BY WALTER CRONKITE
*W*hen young Anh Duong fled war-torn Saigon in 1973, she never imagined
she'd grow up one day to make bombs for the U.S. military. She was just
a child whose passage to safety in the United States she credits to ''a
thirst for freedom'' and ``the sacrifice of other people.''
In the important new documentary film /Why We Fight,/ Duong's remarkable
saga is told alongside the stories of a number of everyday people
working for America's defense. From a wide-eyed young recruit to the
pilots who launched the opening strike of Operation Iraqi Freedom to a
New York policeman who lost his son on 9/11, the film is a scrapbook of
the American family at a time of war, trapped in a tragedy of history
repeating.
Today, Duong is an explosives expert employed at the Naval Surface
Warfare Station at Indian Head, Md. Credited with the development of a
powerful bunker-buster used in Afghanistan and Iraq, she proudly
recounts her rise from refugee to ``defense technician.''
''I do remember the desperation,'' Duong recalls, the obvious sunshine
in her nature battling the anguish of memories.
``A lot of South Vietnamese felt that the Americans had left them to
fend for themselves. That in the end, America deliberately withdrew all
the support.''
Though the pain of betrayal is not lost on her, there is an irony in her
path from war victim to war professional. Though Duong's tale is a
stirring immigrant success story, watching the movie's scenes of
Saigon's fall at a time when we are facing the withdrawal question in
Iraq gave me a profound sense of /déj vu./
Not unlike the Vietnam quagmire on which I reported in 1968, we are
today presented with the Iraq quagmire. The threat of world communism
has been replaced by international terror as a pretext for another
misbegotten and mismanaged war, but the falsehoods, broken promises and
withering national faith are too familiar.
Now, as then, with each further escalation, we come closer to the brink
of cosmic disaster. A recent poll revealed that three-fourths of U.S.
troops serving in Iraq want full withdrawal, one-fourth immediately.
Despite the executive's stubborn optimism, two-thirds of the public now
favor withdrawal.
Yet in Congress, such voices are the minority.
In my February 1968 broadcast, I called the position of Vietnam a stalemate.
I'm not sure ''stalemate'' fits the U.S. military's loose footing in the
sands of Iraq, but the need to cut losses does. In the wake of the
Golden Mosque bombing in Samarra, Shiites and Sunnis now clash across
the region. Our men and women in uniform face the task of trying to
stave off a civil war when their very presence as an occupying force
more often than not fuels the violence and represents an obstacle to
Shiite and Sunni reconciliation.
As I stated in relation to Vietnam, the only rational way out is to
proceed not as victors but as an honorable people who tried to defend
democracy the best they could. Recently, I suggested that in the
immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina there was an opportunity to
withdraw from Iraq and still maintain our sense of honor. We had an
urgent need to redirect our resources to the aid of our communities and
people stricken by the devastation of the great storm. Almost no one on
Capitol Hill was listening.
/Why We Fight/ should be required viewing for Americans but even more
for those on Capitol Hill. The film sends a chilling warning that should
not be ignored by Congress and our executive branch.
Walter Cronkite is a former anchorman for CBS News.
--
“Peace is not the absence of war. It is a virtue, a state of mind, a
disposition for benevolence, confidence and justice”
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