01 April 2008

April Fools

This could pass for one of the greatest shows on earth, this circus turn of the quarter year. This day devoted to pranks and foolishness fits well with the mood.

Hard to imagine that we a done with so much of this young year, and we have dug such a deep hole. The good news from overseas is buried in new apprehension about the Shia militias, to the extent that it is reported. It is understandable. You could get shot over there. The Mainstream Media is a strange beast. It confirmed in a subtle way the state of the race for the Democratic nomination for President this morning.

Senator Obama got the sound bite; a few seconds of something that sounded pleasant enough, and the dance off for the update was the brief notation that Senator Clinton had “an economic roundtable” with some people in a diner in Harrisburg.

Diners are good places to take the pulse of the nation, near an easy-off exit from the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Truckers told her that diesel fuel was too expensive, and they could drive or stay home, either way they were losing money. It feels like 1973 again, and though I would trade backwards for the hot blood of youth, I would just as soon not live this again.

My younger son is in the trucking business, or at least brokering loads all across this great nation. At the moment, he is making a great deal of money for his company. At the front end of this recession, the truckers want full trucks if they are going to drive, and that means a lot of loads booked.

That can’t go on forever, and the cost of the fuel will get passed along to the you and me soon enough. Senator Obama said something about hope; and I know he hopes this is all over soon. Clinton is trailing him in the popular vote, in total delegates, and in the national polls. She is a tough lady, though, and recent polling in rusting Pennsylvania give her a double-digit lead in the primary that comes in three long weary weeks.

She seems to be coming through the last foolery about whether or not she had braved combat in Tuzla, in the late Bosnian crisis. She was badly wounded in that. Why she would claim that she had come under sniper fire at a friendly welcoming ceremony at the airport is beyond me. She said she was tired and misspoke.

I can understand that. I have drawn hostile fire pay a couple times in a checkered career, usually inadvertently. Truth be told, my favorite episode was qualifying for the tax break while staying at the Zagreb Intercontinental Hotel. Nice place.

It was possible, at least theoretically, that ground combat could have broken out at any moment.

I guess that is why people who have been in real danger get so bent out of shape about the poseurs, and why they reacted so strongly when the mantle of the combat veteran is abused. Those that have not seen hostile fire- and I count myself among them- will never know the lingering consequences of it. The fact that Senator Clinton was asked to sit on a flack jacket just in case, and that her C-17 took the cork-screw approach to the airfield notwithstanding is simply prudent.

The real deal changes people. A friend who had served in-country in South East Asia told me a story that summed it up pretty well. Years after, he was on the bridge of a ship and something went “bang” on the deck below. Most of the officers went quickly to the rail to look down and see what happened. The three combat vets were flat on the steel, and did not rise until they knew it was not incoming fire.

They had the experience that came each night. During the day things were relatively calm, and the full might of the United States of American could be whistled in from the sky at their discretion to deadly effect.

Not true at night. Charlie owned the night, and he could move at will. The local farmers or base employees would don their black pajamas and hump a mortar out somewhere in the darkness and lob a round or two at the Americans, enough to ruin sleep and sometimes get lucky. Force the foreigners to keep their heads down, and allow the goods of war to be transported along the trails and in sampans on the rivers.

The Americans were no fools, and never lost a fight where the enemy tried to stand toe-to-toe. That was never the point. The famous Tet offensive was a disaster militarily for the VC, and nearly wiped them out. They won the sound-bite, of course, and that is what turned the tale in the end.

I am going to venture off the conventional wisdom here for a while. With the passing of time, a variety of theories have been advanced that assuage the anger of those who sacrificed so much in a lost struggle.

There are those who argue that the time and treasure spent to deter the Communists delayed the Domino Effect, and permitted the rise of a democratic Asia. Others remind us that the military conflict was won in the field, and the departure of American Ground forces in 1973 was done in an orderly manner, victorious in every conflict, and in accordance with the terms of the cease fire.

Both contentions are accurate, to the degree that they are quite true. But the common view of history is that the Americans were run out of the country, and the tragic evacuation of Saigon two years later was the way it ended.

Quite the contrary. When the Americans pulled out in 1973, things were pretty well stabilized, and the night was no sanctuary at all.

I was going to bore you with how that came to pass, and why the night provides so little cover for Joe Jihadi in Iraq, or in the mountains of Afghanistan, but that will have to wait until tomorrow.

Copyright 2008 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com