OPINION:
No doubt Secretary of State John F. Kerry has forgotten his memories of Vietnam, but I have not (Commentary, “Playing a president on TV,” Web, Sept. 12). It was July 1971, and Flying Tiger Line was flying me along with other draftees, all trained and ready for a tropical experience, to Ben Hoa. The plane had flown from Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, Calif., via Anchorage, Alaska, and Yokota, Japan, to cruise down the coast of Vietnam before the final approach to the airfield. I remember looking out the window to see what looked like moon craters. It was unbelievable. If you ignored the surrounding vegetation, it actually looked like the surface of the moon. Someone pointed out that it was the result of a B-52 bombing.
I spent the next 11 months in Long Binh, and it was a lot like Joseph Heller’s “Catch 22.” Nothing made any sense. In fact, it resembled the Obama administration. I thought we still had a half-million boots on the ground in Vietnam when I arrived, but it was actually more like 350,000 at that point. You might say the writing was on the wall. Even Jane Fonda knew it. All of the bombing, B-52s or otherwise, and a half-million U.S. troops had not done the job. As far as training the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, well, that just did not pan out. It did not pan out for the French, and it was not going to pan out for us.
So what to make of the Obama administration’s response to the Islamic State? Could anyone actually be this stupid or have so little knowledge of history, or is there something else going on? President Obama is just a reflection of the people who elected him. They will soon be experiencing firsthand the result of the incompetence that they voted for, and they should be preparing for what is to come. My guess is that in the very near future they may very well end up in a plane flying over what looks like the surface of the moon.
SAMUEL BURKEEN
Reston
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