2018 worst year? 1968 is tough competition
We lived through it and became a stronger nation
My millennial daughter, a recent law school graduate, believes that 2018 was the worst year ever. She cites rampant political partisanship and vitriol, a president under investigation, sexual violence, and worsening wage and income inequality.
She says that U.S. involvement in overseas wars never seems to end, and that our Middle Eastern wars have caused numerous casualties and weakened American military capability and status in the world.
Finally, my daughter points out that 2018 delivered major mass shootings, historic natural weather disasters and data showing last year’s record number of opioid overdoses.
I listened and acknowledged that she might be right for her generation, but I then offered some perspective only age and experience can provide.
My generation would likely vote for the year exactly one-half century ago as the absolutely worst year in our lifetimes. I flew into Vietnam in June 1968 as a young captain. I learned on arrival that Robert Kennedy, the man many hoped would end the war, had been assassinated. Considering what was going on back home, I thought, I might be safer in Vietnam than in America.
I ended up doing two tours. I was very proud of the young men I led in Vietnam in a war that most came to believe would not be won as previous wars had, and these brave men often took the brunt of America’s frustration.
Today’s polarization pales compared with the Vietnam War debates between the “hawks” and “doves.” My generation’s parents, the “Greatest Generation” of World War II, did not understand the boomer attitudes toward the conflict in Southeast Asia.
The radical anti-war Weathermen would soon form to rail against the establishment, often using violent methods. And the 1968 assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King incited the Black Panther movement to violent confrontation, ignoring King’s commitment to nonviolence.
Dr. King’s death also led to fiery protests in many American cities. Active duty soldiers as well as National Guard troops helped restore order.
Racial divides and anti-war sentiments culminated with riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where protesters were beaten by police on live television.
It was during 1968 that the women’s rights movement gained momentum, with protests at the Miss America pageant. Roe vs. Wade was decided five years later, and we’ve been agonizing over abortion and feminism ever since.
The Republican Party nominated Richard Nixon, who had a “secret plan” to end the war, which we later learned was nothing new and did not end the war as fast as he asserted it would.
In 1968 alone, nearly 15,000 U.S. service members were killed in Vietnam. The North Koreans seized the USS Pueblo in international waters and imprisoned its crew. The Vietcong and the North Vietnamese army waged the Tet Offensive.
U.S. soldiers massacred Vietnamese civilians in the village of My Lai, a fact not revealed to most of us until 1969, when eyewitness accounts and photos were provided to Congress. An investigation showed that U.S. servicemen killed more than 500 women, children and old men. It was covered up by our military leaders.
The “Prague Spring” was a tentative move by the Czech people toward democracy, but it was crushed after a few months by a Soviet invasion. America, overburdened by the ongoing Vietnam War, did nothing. The European NATO allies, who did not support America’s involvement in Vietnam, also stood by.
I understand why young people view
2018 as a terrible year. I agree it has been pretty bad. But for many my age,
1968 is and will probably always be — let’s hope — the worst year we endured.
Thankfully, that year came to an end, as will this one. Make no mistake,
1968 was truly painful. But we came through it, and we became a stronger country because we learned lessons and made changes. The most important lesson for me was that you do not blame the soldier for bad war policy.
Today’s problems also will be resolved, as long as Americans support and preserve the values and institutions of our democracy, as the Founding Fathers intended.
Thomas Dombrowsky, a retired lieutenant colonel and Vietnam War veteran, teaches courses in U.S. military history at Gettysburg College.