By David Black

It was the summer of 1968 when I shipped out to Vietnam. The Doors and CCR blared from radios coast to coast. RFK and MLK had just been assassinated. LBJ funded his Great Society with abandon. Debt ballooned. Recession loomed. Charles Manson stalked the streets of LA. All the leaves were brown and the sky was gray.

I graduated high school on a Thursday, enlisted on Friday, and soon was headed to San Diego as a Hollywood Marine. Our drill instructors were Vietnam veterans who trained us to kill and survive. They were tough Marines and tough on us because they knew what we were headed towards. My war was night patrols around Danang and aircraft support for Chu Lai, fighting the Viet Cong in thick jungle and thicker heat.

When the war ended, I felt the same senseless loss that this generation’s soldiers no doubt feel — sorrow for friends buried and sadness for civilians abandoned. But simplistic comparisons between the final days of Vietnam and Afghanistan are overdone; the two events are not the same.

Withdrawal from Saigon came two years after the January 1973 peace deal and only after Congress cut off financial aid, undermining the White House and guaranteeing the fall of South Vietnam. Over the long term, American financial support and capitalism have modernized Vietnam and put some distance between Hanoi and Beijing. No Vietnamese are still trying to kill Americans.

A similar future for Afghanistan is inconceivable. Our sudden collapse was entirely avoidable, the fault of a president who has failed as commander-in-chief. We never gave up the fight against revolutionary communism. But in his disastrous withdrawal, Joe Biden has signaled our surrender to radical Islamism and a weaker resolve against other enemies.

What the helicopters leaving Saigon and Kabul have in common is a backdrop of domestic crisis. The malaise of the ‘60s and '70s undermined America’s self-confidence, damaging our moral leadership and strangling our ability to prosecute the war. The same happened during our time in Afghanistan. Twentieth-century self-doubt has become 21st-century self-hatred.

Americans returning from war are no longer spit on or called murderers; they’re better respected. Instead, they come home to be told that their country is irredeemably racist and on the wrong side of history. They witness Christ being removed from the public square and schools teach their children that Judeo-Christian values are evil. They watch athletes turn their back on the national anthem and protest the flag to which every citizen swears allegiance. They are told that the acts of heroism of their brothers-in-arms are less important than the color of their skin or their gender. And they are told this by the very men who sent them to war.

Lloyd Austin and Mark Milley’s recent defense of the teaching of Critical Race Theory in the military is especially stupid in light of their own incompetence. It is no coincidence that they serve the most left-wing president in history. Democrat Party elites no longer believe in America, let alone American exceptionalism. Their Pentagon appointees are not allowed to either.

What defeat in Vietnam and disaster in Afghanistan show is that countries cannot win foreign wars if they don’t believe in themselves. We cannot win if Americans don’t share a positive narrative about their nation’s founding and its future. Our history and national confidence are fundamental to our strength.

Since 1776, people everywhere have dreamed of becoming American. And America has sacrificed to protect the world from fascism, socialism, Marxism, and other forms of tyranny. Our Judeo-Christian values have been the continual beacon of hope for mankind.

Having spent a year of my life fighting communists in a foreign land, I’ll be damned if I’m going to stand by and watch them take over my country from within, while they sip Starbucks and wear Levi’s. That’s why I’ve dedicated the rest of my life to fighting big business and big government Marxism.

The organizations that I founded with my wife, former Congresswoman Diane Black, are taking on corporations promoting Critical Race Theory. We’re calling out CEOs who pocket millions of dollars from the free-market system that they attack. And we’re giving ordinary Americans tools to make informed choices with the dollars they spend and invest.

The greatest power we have resides in our wallet. Conservatives need to stop endorsing the ideology of international corporations by consuming their products and services or investing in them through our brokers and retirement plans. We need to hold international public companies accountable for how they waste shareholder money supporting a leftist agenda.

This great country can project strength and defend our values abroad, if we first win the battle for America’s soul at home. Please remember that next time you buy a cup of coffee or invest in a mutual fund.

Dr. David Black is a disabled Vietnam veteran, a longtime supporter of The Patriot Post, and the founder of both 2ndVote and 2ndVote Advisers.