I need to write about the war because it’s everything in the papers right now and I can’t pretend it’s not happening.
The Tet Offensive started last week. North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces launched coordinated attacks across South Vietnam — including on Saigon itself, including on the American embassy compound. The embassy attack has been particularly shocking: we’ve been told repeatedly that we’re winning, that progress is being made, that the enemy is being broken. And then the enemy attacks the embassy in the capital.
I’m not a hawk or a dove exactly. I’m a man in Ohio who has been watching the war the way I watch the space program — from the outside, with limited information, trying to understand what’s actually happening from public reporting that may not be complete. I have friends who have sons in Vietnam. Harold’s nephew is over there. I know families who are waiting.
What connects this to the space program — the reason I’m writing about it here — is that I keep noticing the contrast in my newspaper’s front section. One column: the Tet Offensive, 543 American soldiers killed last week, a war we might not be winning that we were told we were winning. Next column: the Apollo program, the unmanned lunar module test, the upcoming crewed mission, the methodical pursuit of an impossible goal that seems to be actually getting somewhere.
Both represent enormous national effort. Both are consuming lives and money. One feels like it’s going somewhere. One feels like it might not be.
I haven’t said publicly which side I fall on regarding the war. I won’t start now. But I notice that when I think about the space program I feel hope, and when I think about Vietnam I feel something more like dread. The two compete for the same column inches and the same national attention, and I know which one I want to be reading about.
Betty’s nephew has a deferment because he’s in college. We were relieved when he got in, and then relieved again when we found out deferment applied. I felt guilty about the relief. A lot of families don’t have that option.
The Apollo 5 unmanned lunar module test is next week. I’m going to try to focus on that.