Fifty Years Since the Fall of South Vietnam: There is Great Hope for the Future

This week the United States Senate fulfilling their Constitutional advise and consent function will host a hearing for Hung Cao to become the Undersecretary of The Navy.

Captain Cao USN (ret.), an Annapolis grad and distinguished combat veteran, when a very young child escaped with his family fifty years ago from Saigon as South Vietnam fell to the North.

As his the title of his book says “Call me an American—Refugee to Patriot: Lessons Learned for a Strong America.”

He is now the right person for the right job and it is the right time for his confirmation in these increasingly dangerous years.

The Vietnam War was truly a seminal moment in American history and as the helicopters left the roof of our embassy, all was not lost for a generation of warriors because as Hung’s family’s epic journey shows the power and strength of America is in our welcoming immigrants.

“We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, and oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty.” President Kennedy’s words from his Inaugural Address, January 1961.

For “the Boomer” generation coming of age bequeathed from our World War II parents, President Kennedy’s immortal words inspired us to become an unweaving part of the great American tradition of a quest for freedom and the well being for all.

From President Kennedy’s words, with the great advances in civil rights, with the truly blessed leadership of Martin Luther King, to our small minority of 2.7 million warriors, out of the fifty two million Baby Boomers, who fought the war along with many more of our peers having convictions that the war was wrong, to eventually the free world facing down the Evil Empire of the Soviet Union.  they were all truly epic times.

For those of us in military service from 1965 to 1975, it was a mission of honor, even if some of our generational peers attacked and derided us for just serving in uniform. And it took, after President Johnson symbolically marched us into the “Big Muddy” and then ran away, for President Reagan to tell Vietnam Veterans at a VEW Convention; “It is time we recognized that ours was, in truth a noble cause.”

Now in the U.S. Capital this week, a Vietnamese American refugee tasked with guiding the U.S. Navy in very rough seas will be empowered to protect all Americans. For those of us Vietnam Veterans still alive this is a moment of triumph.

However, Hung Cao is but a human example of courage and fortitude going into the future.

The Vietnam War also has a lasting positive impact over the last half century on amazing medical advances that have to be acknowledged.

Vietnam combat warriors in addressing their struggles to come home in a positive forward way ahead created VA PTSD Vet Centers.

From that DVA beginning, civilian Mental Health professionals and insightful writers studying the effects of trauma are today making great steps forward in civilian PTSD mental health treatment modalities.

The other area of combat dangers focused DVA research that is making great advances is closed brain head injuries, especially with the recent enemy reliance on improvised explosive devices (IEDs) blowing up road traffic in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Another successful post-Vietnam struggle to address one’s health damage from the adverse environment effects on the battlefield was when the late Secretary Ed Derwinski, a WWII Army Corporal, service connected combat disability to the horrific at times life ending health effects now listed on the VA Agent Orange Registry.

That Agent Orange Registry of diseases then lead to the Desert Storm Registry then to the Gulf War Registry and now to the most recent addition of medical research of nasty battlefield toxins, the PACT Act.  The spillover research to adverse civilian health by exposure to toxic environments is becoming a unified medical work in progress because, the VA funds for instruction 130 of our great teaching hospitals

Finally, as moments of remembrance of a historically fading war, and  for the lasting tribute for our combat generation is the magnificent eternal Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

Listen closely America for a distant roll-call muster of names on a parade ground on the United States Mall eternally ringing out to all who pass of their unselfish devotion to freedom.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial team lead by Jan Scruggs succeeded in forevermore having Americans remember the names of those who gave their all by being inscribed in beautiful black reflected stone on the Mall in Washington D.C.