I AM NOT OUTRAGED AT THE PROTESTS GOING ON IN COLLEGES

 

 

Protests have brought women the vote; protests have brought an end to segregation; protests have brought an end to wars…

When my tour ended in Vietnam one hundred and fifty of us were flown back to California on a civilian airline in an attempt to disguise our return and avoid protest.  

When we landed the airport there were young people protesting.  We were in our jungle fatigues and we were harassed.  There were dead military bodies aboard our flight.

I was furious but we had been ordered not to react.    For years I was resentful. 

But now I realize these protests, as distasteful as they were to me at the time, brought an end to an unjust war.   The government knew the war was not winnable but continued to send our military into the jaws of the war shredder.   After 58,479 deaths, hundreds of thousands of wounded, and hundreds captured, held prisoner, and tortured,  we surrendered Saigon to the North Vietnamese and retreated.    Nothing had been accomplished!

Those military deaths and wounded vets were for nothing but political chess.

This war would have gone on longer except for the outrage, mostly by college students.

High schools teach you information.  Colleges encourage you to think.  College classes encourage a diversity of thought and professors like to be challenged.

College students are most often young and naive - they haven’t been jaded by the adult world.  They see things in black and white and do not yet realize that the human world operates in shades of grey.

The Middle East is a complex place of religious fundamentalism, and the human race is a violent organism.   

The students want an end to war – a peaceful solution to what they feel is genocide.   I can’t fault them for that.

the Ol’Buzzard