35 years Ago Today, The Fall of Saigon

In many ways I feel as though the fall of Saigon marked the end of the Roosevelt era in America. Although Reagan would not be elected for another five and a half years, the damage was done and liberalism in its form from the 1930's to the 1970's was dead. What followed was an agonizing period of energy shocks, inflation and a crises of confidence in our identity as a nation.

For the Vietnamese, April 30th, 1975 means so much more, liberation, frustration, a day of both celebration and mourning for all those who were lost in what turned out to be a long struggle for their independence.

My experience of Viet Nam is wholly secondary, the experiences of watching a father who served there spend a decade trying to intellectualize the experience through close study of the dozens of books that describe the American experience in the war.  My perceptions as a child of a 1970's America in near chaos, and the bizarre national amnesia that we put on like a set of earphones starting with the election of Reagan.

Today, let me just recognize that the there was a day when America was forced to face up to its mistakes, and that those mistakes still influence our national decisions regarding our actions abroad. Let me also pay my humble respects to our servicemen who lost their lives in the war, the over 2 million Vietnamese who died at the hands of US armaments and the millions more Cambodians and Vietnamese that died in the subcontinental chaos that followed our departure.

The possible parallels to Iraq and Afghanistan are legion but perhaps too simple. Today, I'll just remember the past.

Photo Credit: Hubert Van Es , Link is well worth the read.