Vets Make It Clear:Afghanistan Another Vietnam

November 18, 2009
By Ken Herman
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Austin American-Statesman

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas - In honor of Veterans Day, this column is offered with minimal interruptions.

It comes from the VFW Southern Conference, where I talked with vets about Afghanistan and Iraq.

No statistically significant sample here, but I found vets of foreign wars who are fed up with the current foreign wars, especially Afghanistan. Pull out, some say. More troops, say others. But the status quo has few backers. And I found little confidence that either nation would be a self-sustaining democracy anytime soon.

Notice how our Vietnam misadventure colors their views of the current wars.

Thanks to these vets for their input. And thanks to all vets for their service.

“Afghanistan is more like Vietnam than any war we have been in since 1975,” said David Harris, who served two years in the Army in Vietnam. “It was Pennsylvania Avenue that lost that war ... We lived and sacrificed while the fat cats in Washington sat up there, ate steaks every night, slept on a warm bed, and nobody had to sleep out there in the boonies.

“I think the president doesn’t have any choice but to send (more troops to Afghanistan) because if you do not send them, let’s not get the ones over there murdered. Let’s pack them up and bring them home. The old saying is you either got to do it or get off the pot.”

Rod Stone of Selma, Ala., is a Purple Heart Vietnam vet who said, “We’re OK in Iraq and Afghanistan. I think Obama needs to send more troops to help our troops that we’ve got over there. We can prevail if the government will get out of it and let us go fight like they didn’t do in Vietnam.”

Democracies in Iraq or Afghanistan?

“I doubt that very seriously,” Stone said. “I’m a Vietnam veteran ... and it’s a shame that we left dragging down the American flag from the embassy and jumping on helicopters to get out of there as the communists and North Vietnamese were advancing on the embassy. I hope and pray that that’s not what happens in (Iraq or Afghanistan), but I have a feeling that when we do pull out combat troops and cease operations, that not too long after that, I believe there will be a civil war in those countries. “

Correct, said Vietnam vet Juan Saenz of Corpus Christi.

“They’ve been fighting since Alexander the Great,” he said. “These people have their own little enclaves. This war chief will fight with this other war chief ... That’s the way they live and that’s the way they’ve been living for years ... If you go in there with your hands tied like they did with us in Vietnam, you are not going to accomplish anything ... Personally, I would pull my troops out.”

Ken Miller of Vonore, Tenn., served 27 years in the Navy, including a carrier stint in Vietnam.

“We need to be out of Afghanistan, and we need to be out of Iraq,” he said, foreseeing no chance of democracies in either country.

Miller said returning troops tell him “that no matter what we do ... 10 years from now we will still be in the same position we are now. Nothing will change over there ... Democracy is not going to work in Afghanistan.

“If you send more troops in there, all we are going to do ... is actually increase the anti-American sentiment.”

Let’s close with former Texas VFW Commander Al Cantu of Corpus Christi, a 21-year Army vet, who spoke of something that unites our nation in a time of great division.

‘‘I don’t necessarily care for the wars, but I do care about our troops, and I am very much in support of our troops that are there.

“And I wish them God-speed home and that they do a job well done.”