11th Armored Cavalry Regiment

Editorial

I have wondered many times about the consequences of our actions and if what we did there had any effect.

I happened upon a documentary on PBS of a young girl that recently took a photo tour of Vietnam.

She displayed the lodging, accommodations and tourist business and the metropolis of Saigon that has developed in the south since our excursion there. (In her feature the people there still referred to the city as Saigon,. They did not acknowledge Ho Chi Minh City)

As she crossed the DMZ, she noticed the difference in the people and country side --- sort of living far in the past. No accommodations for travelers and no amenities at all.

The country seems to have split on its own, the South, part Capitalistic, the North, definitely Communist.

Farther North, she met people living as they had lived for centuries, and really did not know much about the conflict.

What have we done and are we finished? 

1. Did we achieve any of the goals we were sent there to achieve?

2. If we had come back with respect, would the drug culture in the U.S. be as prevalent?

3. What would the world be like if we had been able to give the Vietnamese a democratic society?

4. Would the Democratic government have been as active in solving the Cambodian mess as was the Communist government ?

Any thoughts?