The Price

It’s 2022 and much of the world is, as usual, at war. Hot spots include (but are not limited to) Ethiopia, Yemen, Libya, Syria, and Myanmar. A nasty civil war in the Central African Republic has left (according to reliefweb.int) 63% of the population in need of humanitarian assistance. Fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan has (largely) abated for now though territorial questions remain unresolved. (Also unresolved – more dangerously since two nuclear powers are involved – is the border dispute between China and India.) In addition there are numerous terrorist insurgencies that might not quite rise to the level of civil wars but nonetheless cause ongoing casualties, as in Algeria, Nigeria, Chad, DR Congo, et al. Ukraine dominates the news at present as it struggles to fend off a far larger power.
 
The US is no stranger to wars, having been at war 226 out of its 246 years. 1.2 million Americans have died in them. A two-decade-long one ended last year. (I don’t intend to discuss the nature of the ending.) I have nothing but respect for the military personnel who deploy to those wars. The politicians who send them there, not so much. Even in the most ill-considered (by politicians) military actions the troops who fight them make the point to their opponents that it is costly to engage the US military, and they thereby defend their country every bit as much as those who fight in more necessary conflicts. Some interventions are in fact necessary, but most have been questionable at best. American power is limited, and there is danger not just to the troops but to the homeland from overextending it however tempting it might be in light of tragic images from war zones – and never more so than when facing another nuclear power.
 
I was 11 years old when the Tonkin Gulf Resolution “began” US participation in the Vietnam War in 1964. (In fact there were already 23,000 troops on the ground officially acting as advisors.) I was 20 when US troops withdrew in 1973. Saigon fell two years later. Conscription ended in 1973, so my student deferment had outlasted the draft. Other members of my family weren’t so fortunate. It was the first televised war, which had much to do with the shift in public opinion about it between 1964 and 1973. It was a magazine article that shook me the most however. On June 27, 1969 LIFE magazine published The Faces of the American Dead in Vietnam: One Week’s Toll. The article contained the names and photos of 242 Americans killed in the week of May 8 – June 3. It was an average week in 1969. I urge a look at it. 33 of those pictured were 19 years old. 16 were 18 years old.

I am not offering an opinion about the wisdom of direct intervention in any regional conflict now underway. My opinion counts for little in any event. I only can hope that those who do have authority in these matters revisit those pages from 1969 and ask themselves how many more faces like these they are prepared to sacrifice. Perhaps it’s the right thing to do. But it’s something about which they (and we) should be sure.
 

Tiny Tim’s 1968 rendition of Irving Berlin’s 1914 song Stay Down Here Where You Belong