Time Warp: 1981

With my fortieth birthday fast approaching, I've decided to take a look at some of the big news stories for certain years of my life.  Let's take a look at a couple of these years, starting with 1981.  

1981 Recap

• January 20: Just minutes after new US president Ronald Reagan is sworn into office, Iran releases fifty-two Americans whom they had held as hostages.  In total, the hostages spent four hundred and forty-four days as captives of the Iranians (1).  

• March 30: Ronald Reagan is shot and wounded by John Hinckley Jr., an obsessed fan of actress Jodie Foster.  Hinckley believed that the assassination attempt would impress the actress, thereby winning her favor (2, 3).  

• April 12: Columbia, the world's first reusable spacecraft, is launched on its maiden mission (STS-1) by NASA (4).  

• May 5: In Northern Ireland, Irish Republican Army ("IRA") member and political activist Bobby Sands dies while on a hunger strike.  Sands was attempting to secure better prison conditions for himself and his fellow inmates, many of whom had been branded as terrorists by the then government of the United Kingdom (5).   

  

• May 13: In Vatican City, Pope John Paul II is shot and wounded by Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca (6).  

• May 18: Reports begin to emerge surrounding an "exotic new disease" occurring in gay men.  This disease is later named "Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome", or "AIDS".  By the end of the 1990s, it is estimated that five to ten million people (worldwide) are living with HIV/AIDS (7). 

 (Note: The following video may be difficult for some to watch....use your discretion) (8)

• August 1: MTV makes its first broadcast, promising that "you'll never look at music the same way again" (9).  

Next up: 1986, and my fifth birthday.  

On Afghanistan

Just thought I'd write up a response to something I saw on Facebook today.

In an opinion piece that has been re-posted by a friend of mine, author Cree Hardegree talks about the current situation in Afghanistan. She writes:

"Why is everyone acting like we handed control of the country over to the Afghans just yesterday? They've had SEVEN (expletive) YEARS. This is cultural. They don't WANT to leave. They want us to stay there forever to fight their battles for them while they use the 45-year-old specter of a rooftop in Saigon to force us to strain and drain our resources until we’re (expletive) bankrupt" (1)

I will agree with Ms. Hardegree on one thing; many Afghanis don't want to leave that country. After all, Afghanistan is their home. Would the author want to leave somewhere she loved, and was likely born and raised in? In a similar situation, I think she might oppose such an idea.

However, I think Hardegree's argument that Afghanis "want us to stay there forever" is illogical at best.  Certainly, there are some people who "just want to watch the world burn", but I would guess that most civilized humans prefer peace and order to death and destruction.  Being that Afghanistan has been in the latter condition for many years, why would most Afghanis ever want the status quo to continue indefinitely? That doesn't exactly sound like (for lack of a better term) a "good deal".  

The piece continues,

"Leaving a country always poses a huge risk.  That's why we leave behind equipment and supplies — 'moving day' is too dangerous.  There was very little we could have done differently in Saigon.  There is nothing we can do now except postpone this exact same scene to a future date.  The lessons we thought we learned last time and the lessons we need to learn this time are not lessons about withdrawal.  The lessons we need to learn are about how to avoid going in the first place.  Sometimes we just need to keep our (bleeps) on the ground"

I don't know if Ms. Hardegree realizes this or not, but our military's policy is not to leave anything on the battlefield that an enemy could possibly use.  For example, during the evacuation of Saigon, American helicopters were ditched in the waters off of Vietnam.  This is because it was feared that our Viet Cong enemies might capture the equipment, and use it for their own purposes (see Note 1) (2).  

In any event, I have digressed; let me return to the issue at hand.  

Perhaps the author is correct that, in the case of Saigon, "there was very little we could have done differently".  By that point, American and South Vietnamese forces had been largely overrun; Communist tanks were rolling into the city, and approaching the seat of power.  The only thing that was left to do was play "White Christmas" (the signal for the evacuation to begin), and get Americans out of harm's way (3).  

This fact notwithstanding, I don't agree that in the current situation, there is nothing else we can do but "postpone (the) exact same scene".  History often repeats, but we are not doomed to reprise the same events and the same outcomes.  If indeed we have made mistakes and gaffes during wartime, let us learn from such errors, rather than duplicate our past blunders.  In this way, we may better ourselves, and ensure that the tragedies of Saigon and Kabul never happen again.