We should only care about our own

Looking out at an alien world of murder and horror that has nothing to do with me.

In this article, writer Linh Dinh is interviewed about, among other things, how Americans' views of the Viet Nam War are shaped by movies that show Vietnamese as merely "faceless ciphers."  I'd go beyond that and say that Americans, the few who ever think about the Viet Nam War anymore -- after all, it ended almost half a century ago -- view the Vietnamese as NPCs in modern parlance:  Non-Player Characters without will or agency, merely fulfilling a programed role.

Do you care, really?

But then, I think that for the Vietnamese, we were the faceless ciphers, the NPCs, inexplicably thundering into their world with fire and fury, wealth and power, and then, just as inexplicably, leaving.

 In each case, why should the one care about the other?  And what would caring consist of?  Stopping the war?  That would be best, but certainly we ordinary people can't

He's lucky.  He got to a hospital.

do that.  The politicians couldn't, even if they started it.  My mother cared by returning to Viet Nam after her Army nurse service ended and volunteering to help war-injured  children with the burn unit of Children's Medical Relief International, but against the overwhelming flood of wounded children any effort she made, any effort CMRI made, was all but useless.  Her caring for foreigners, people unrelated to her and with no connection to her, was pointless.  More than pointless because it left her with unresolvable emotional

Two lucky saved.  Thousands unsaved.

trauma that has haunted her all of her life.  The little good she may have accomplished for those strangers is no compensation for the anguish she has suffered.  She would have been better off to have forgotten all about Viet Nam once her tour was over.  And so would her husband and children, who had to experience, at least to some degree, and at second hand, that anguish themselves in a thousand little episodes that baffled, confused, and sometimes frightened us.  If you know about real PTSD then you know what I'm talking about.  If you don't; well, I'm not talking to you.  Sorry about that.

These are my guys. I care about them.

Afghanistan is dying and I suppose I should have some emotional reaction.  All those years of effort, all the deaths, all the horrific injuries...all for nothing.

My father was furious when the North Vietnamese conquered South Viet Nam in a massive conventional land invasion.  Had US air power been unleashed, the destruction wrought on the NVA would have been orders of magnitude greater than that inflicted on the Germans in the Falaise Pocket.  He paced the deck of his carrier waiting for orders to attack that never came.  "Pilots, man your planes!"  All right!  Smash those mother-fuckers once and for all!  It was not to be.  He's still upset about it.  He doesn't say so.  But I can tell.

These guys I don't care about at all,  nor they me.

My mother...I think she was just relieved it was finally all over and what difference did it make who "won"?  Just end it. End it!

I guess I am with my mother when it comes to what's happening in Afghanistan.  Just end it.  Let whatever is to happen there happen.  They are not us.  None of them are.  They never liked us or wanted us there.  Those that pretended they did may have hoped for a better homeland to come from our intervention, but I think most simply endured our presence, being courteous to the foreigners with guns and bombs.  Others merely glomed on to the money machine we represented.  And still others, many others, did not bother to hide their hatred for we alien infidels who had inexplicably invaded their homeland.  

Well, I'm rambling.  I have a lot of half-formed thoughts that I'm not going to bother writing down.  Maybe I will in 30 or 40 years.  But probably not.  I guess all I really want to say is that we, as a country, should stick to our knitting, mind our own business, not go abroad seeking monsters to slay.  Just take care of our own and let the rest of the world do the same.

I know.  Dream on.

What's that?  Do I have PTSD?  Um....