… two armed Viet Cong led Al from the jungles of South Vietnam to a prison in Hanoi. The journey took three months.

At the very time of Al’s walk, I had a small role in organizing the only antiwar demonstration ever held in Beaufort, South Carolina, the home of Parris Island [Marine Boot Camp -Skip] …[snip]…  I thought I was serving America’s interests by pointing out what massive flaws and miscalculations and corruptions had led her to conduct a ground war in Southeast Asia.

When I was demonstrating in America against Nixon and the Christmas bombings in Hanoi, Al and his fellow prisoners were holding hands under the full fury of those bombings, singing "God Bless America." …[snip]… When he told me about the C-141 landing in Hanoi to pick up the prisoners, Al said he felt no emotion, none at all, until he saw the giant American flag painted on the plane’s tail. I stopped writing as Al wept over the memory of that flag on that plane, on that morning, during that time in the life of America.

…[snip]…

I looked for some conclusion, a summation of this trip to my teammate’s house. I wanted to come to the single right thing, a true thing that I may not like but that I could live with. After hearing Al Kroboth’s story of his walk across Vietnam and his brutal imprisonment in the North, I found myself passing harrowing, remorseless judgment on myself. I had not turned out to be the man I had once envisioned myself to be. I thought I would be the kind of man that America could point to and say, "There. That’s the guy. That’s the one who got it right. The whole package. The one I can depend on."

It had never once occurred to me that I would find myself in the position I did on that night in Al Kroboth’s house in Roselle, New Jersey: an American coward spending the night with an American hero.

A sobering confession.  While there are those that harken back to the days of Vietnam and try to paint the current conflict as Vietnam the Second Coming, I think of the horror and the terror that happened afterwards in Vietnam and in Cambodia when we cut and run (there was no peace and there was no honor).  I wonder how many who advocated that policy have taken responsibility for what happened later.  I wonder if those that are once again advocating that policy understand that although our troops may come home, will that same carpet of death may be rolled out again.

Will once again, America turn tail on what it started?  And by running, how will that enhance our standing in the world with our allies?

And will it take another 40 years for history to repeat itself for those protesting now and advocating  "redeployment", only to realize years later within themselves what this author is now acknowledging?