Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Roger Allbee, secretary of the Vermont Agency of Agriculture and a former U.S. Army captain. He served in the Vietnam War.
Never again, not one more time – not another war like the one we are engaged in now. We’ve heard it before, about another war. That war was also in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and for the wrong reasons…and in that war many innocent people, in uniform and out of uniform, women and children, sons and daughters, grandfathers and grandmothers, died. That war was Vietnam. A war, we were told, to stop communism. We were wrong then and we are wrong now.
Today we are in Iraq and Afghanistan, to stop international terrorism, we are told. Afghanistan is a land continually engaged in tribal conflict where history has demonstrated that their people do not accept or embrace any foreign occupier, not the Soviets or those who came before or after them. Like Vietnam, we have been told that eventually a deal, or negotiations will have to take place with the Taliban in order for us to leave….as there is no winning. In the meantime, just as in the Vietnam war, innocent people, in uniform and out of uniform, women and children, sons and daughters, grandfathers and grandmothers are being killed daily. As former Vermont U.S .Senator George Aiken said about Vietnam, “Let’s declare victory and get out.”
