Viet Nam

As comparisons to Viet Nam spread across the news, my mind drifts back some 50 years to those troubled times. The body counts, where they would announce that 50 died and that 500 Viet Cong died and somehow it didn't seem so bad. The protests both violent and not. The national guard shooting students at Kent State. The democratic convention in Chicago where Walter Cronkite was all upset when his protege Dan Rather was punched in the stomach. The little girl running naked down the road with her arms and legs burning with napalm. The most striking was on the roof of the embassy as people boarder helicopters. One woman approached with her son who looked to be about 10 and the soldier must have told her that only the boy could go because they showed her face for about 5 seconds and you could see her whole life pass before her eyes and then she pushed the boy forward and ran off. The situation in Afghanistan may be what the young people today will remember in 50 years.