The young among us long ago dismissed the subject of Vietnam, and who can blame them? We Boomers might, at times, have wished that they would be less obvious in their eye-rolling disdain, but we could hardly expect them to find meaning in a war that happened in a place they can't find on the map and a time when "America's Army" was merely flesh a blood rather than a popular video game.

The younger generations saw no point in our obsessive nattering. They were sick of it. They were tired of it. They were sick and tired of it - and of all us navel-gazing gray-hairs, too. Well, here's the good news: I think we're seeing the light at the end of the Vietnam tunnel. It's called Iraq. Odds are excellent that for the next 40 years - or at least until another war launched with horribly flawed premises yields horribly flawed results - we will argue ourselves hoarse over what went wrong in Iraq.

No longer must our young friends make do with their elders' hand-me-down meltdown. They've got one of their very own. In one respect, Iraq will not be as costly as Vietnam. It is inconceivable that the American people will allow 58,000 of their countrymen to die in Iraq. In another respect, Iraq has the potential to be a disaster of a magnitude Vietnam never approached. If Iraq devolves into full-scale sectarian violence, the peace and stability of the entire region - none too robust for starters - will be at risk.

In geopolitical terms, Vietnam was a negligible loss. Huge in terms of human suffering. Huge in terms of disillusionment and divisiveness. But those who opposed the war were right in at least one respect: Saigon could become Ho Chi Minh City without a flotilla of communist invaders showing up in Baltimore harbor. The sordid, dispiriting truth about Vietnam was that, in the end, all that death and pain and rending of the American fabric didn't much matter. Iraq will almost certainly matter. If the war turns out well, with Iraq governed by a pluralistic, democratic government, buttressed by a healthy middle class, it has the potential to make the world better. If, as seems virtually certain, the war turns out badly, it has the potential to make the world - and, not least, the United States - immeasurably worse. The Viet Cong didn't care about killing Americans on American soil. The Islamic militants for whom Iraq has become a rallying cry and proving ground care very much about it. Which is what some of those of us who remember Vietnam were actually trying to say in our clumsy way by raising its specter during the run-up to the drive toward Baghdad.

There is a particular, gut-twisting awfulness to watching the country you love march resolutely down a path that you honestly believe will lead only to grief, isolation and recrimination. It's a feeling that, once you've known it, you never forget. It's a feeling that, once you've known it, you never, ever want to repeat. When that sick sensation started tugging at our entrails, we couldn't ignore it. Of course, we wanted to spare ourselves pointless suffering, but we also wanted to spare the ones young enough never to have known it. Age has its follies, too. Like all foolishly fond parents, we wanted to save the innocent from the painful consequences of vainglorious dreams and ill-judged actions. But, as child psychologists tell us, part of being a good parent is allowing the child the dignity to make his or her own mistakes. Well, we're all ass-deep in dignity now, so I suppose we should be grateful. But, damn, dignity hurts.

Victoria Loe-Hicks is a writer living in Dallas, Texas.

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