I have been reading a lot of books lately on the Vietnam War, and just finished a book about Hue. Just about every "expert" of that time period warned against getting involved there. Yet, our politicians felt as if they had to stand up to communism, so Democrat and Republican alike were in favor of it.
Maybe we could have won, but certainly not the way we went about it. History shows us that all we did was waste a lot of American lives, fighting what turned out to be nothing but a delaying action. No need to rehash it, as it is what it is. A couple of my high school classmates were killed over there, and I've always thought that they gave their lives for absolutely nothing.
As per my cousin Gene who was there, we were winning. Right up until LBJ said we could not go north of the DMZ. 4 years later we were winning again with Linebacker II until we stopped again. The ultimate defeat was abandoning the South in 1975. We were always winning the war in Viet Nam. We were not winning the war with the leftists and the idiots at home. I watched the fall of Viet Nam from an Army missile base in Alaska and we all felt the same way, we had it won and we let it slip away. It was a low time for us. We all thought America hated us. We didn't know why. We stuck it out in Europe in WWII and look at Germany and Japan now. Allies. Strong Allies. If they look like us we will stay. If they don't look like us we will leave them hanging in the wind. Shame on us.
kwg
