{"id":59994,"date":"2026-06-30T01:55:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T01:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=59994"},"modified":"2026-06-30T01:55:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T01:55:09","slug":"recalling-a-national-mistake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=59994","title":{"rendered":"Recalling a national mistake"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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President Barack Obama occasionally would hang a medal around the neck of a warrior who fought in a long-ago-battle. And if that warrior served in Vietnam during the war that ravaged that nation, he would remind Americans of the mistake many of them made when those warriors came home.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The nation has grown up since those days. Now we honor the men and women who fight our battles. We tell them we love them and we’re proud of their service. During the Vietnam War era, it wasn’t that way … at all! The individuals who came home were treated with varying degrees of hostility or — in my case — with profound disinterest. Therein lies the mistake we made. Gladly, we have rebuilt our national conscience and are welcoming home our warriors with ceremonies, with viral videos of their reunification with loved ones.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In the 1960s and 1970s, Americans had to taste the bitter pill of defeat. We didn’t lose fights on the battlefield. We lost the war at home. We ran out of patience. The Vietnamese proved the fallacy of walking onto another man’s turf and expecting to score an easy, quick victory over a people that had fought for decades for their homeland. They were battle-hardened. They knew about suffering in ways we only could imagine.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The result was the young Americans who went to war because their government ordered them, or who volunteered for the service, were treated disgracefully. They took the blame for policy decisions they merely were following. The public that blamed them had no clue about the wrong they were perpetrating.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

That’s all changed. The Persian Gulf War of 1990-91 brought that shame to a screeching halt with parades honoring the personnel who took care of business on the battlefield. Who led the cheers? The Vietnam War veterans! In communities all across the nation, Vietnam vets took up the organizing baton and staged parades to honor their battlefield descendants.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

That’s how a nation grows up.<\/p>\r\n\n

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President Barack Obama occasionally would hang a medal around the neck of a warrior who fought in a long-ago-battle. And if that warrior served in Vietnam during the war that ravaged that nation, he would remind Americans of the mistake many of them made when those warriors came home. The nation has grown up since … Continue reading Recalling a national mistake<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[3555,7120,5116],"class_list":["post-59994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military-news","tag-persian-gulf-war","tag-vietnam-vets","tag-vietnam-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59994"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59996,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59994\/revisions\/59996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}