One would think the Trump administration would want to draw attention to the terrible costs associated with America’s worst “forever war,” which ended 50 years ago with the Fall of Saigon and the evacuation of United States troops. Certainly, the human toll the Vietnam War took on our troops — or to use the now-mandatory Pete Hegseth terminology, our “warfighters” — would be worth remembering as clearly as possible. If, as appears to be the case in MAGA-land, the unnecessary death of 13 Americans during the botched 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan was a crime that cries to Heaven for vengeance, then the roughly 22,000 Americans who died after the Tet Offensive eliminated any real chance of a U.S. military victory in Vietnam deserve some recognition as well. In addition, the long and by all accounts successful reconciliation between Vietnam and the U.S. will be a particular topic of 50th-anniversary ceremonies in Ho Chi Minh City on April 30, providing some solace for veterans and the families of the fallen alike. It’s not as though this war is in our distant past; about one-fourth of the current U.S. population was born before it ended.

But instead of honoring this solemn and important patriotic event, Trump’s diplomats are being told to stay far away from it, as the New York Times

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