"Lessons we've learned - or should have - in Vietnam"

From the Christian Science Monotor:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0505/p09s02-coop.html

"Commentary > Opinion
from the May 05, 2005 edition
By Pat M. Holt

WASHINGTON – This week marks the 30th anniversary of America's ignominious withdrawal from Vietnam in helicopters from the roof of the American Embassy in Saigon. The South Vietnamese capital, soon to be renamed Ho Chi Minh City, fell to Communist forces on April 30, 1975. President Ford proclaimed the end of the war on May 7. Not since the Civil War 100 years before had the country been so divided. What lessons have we learned, or should we have learned, from the Vietnam experience?
*<snip>*
Vietnam ruined the reputation of Lyndon B. Johnson, the president who had most to do with it. He also hated it. The first weekend of his presidency, even before Kennedy was buried, Johnson had a long telephone conversation with Sen. Richard B. Russell, his closest friend in the Senate, in which these two hawks (among the biggest in Washington) both lamented the predicament. Neither had any idea what to do about it. Johnson's White House staff later said the president thought anything less than victory would "tear the country apart," as one of them (Jack Valenti) put it. In fact, what tore the country apart was continuing the war."

Read the whole thing.

it thru our heads:
We are NOT invincible.