HOW DID IT USED TO BE IN AMERICA 30 YEARS AGO, Grandpa??? Marking 30 Years of Radical Rightwing Islamic movements in the Middle East and Right Wing Patriotic Backwash in America
By Kevin A. Stoda, on-line candidate for Kansas U.S. Senate post
If your grandchild ever asks you about what life was like in America right after the U.S. forces pulled completely out of Vietnam so quickly in April 1975, tell him the truth next time.
I for one will never forget the sincere sadness on the face of my 7th grade instructor ( and a former helicopter pilot in Vietnam) who with the Fall of Saigon on that fateful day pronounced solemnly that no one would ever forget this date in American history when the U.S. lost its first war.
That was on, of course, the 30th of April. i.e. I still remember the date.
However, with a little more study I soon came to know that the U.S. had been kicked out of the Nicaragua by Augusto Sandino in the 1930s—i.e. after 20 years of the U.S. having forces there.
Moreover, I also learned that in the 1910s the U.S. had had to leave Mexico twice—the second time in 1916 after General Pershing’s failure to find Pancho Villa and his rag tag “terrorist forces”. (This was during Mexico’s Revolution—i.e. a 10-year long Civil War.)
I wonder when the U.S. will realize it is time to pull out of Iraq and/or Afghanistan.?? Or any other civil wars?
Moreover, how many other times have Americans had to suck up their pride and pull out of wars or other people’s civil wars?
Well, during the Reagan era, I recall the U.S. forces being pulled out of Beirut after heavy losses from a terrorist attack during the Lebanese Civil War.
Then in the 1990s, there was that high-tailing out of Somalia’s civil wars.
At least in the period between 1975 and 1980 when I went to high school, there was a historical reality of a phase in U.S. history when there was a majority of Americans who had a common sense of purpose.
We told ourselves time-and-again in those days in the post-Vietnam Quagmire period: NEVER AGAIN!
IMMEDIATE POST-VIETNAM WAR ERA MEMORIES
I remember the late 1970s, i.e. as the so-called political and spiritual post-Vietnam era malaise spread across America.
On the other hand, I recall there was a great joy and hope as a country bumpkin Baptist, named Jimmy Carter from Georgia walked between the Capitol and the White House on Inauguration Day in January 1976.
