Here I am, a few months away from my next birthday. I still don’t think I’m old, and to ensure I keep it that way, I rarely look at myself in the mirror. That will stop the aging process, right?

Well, folks, we’re at war again. This time in Iran. Didn’t we just get over that forever war in Afghanistan after twenty useless years, where once again our U.S. troops were once again sacrificed. I am thinking that since my daughter was 15 years old and a high school freshman, we have been at war somewhere for something. And the wheel keeps spinning.

Back in the late 60s into the early 70s, America was at war, then, too. It was Vietnam back then. More than 58,000 young American lives died in that godawful war.
Today, the battle of our lives is on the move again. We are at war with the Mullahs, but it remains the same old story.

Weeks into this new war, a joint effort of airstrikes by Israelis and the U.S., President Donald Trump says we are winning tremendously, but when the smoke clears, we’ve created lots of rubble on the ground, and the mullahs go on fighting us to no end. Trump said the war would be over in mere weeks, but I wasn’t too sure when I heard that, and I am still not too sure today. Looking at current events, it could very well turn into a protracted strategy. Republicans hate calling it a war; it is just a mere “conflict.” Democrats want to call it a “war” so they can rattle Trump’s cage.

As for the war itself, we did take out Iran’s head of state, but like that old tune from the Who, “The king is dead, long live the king.” Are we all hoping for an uprising by the people of Iran? What if they don’t revolt? What if they can’t revolt? At the end of this “historic war, Jeff Kuhner’s words, not mine,” what happens to the people of Iran? Will life change for them, or will they be the next group of collateral damage folks?

As an aging baby boomer who enlisted in the military after graduating high school in 1966 at age 18. I joined the U.S. Air Force and, luckily, was never deployed to Vietnam. Nothing ever really changes except names and geography. Then Vietnam. Today Iran. Tomorrow, somewhere else will come along. You can be sure.

I just read the obituary of Juan Jose Valdez, 88 years old, who was the last Marine out of Saigon as the U.S. scrambled for safety as the North Vietnamese approached the city. U.S. troops had been evacuating this hellhole from the end of March 1975 until April 29, 1975, when U.S. troops scrambled to escape with an armada of 81 helicopters being guarded by 800 Marines and U.S. fighter planes roaring overhead. I can still see that photo on the embassy rooftop where everyone was jumping to safety from the madness of it all.

Valdez was the last Marine to leave, being lifted to safety from the rooftop of the U.S. Embassy in Vietnam. It was the final humiliating chapter of the War in Vietnam. Juan Jose Valdez passed away on Feb. 15 in Tucson, Arizona.

Many Vietnam veterans came to understand that the war, in which 58,000 Americans and three million Vietnamese died, seemed like a tragic waste. In 1990, Valdez told The Los Angeles Times, “(W)hen we left, we left with our tails between our legs.”

Will this so-called historic war be worth it all? In the end, we can’t defeat an enemy through airstrikes from the sky. Just as President Nixon learned back in April 1970. Back then, B-52s launched an unrelenting dropping of bombs on Cambodia. Seems the more things change, the more they say the same.
God bless America. Save us from our past.

Sal Giarratani is a commentator for several newspapers, including The Boston Post Gazette, The Boston City Paper, and The Revere Advocate, and can be reached at [email protected].