Given trump almost won an election, a vile and filthy racist Nazi, that he almost won (he didnt, on the ground KGB agents flipped votes) it would appear we have learned little.

The same holds doubly for our misadventures in Iraq.

We would have been better off buying good will by doing good works - clean water, electrification.

I knew it then and have to admit I did everything I possibly could to avoid going..

We are same age, and I have a dear friend also about the same age who served only on a hospital ship. He still suffers from the trauma of what he saw..

I can not imagine.......

But the truth is, so are the overwhelming majority of wars. Even when wars are fought for a good cause (WW2, Civil War, Revolutionary) it's still a waste. It's just that fighting them and sacrificing so much was simply better than the alternative.

7th Surgical (MA) Blackhorse Cu Chi South Vietnam

There was no mystery from day 1.

I knew a guy who became a Missouri State Trooper who went into Cu Chi in the beginning. He told me how bad it was because they were in the midst of a tunnel system. He was with an artillery unit and the VC were coming up out of tunnels around them.

of the tunnel system these days. No shit !! Charlie and the scorpions did big work from there. I met both.

for example of one. There is nothing wrong IMO with a decent defense, but these pilgrimages America often goes on ...
Spreading goodwill IMO is far more important. Our current president does not want to this. I'm afraid he sees war as a fun game for him to play with. The MIC makes out well, lots of profit for them. It's so fucken sad!

Years ago I heard directly from a good source who had been in Hanoi with the US MIA program that the Vietnamese were ready to surrender to the US over B-52 strikes. They could not sustain the total destruction of Hanoi at the time. Nixon stopped too soon.

There was a clear purpose and threat and danger of until a numbers and dimensions. I can imagine how WW2 vets feel when they hear the fucking moron speak. It must feel like a knife.

People (all people in all societies and cultures since the evolution of MAN, not necessarily women) never learn from history, lessons, mistakes etc and that is why we are a unique species. We kill our own when not necessary. We kill the earth. We kill.

Vietnam should have been left to the Vietnamese people to decide what type of government they wanted.

Foreign powers should have stayed out, as it was a recipe for defeat and disaster as we now know.

I adopted my son from Vietnam. We got back with him the day before 9/11. He is the light of my life. I think we might have chose Vietnam because I had a Ex S Vietnamese coworker. He was bitter about the war and I was apprehensive going over to get my son, but people were very nice to us. My son and my ex have gone back twice and are always saying how well they are treated even in the north. My kid was from an orphanage in Soc Trang. Not sure if I spelled it right.

I used to have an older friend who’d been with the 1st marines. He loved to watch my son crawl all over me. I think it made him feel like maybe he’d done something good

Vietnam era Navy here, but did not go there. Lucked out, assigned to a tin can out of Norfolk Virginia. Two friends didn't come back from Nam, others have PTSD. The invasion was a total waste, but that in no way reflects on the grunts, jarheads and swabbies, and their efforts to serve honorably. It's the psychopaths at the top who bear responsibility, then as now.

1. Hit Hanoi with B-52's Right After Tet. We won TET but it was treated lie a defeat for US. They could not sustain the war with Hanoi decimated.
2. Continue the b-52's for another week or until they cried Uncle.

If we wanted to win we had to do that no matter what the world though at the time. I was there and I would have pushed the button to save my friends. Screw them.

Now I am not a militant really but after what I saw I have no problem with that strategy. We dawdled and that mistake was the biggest once we were in there. Yet we should have never entered that war.

As a commander you are obligated to protect your own troops as much as possible and NOT take unneeded casualties. Your men must come first.

I'm 76 and I was lucky enough to get into an air national guard squadron flying planes (RF-84/F) that were obsolete in Korea.

I lost two good friends in that shit.
LBJ and Nixon and their abettors really fucked us.
USA USA USA!
Yeah, right.

Shakespeare had it right in Henry V, a soldier is not responsible for the bad wars started by politicians:

King Henry: Methinks I could not die any where so contented as in the king’s company, his cause being just and his quarrel honourable.
William: That’s more than we know.
Bates: Ay, or more than we should seek after; for we know enough if we know we are the king’s subjects. If his cause be wrong, our obedience to the king wipes the crime of it out of us.
William: But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make; when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day, and cry all, ‘We died at such a place;’ some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of any thing when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it, whom to disobey were against all proportion of subjection.

You did a soldier's job with honor. The harm done by poor decisions by politicians is not your burden.

Thank you for your service!

He lost friends, too.

Endless wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq thanks mainly to Presidents from Texas. I don't know if it's their overconfidence or some deeply held belief in guns as problem solvers or if it's more about MIC contractors in Texas.

Current criticism over Halliburton's lucrative Iraq contracts has some historians drawing parallels to a similar controversy involving the company during Lyndon B. Johnson's administration.

Nearly 40 years ago, Halliburton faced almost identical charges over its work for the U.S. government in Vietnam — allegations of overcharging, sweetheart contracts from the White House and war profiteering. Back then, the company's close ties to President Johnson became a liability. Today — as NPR's John Burnett reports in the last of a three-part series — Halliburton seems to be distancing itself from its former chief executive officer, Vice President Dick Cheney.

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1569483