As I write this, horrific images of desperate Afghans, Westerners, and Americans fleeing to the Kabul Airport in Afghanistan dominate our TV screens. Just as when ISIS terrorist armies swept across Iraq several years ago, veterans of our 20-year long war in Afghanistan look on in shock and frustration as they see, in real-time, all their sacrifices and efforts seeming to crumble into the dust of Kabul.
Unlike Iraq, it is very doubtful that this situation will right itself, and the news out of Afghanistan will probably be grim and heartbreaking for many months to come.
Words are pale and woefully inadequate when addressing what these veterans must feel in light of the brothers and sisters in uniform they lost and seeing the lives of their friends shattered by the loss of limbs and traumatic brain injury. Families of the injured question again what benefit their loved ones gained for the world in exchange for their pain and perpetual lost abilities and opportunities due to their wounds. The hollow places in the lives of Gold Star families of the fallen now ring emptier without even the smallest consolation that their loved one died so that an oppressed people could be free.
Only one fact stands bright amid this dismal landscape — honorable men and women of America’s armed forces fought and defeated the barbaric forces of terrorism that struck our homeland on 9/11, and they kept us safe from this particular threat for two decades. All I can say is ‘Thank You’ for completing the tough missions you were asked to do, and may you find peace and strength in the coming days.
In the last column, I indicated I would start spotlighting some of the various veterans’ organizations in Osceola County. It is by profound coincidence I had already reached out to the Osceola Chapter of the Veterans of Vietnam America (VVA) before the Afghan crisis came to a boil and brought on comparisons to the fall of Saigon in 1975.
VVA was formed in 1978, motivated by some of the unique issues facing the veterans of that war, including exposure to the Agent Orange herbicide, a widening recognition of the lingering effects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and substance abuse. Their founding principle is “Never again will one generation of veterans abandon another.” Nation-wide VVA has 85, 000 members, and locally Osceola VVA Chapter #755 has about 40 members. The chapter meets on the second Thursday of the month, at the Osceola Council on Aging, 700 Generation Point, Kissimmee, FL 34744, off of U.S. 192. According to chapter president Dan Depagnier, the chapter’s goals include the construction of a Gold Star Families memorial and eventually a Vietnam memorial.
For more information on the Vietnam Veterans of America, go to https://vva.org.
