THUAN LE ELSTON: It Took Two Wars To Make Me An American.

I’m tired of people assuming that I opposed the Vietnam War. My parents were born in the north, and when an international summit divided the country into communist North Vietnam and non-communist South Vietnam in 1954, their families were among a million who left all they owned to flee south away from Ho Chi Minh’s troops — troops whom my dad once had idolized as nationalist boy and girl scouts. Scouts honor no more. Escaping to America in ’75 was the second time my parents sacrificed the past to save their future. Second. Anything but communism.

Yes, the South Vietnamese government was corrupt, inept and repressive. But just because our country’s leaders betrayed and disgraced us, did we the people deserve to be abandoned after Washington’s politicians and policies failed to live up to America’s ideals and “exceptionalism”?

No, but it was essential to the Narrative.