...I am of the belief that it (and Korea, and for the Soviets Afganistan)allowed the two super powers to fight without it becoming WWIII.Exactly. Korea, Vietnam, Chile, El Salvador, Afghanistan, Cape Canaveral... these were all Cold War battlefields. You may consider yourself fully deserving of the honor of having won the Cold War. The DC monuments to Korea and Vietnam ought be set around a (living) memorial to Ronald Reagan whose brilliant generalship gave meaning and brought victory to those two "wars."
Nevertheless, these are fitting monuments in the tradition of Stephen Crane's "Red Badge of Courage." This tradition started, of course, with George Washington, who praised his soldiers to no end (affirmed again by Lincoln). It is a uniquely American statement to honor the individuals in this way.
Like I said, I'd prefer a larger, grander affirmation of the purpose of the War, as Americans don't understand it. To attribute Vietnman to nothing is to surrender our dead. I reject this.
In its necessarily inward purpose, the Wall is a marvel, an amazing inspiration. Here's a bit on its symbolism: First, it's shaped like a "V," for obvious reasons, but more importantly for the concave form of that letter. Next, it is built into the ground. When viewed from one side, it is invisible. From the other, it sucks the viewer in; and it is a grave. The one side is the view of Americans from afar during the war; the other is the reality, avoided and unseen on the mainland, equally by those who protested as those who upheld it (the metaphor is particularly apt in terms of the leadership).
Circularity is a central theme, beginnings and ends are mixed and matched. The names of the first and the last dead meet at the middle. Either end is level, and the descent and rise along the Wall are the same. The sense achieved here is that Vietnam came without Americans noticing it, and we departed it the same. It is a demonstration of how America only came to see the war once we were in its midts, then turned its back on it once, even spurning its veterans, as we escaped it. The metaphor is physical: as you walk down the path, the list of the dead that start with a single name double every five feet, until you find yourself standing before a ten-foot wall filled with names. The average age of those names is 19-1/2 years.
I remind folks that were we to construct a similar wall for our enemy, it would be a mile long. Vietnam paid a horrific price for Ho Chi Min. So did we. It is more meaningful to us because we respect every one of those who died. Ours is a nation that greived and turned its back upon fifty thousand dead and hundreds of thousands risking their lives because seven innocents were killed protesting all that. Imagine! Ho Chi Min didn't cry for his dead.
We won. We won.
[With apologies for the rough summary & writing, I must get back to work, and I leave the above as an incomplete draft; I couldn't resist the opportunity to express this. God Bless those who served. God bless those who died in that service.]
You said it better than I.
Thank you.