“History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme,” Mark Twain supposedly said.
Watching the tragic events unfolding in Afghanistan this week took me back to April 1975 and the Fall of Saigon or, as the North Vietnamese – whom American forces had been fighting since March 1965 when 3,500 US Marines came ashore at Da Nang – called it, the Liberation of Saigon.
As did people worldwide, I watched in disbelief as American military helicopters evacuated American troops and American embassy personnel from Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam. A history major at Montreal’s Concordia University at the time, I was saddened by the television images of desperate people doing desperate things. What an embarrassment on the world stage for a country I loved and had lived in for almost four years.
The Fall of Saigon was a significant moment for those who grew up during the age of what we called American Exceptionalism. Coming less than a year after the resignation of President Richard Nixon, the evacuation brought the Vietnam War to an ignoble and embarrassing end for the United States. In 1976, the government of a unified Vietnam renamed Saigon in honour of Ho Chi Minh, president of North Vietnam from 1945 to 1969 and one of the most influential communist leaders of the 20th century. It was Ho Chi Minh who led the long and ultimately successful fight to make Vietnam independent.
The Vietnam War, which so many of us young people were against, was finally over. For many, myself included, so was the age of American Exceptionalism.
I have never stopped believing in America, however. In the more than 45 years since those tragic images from Saigon flashed around the world, I’ve learned that our southern neighbour is no more exceptional than Canada, France, the United Kingdom or, for that matter, any country. No matter where they live, it’s the people who are exceptional.
Just look at some of the remarkable people standing up to the Taliban, women especially. Talk about exceptionalism. What courage! Gazing now at a photo of my daughter, I can’t bear to think of the horrible things the Taliban will do to young Afghan women who have grown up in relative freedom. Though they know the Taliban’s history, they must now experience, full force, the ultraconservative political and religious movement that took root in their country in the mid-1990s following the withdrawal of Soviet troops and the collapse of the communist regime. The Taliban is all about female subjugation as it seeks to establish an Islamic government through a strict interpretation of Sharia law, tragic news for the women of Afghanistan.
A foundation of America’s greatness and its remarkable contributions to the world is immigration, which accelerated after the American Civil War. Between 1880 and 1920, more than 20 million immigrants arrived, many of them settling in major U.S. cities. Tempered by wars, famine and social upheaval, most came from southern, eastern and central Europe. Striving for a new and better life, they knew adversity. They were exceptional people who brought new perspectives, new inventions and new ways of doing things with them.
When you bring many people together with different ideas, religious beliefs and life experiences, exceptional things will happen. That’s happened in New Brunswick because of the almost 1,500 Syrian refugees who have come to this province since 2015. And many others who’ve come from other countries. I’ve met many of these newcomers. Their drive to succeed and their accomplishments are impressive. They enrich our province.
Considering the Taliban’s intransigence and the complicating dynamic of ISIS-K, the group behind the Kabul attacks, which killed dozens of Afghan civilians and at least 13 U.S. service members, Afghanistan is an ongoing crisis. It will only get worse, far worse than the Saigon evacuation I watched unravel on television all those years ago.
When history rhymes, we must pay attention. Considering what happened in Syria just 10 years ago when a peaceful uprising against President Bashar al-Assad turned into a full-scale civil war, let’s do what we can to welcome more refugees to New Brunswick – Afghan refugees.
It’ll be a big challenge, but we can do it.
