Today’s word of the Day, thanks to Merriam-Webster, is boondoggle: “A boondoggle is a wasteful or impractical project or activity that usually involves public money or labor. Boondoggle is also a word for a braided cord worn by Boy Scouts as a neckerchief slide, hatband, or ornament” (https://www.merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day). The entry provides some background for the word as well:

When boondoggle popped up in the early 1900s, lots of people tried to explain where the word came from. One theory traced it to an Ozarkian word for “gadget,” while another related it to the Tagalog word that gave us boondocks. Another hypothesis suggested that boondoggle came from the name of leather toys Daniel Boone supposedly made for his dog. But the only theory that is supported by evidence is much simpler. In the 1920s, Robert Link, a scoutmaster for the Boy Scouts of America, apparently coined the word to name the braided leather cords made and worn by scouts. The word came to prominence when such a boondoggle was presented to the Prince of Wales at the 1929 World Jamboree, and it’s been with us ever since. Over time, it developed the additional sense describing a wasteful or impractical project.

Tagalog is the native language of the Philippines, and the word bundok means mountain in that language. American soldiers used the word to mean a “remote and wild place.”

Etymonline.com says that the first attestation of the word with the meaning of “wasteful or impractical project” appeared in 1935: “In early April 1935, a dispute erupted in New York City over wastefulness in New Deal white-collar relief work programs, including one where men made boondoggles all day. Headline writers picked up the word, and it became at once a contemptuous noun or adjective for make-work projects for the unemployed.” Then the website quotes a newspaper article: “What is all this boondoggling anyhow? If we don’t know, it isn’t because we haven’t been trying to find out. First used by a witness in a Federal relief investigation, the word has swept the country. [Frances Shattuck Nyberg, “Getting Around” column, Baltimore Evening Sun, May 10, 1935].” So the meaning of the word changed.

Two things happened on this date that almost bookend one of the greatest boondoggles in American history. According to On This Day, Vietnam became recognized internationally as an independent nation within the French Union. Of course, independence is a subjective state. The reality is that the French Union was formed in order to allow France to pretend that it was no longer a colonial power while maintaining some control over its former colonies. And while the French colonies were not extensive as the English ones, they were still extensive.

The French made former emperor Bảo Đại the chief of state of the State of Vietnam. He had been emperor since ascending to the throne in 1932, but with the encouragement of Hồ Chí Minh, he abdicated and became an adviser to the new Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Bảo Đại worked with Ho for about a year, but eventually he left Vietnam and went to Hong Kong. Rival factions among the Vietnamese, along with the French, who were not ready to relinquish their control over Vietnam, fought not only on the ground but also for the support of Bảo Đại. He finally decided to support a coalition of Vietnamese factions with the support of the French, on condition that he would seek independence. In 1954, the French got tired of fighting, and in a treaty the country was split between north and south, ending the First Indochina War. Bảo Đại was eventually removed from power in 1955 by Ngô Đình Diệm, but the Second Indochina War merely continued the fighting.

The second event that happened on this date was the announcement in 1972 of the end of the bombing of North Vietnam. The US had been supporting the governments of South Vietnam since the French withdrawal in 1954. Under Eisenhower and then Kennedy, the USA provided material support and military advisers. But under Lyndon Johnson, the number of Americans on the ground began to increase until there were nearly 200,000 Americans fighting on the side of South Vietnam.

In 1968, the North launched the Tet Offensive, which was a military defeat for the North but a political victory. Reporting in the USA made it seem as if the Americans were losing, and the nation turned against the war. The dissension was enough that Johnson decided to drop out of the presidential race in 1968, and Richard Nixon took the White House away from the Democrats, defeating former Vice-President Hubert Humphrey. Nixon promised the people that he had a plan to achieve peace with dignity.

Nixon promised that he would engage in “Vietnamization” of the war—i.e., making the South Vietnamese responsible for the fighting, but he continued to prosecute the war, especially bombing North Vietnam as well as Cambodia, where the North used the Ho Chi Minh trail to funnel supplies and soldiers to the South. But the bombing didn’t work, and as the pressure built at home, the USA’s determination to fight the war diminished.

So Nixon stopped the bombing, and eventually the USA pulled out of Vietnam. The cost of the twenty-year war was enormous, in terms of money, soldiers, and the attitude of the American people toward their own government. Vietnam was a wasteful and impractical activity for the United States, a true boondoggle.

The image today is the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, DC. It is inscribed with the names of over 58,000 Americans who lost their lives or are still missing because of the Vietnam War. Of course, that number does not included the thousands upon thousands of Americans whose lives were transformed by injuries, PTSD, and addictions.