We had dropped more bombs on Vietnam than we had used in all of World War II and still we had lost. More significantly, Vietnam convinced us that only certain people have to go to war. The pragmatic legacy of the Vietnam War has been the redefinition of duty. Economic necessity now drives enlistment in the volunteer army. Mostly poor kids went up front back then.
More poor kids go up front now.
In a country dividing along socio-economic lines, maybe we should question the wisdom of allowing military skills to reside exclusively in our less privileged citizens. The Czechoslovakian locomotive pulled our train south from Hanoi on old narrow-gauge tracks the French had built. This strip of land south of the Song Ben Hai used to be a defoliated, cratered moonscape. Now it emerged from the morning mist lush with pine and eucalyptus trees. Beginning in 1976, the United Nations had helped the Vietnamese embark on a reforestation project.