Mission Accomplished Sir! (Vietnam - Part 5) By R. A. Hawkins

I remember quite well the very last time I saw General Vann. He was home from the war and I had dropped by to visit Pete. He told me not to go downstairs and to just stay in the living room. This was rather new to me. General Vann came out to see us a few times and to talk to the family. He liked to have his tea in the living room at the coffee table. I didn’t see who was there and knew I didn’t want to look either. A day or two later Pete and I were being the useless kids that we could be at times. You remember…. Surrounded by things to do and bored to death. General Vann stepped out into the living room and looked at me. “Rick I have to take a friend to the airport. Would you and Pete like to come along? You guys look pretty bored today.” Pete sounded off that we would love to get out of the house. So we went. The person who was going to the airport was walked into the garage and placed in the car and we opened the garage door as General Vann backed the car out. We hopped in and he took off.

Then the strangest thing happened. We got to a stop sign and he checked his mirrors for the hundredth time and turned around to look me right in the eyes. “Rick I would like you to meet my good friend Daniel Elsberg.” He made darn sure that I understood that was his good friend. I could tell he didn’t want me to forget that either. So I haven’t.

The following day General Vann went back to the war and like I said that was the last time I saw him. It was also the last time Pete saw his father alive.

Later that day Pete and I came home from our endless wanderings to find Mrs. Vann pretty ticked off. She was going on and on about the numerous Intelligence Agents who had shown up on their porch just a few hours before we got there. General Vann had told her exactly what to do. His sister called the Jefferson County police while Mrs. Vann kept them busy at the door. It seemed that they wanted to have a look around the house. Mrs. Vann was pretty feisty with them. “Do you have a warrant?”

“Since you don’t have a warrant you might want to get your butts off of my porch or you can explain your problem to the Jefferson County police, who are on the way here right now.” She said they turned white and disappeared in a flurry of activity, never to be seen again.

What the nation didn’t know at that time was that there was a nation wide search for Daniel Elsberg and the Pentagon Papers. When it was announced that the search for Daniel Elsberg was over six months later, Pete and I were driving to a store in my car and listening to the radio. He started laughing and looked over at me. “Remember that Rick? That was who you met.” At that moment I realized there was a reason General Vann had wanted me to remember that Daniel Elsberg was his good friend. It took years for me to understand what that reason was however.

I’m sure some are wondering why he did this. I think it was because he kept getting betrayed. I think the same people who were hamstringing our soldiers were doing far more to make sure he didn’t succeed. I suspect he got tired of being used as flypaper. He would gather together those who could get the job done and be called away for a meeting only to have them all killed and his work undone when he left. So I think my initial reaction to his name ‘the cat’ was right on the mark. There was treason, but it wasn’t his treason. It was someone else’s.

Daniel Elsberg didn’t commit treason in my opinion. Back then liberals weren’t America haters. They weren’t openly on the side of the enemy like Hanoi Jane and Hanoi John Kerry. The really sad part is that the street urchins like Kerry and Fonda have moved into positions of power. They have been elevated by the media elites who never seem to get anything right.

Yes Sir! I remember that day quite well. And as I look at politics today I am reminded of another hero along the way in the fight against Communism (Which is far from gone). That other hero’s name was Whittaker Chambers. When he broke from the Communist party another who had done the same thing told him “You do realize that we’re on the losing side don’t you?” What the guy meant was that America was on a collision course with internal problems of a socialist nature. We have to hit the stops on the left before we wake up.

I think General Vann knew something that day when he made sure I understood what he was saying to me. I have a funny feeling he knew that what he was doing might cause this to be the last time he saw any of his family. What he was doing was going to take away the primary tool (The Vietnam War) of the radical left which was being used, with the help of the leftist media to grind our youth and our moral backbone to a pulp. His act helped to end the war Roosevelt got us into and Truman perpetuated, etc… until Nixon got it smeared all over him.

There was a time when the Democrats and Republicans got along. There was a time when the left wasn’t totally against everything American. There was a time when they could disagree and be civil. I think that was what he wanted me to not forget. What I want to know is how he knew I was going to be so vociferous. It was my own father that made me that way. But it sure seems that like so many other things, he saw it coming.

General Vann, that little message you gave me and probably wanted me to pass on… Mission accomplished, Sir. May the good lord save us from the likes of the Left.

To those of you reading this, on June ninth look towards Arlington cemetery and say thanks. Like most people who lose their lives in the military, he gave his life doing the right thing, knowing it might get him killed. That’s a real hero!

R.A. Hawkins is the author of "Through Eyes of Shiva", available through http://www.amazon.com/. Visit http://www.entropical-paradise.com/ -- Entropical Paradise - The Home Of R.A. Hawkins for more commentaries and editorials by R.A. Hawkins.

Thanks for the article. I saw "A Bright, Shining Lie" a couple of years ago and was fascinated by it.

I thought it portrayed Vann and his cause in a fairly decent light and I was interested by his relationship with Daniel Ellsberg.

I don't know anything about the man other than what I saw in the movie, which I have been determining to see again.

Is the book a fairly accurate account?

"What I dont get is how a scandal about a Democrat President starting a war got Republicans blamed for being war mongerers."

If you do a small amount of research, you'll find that Dims started all but one of the wars/conflicts of the 20th Century. Virtually all of those were ended by Republicans. The Dims have the small penis syndrome. Yet, as you say, the Republicans are widely regarded as the warlike party - Go figger?

It goes further than that --

Ted Kennedy said publicly (I believe on the floor of the Congress) that he had not seen such lies emanating from government [as in the Iraq War] since the days of Vietnam, a war that his own brother and his liberal Democratic successor got us into.

And we should not forget about the revelations (gained by the release of JFK's secret tapes) about Bobby Kennedy suggesting we blow up an American ship in Cuban waters in order to justify a war against Cuba.

This has been completely ignored by the liberal media and historical filmmakers. Just look at the movie "13 Days" where all the Republican/conservative generals are pushing for war on Cuba -- the Kennedy Administration would've loved to have a solid excuse for military action there even if they had to fabricate it.

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