History, Rhyming

 AH, DISTINCTLY I REMEMBER, to quote Poe, March, 1975. The helicopter hovers above the American embassy in Saigon, soon to be renamed "Ho Chi Minh city". John Chancellor narrates the situation. A rope ladder dangles beneath the swaying helicopter, swaying. Desperate diplomates and assorted South Vietnamese citizens cling to the ladder, some making their way up, some immobile, several seemingly  paralyzed with fear and indecision. Viet Nam was our first, but not our last made for television war of foreign aggression to make the world safe for American corporate expansion. After ten years of a futile American war of foreign aggression, superimposed upon an ongoing civil war, the Yankee invader, seeking to save some small semblance of  face, had, after years of arguing with the enemy about the size and shape of the negotiating table, had signed a peace treaty in January, 1973. Nixon had run for president in 1968 and won pledging an honorable end to the Viet Nam War, and millions of mostly young liberal Americans had filled the streets for five years, trying to force him to live up to his promise, honorably or otherwise, sooner rather than later. It eventuated dishonorable, and later. Dishonorable because the end consisted in the enemy winning the war, imposing its political will upon the ally of the United States. The North Vietnamese had simply patiently waited for the invader to go home, which they knew it would eventually have to; I knew it too, and I was only a teenager, a teenager who paid attention. By February 1968 the inevitable American loss we evident; the communists had launched the all out Tet offensive, had been badly defeated and driven back, and didn't seem to mind. They knew there would be many more opportunities. When Walter Cronkite turned against the war, so did I. One hardly needs to mention the similarity to the situation of the United States now in Afghanistan. The military will have the diplomats out by mid week, without resorting to the urgent necessity of rope ladders dangling from hovering helicopters, or so one hopes. Mark Twain had it right, as he usually did, when he said that history never repeats itself, but that it often rhymes. This war lasted twice as long, resulted in far fewer casualties, with the same outcome. The United States is defeated, its enemy imposing its will. Again American imperialism is defeated, predictably. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on Christmas Day 1979, and was driven out in defeat ten years later, with the help of jacuzzi Congressman Charlie Wilson and his hand held shoulder launched helicopter killing mortars. Before that, many equally formidable would be conquerors had met with the same fate, in particular the British and the Persians. Now it it time for the mighty American empire to humble itself.