Commentary: Current-day Vietnam underscores the folly of America’s wars
On a recent drizzly afternoon in the jungles of Vietnam, it was a miracle that I did not blow out my 60-year-old knees, break my ankles or get stung, bit or punctured. The trail I was traversing was a mudslide, and I couldn’t see 2 feet ahead of me.
As I clumsily climbed over a wet log and landed on my rear end, I imagined an 18-year-old farm boy from Indiana, drafted with a low lottery number, arriving in Saigon in 1968. or wounded would be 1 in 10. He could be one of the 58,000 soldiers killed or one of the 300,000 wounded or one of the 75,000 severely disabled. If he succeeded in returning to the United States, he could be one of the estimated 10,000 Vietnam veterans who would die by suicide, although unofficial estimates run as high as 50,000.
