Burying the ghost of VietnamDURING DESERT Storm many pundits claimed that the quick defeat of a cowardly and poorly equipped enemy had finally buried the ghost of Vietnam. The phantom of military failure may have been cast off in the desert of Kuwait, but the specter that haunts the Vietnam generation, that caused so many of us to doubt our leaders and to distrust our government, found no peace in that hollow victory in the desert. The real ghost of Vietnam was not military failure, it was the failure of leadership, the abandonment of those who served, and the failure to admit to our national shortcomings.
Last Thursday evening in Boston, on the stage of the Democratic National Convention at the FleetCenter, the true ghost of Vietnam was confronted when Max Cleland, a Vietnam vet and former US senator, rolled to the podium and embraced John Kerry, a man who served his country and then came home and told the truth about the war. Cleland lost his legs and right arm in Vietnam. We were wrong in Vietnam, and Max Cleland, who paid the real price of war, introduced his fellow veteran to the nation and started us down the path of reuniting a generation and a nation that is still too often haunted by Vietnam.
BRIAN DANIELS © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
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