David Halberstam, the legendary Vietnam War reporter who died this week in an auto accident, was an American hero. He helped bring something new to journalism — a willingness to challenge official military and administration accounts of war — that has served the American people well.
Tuesday’s testimony about the military’s deception on the death of Pat Tillman is a prime example of why journalists must question official sources.
According to the New York Times obituary for Halberstam: “His reporting, along with that of several colleagues, left little doubt that a corrupt South Vietnamese government supported by the United States was no match for Communist guerrillas and their North Vietnamese allies. His dispatches infuriated American military commanders and policy makers in Washington, but they accurately reflected the realities on the ground.”
In short, Halberstam set a standard for journalistic courage that, unfortunately, was lacking in the lead-up to and fawning early coverage of the Iraq war.
“I just never thought it was going to work at all,” Halberstam said of Iraq earlier this year. “I thought that in both Vietnam and Iraq, we were going against history. My view — and I think it was because of Vietnam — was that the forces against us were going to be hostile, that we would not be viewed as liberators. We were going to punch our fist into the largest hornets’ nest in the world.”
Posted by Randy Scholfield
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62 Comments
Halberstam was right. I’d expect him to remember Vietnam, because, unlike President Bush, he was there.
Randy,
I suggest you read a good book called:
Unheralded Victory: The Defeat of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army, 1961-1973
It is well written and totally refutes this idea that we were beaten militarily in any way during the vietnam war.
It is sad that history has been rewritten by dupes like you who continue to push this idea that we were beaten.
We quit.
One of the few actual similarities between this war and Vietnam: That the democrats and the media are doing everything they can to declare our loss and demand we quit once again.
Oh my, “Nathan,”
Say hello to Bizzaro Lois next time you visit your home planet.
Nathan is right in that we never lost a major battle in Vietnam, it was a failed policy that caused the failure to win there. A lack of understanding the very people that we (the U.S.) were fighting for, by the time the U.S. got involved the Vietnamese had been at war for two generations and had gotten to the point where they did not care who won. We became just another “cause” of more death and destruction for them by our presents.
LOL I am not sure why I have cable when I end up watching PBS anyway. Last night Bill Moyer had a piece on how the media handled the run up to the invasion. The media dropped the ball in their duty to investigate sources and what was being said. The MSM would simply report what someone else said and not look beyond to see if what the person was being truthful or the facts stated by that person.
One reporter said that the paper he worked for use to have a “Truth squad” often checking out what someone said and the facts of the statement. But they were told to stop as it was being taken as simply being Partisan. Another reporter stated that he would have his essays redacted by the editor before being printed.Deleting any reference that questioned the accurately of the statements given by the Administration.
Something that was not touched on by our MSM but was top news in Great Briton was Powell’s referring to a British document that outlined how Saddam was being deceptive. In the speech to the U.N., the next day the paper in Great Briton discovered that the document had been gotten from the internet and was a word for word copy of a Southern Cal. student’s paper right down to the misspellings. Now this was not an attempt on the administration’s doing to be deceptive. It was the act of a British Government employee who made it in doing research on the question of Saddam and WMDs. He did a keyword search and copied the student’s paper. The papers in G.B. carried it daily for two weeks, but not a word here.
to summarize, the MSM just got lazy in their reporting.
. . . and hence lies the main problem. Had the fifth column done their job and investigated the truth behind the lies and deception by this administration prior to the war, we would not be in Iraq.
Nathan,Nowhere in the main post does it intimate we lost militarily in Viet Nam. It emphasizes the parallels between the two “conflicts.” And there are many. David Halberstam is dead on in his assessment.
Halberstam wasn’t a reporter he was an opinion Editor who sought to give his own opinion.
This is what is wrong with the news world today – too many opinion Editors and not enough true reporters.
Republican,
Still fighting the last war (namely Vietnam), eh? Big shock. You Right Wingers are the like the Bourbons: you learn nothing and you forget nothing.
Let’s just say that in judgments about who is and isn’t a “reporter” as opposed to an “opinion editor,” I’ll take the Pultizer Prize and the Polk Award committees’ side over yours, thanks.
Your diagnosis that the current news environment suffers from a lack of hard news reporting is interesting for what it doesn’t say: that what’s really needed is more investigative journalists, and courageous editors to get out in front of a story.
Why don’t you call Roger Ailes at Fox News and tell him that?
It is true that the US military could defeat the Vietnamese military. That has never been denied. Problem is, the musical-chairs dictatorships in Saigon could never bring their country together on there side. This is the parallel with today: the US military quickly dispatch Saddam’s rag-tag army; however the Maliki regime is looking more and more ineffectual in governing the country. THAT is where this venture must be won or lost.
Interesting thing about Halberstam – he began as a believer in JFK and in the war in VietNam. It was only later that he turned against them as reality set in.
Please correct me if Iam wrong, but didn’t we have a mutual defense treaty with South Viet Nam?
Yes, we did. However, I think Ford properly expected their million-man army to do most of the fighting against their ‘insurgents’ who had already been decimated by US bombing etc.
Sort of like the idea of having the several thousand trained ARI take over the fight against the handful of dead-enders in their last throes in Iraq.
I see even soldiers today are dipped in the “stabbed in the back” meme.
Ben,
Now who is being deceptive?
Insurgents? How about the entire North Vietnamese Army backed by a Soviet Armor reinforcement!
I swear, you people have to have had your heads buried in the sand.
It was not some group of insurgents or the viet cong who took over South Vietnam.
It was a full fledged military invasion from the North.
I wonder how many times we have to write this before it sinks in for Nathan . . .
We didn’t lose militarily in Vietnam. We lost politically.
The South Vietnamese government was rife with corruption, autocrats, factional fighting, and most of all, people who couldn’t marshal popular support as long as the government was seen, rightly, as a puppet of the US.
Exactly the situation we have in Iraq . . .
Sorry that last post was mine
ksfarmgirl–????
Ben-
I think you are probably right. I think Viet Nam was lost not by military, but by the politicians.It should have been a no holds barred, no limited action conflict. We should have bombed the shit out of the NVA wheever we found them. Escalated quickly, got it over quickly, and been done with it. Instead, it became a pawn in the whole geoplotical scene with China, and to a lesser degree, Russia. The fact that it lasted through several administrations did nothing but cost many more miitary lives, antagonize the American public, encourage the NVA and the Viet Cong, and their allies.
We dropped more bombs on the NVA that all the bombs we dropped in WW2.
Is that bombing the sh*t out of them enough for you, LJ?
Guess not, since we lost
My emphasis should have been”wherever we found them”. using a WW2 corollary, I guess we should have just drawn a line throught he english channel and said to Germany”don;t cross this line, we will only engage when you are on this side of the line”
And if you count hiroshima and nagasaki, I doubt your statment
Hank – my stepbrother told me after he came back that the ARVN was always a joke. Even with the NVA coming in there is no reason the million-man ARVN could not have stood and fought. They still out-numbered the VC/NVA; especially considering the fact that we had already killed well over a million of them.
The problem there was that the Saigon regimes could never marshal the support of the South Vietnamese people. THAT is where the war was lost. And, if Maliki cannot cobble together a credible government in Baghdad and get his several hundred thousand ARI to do the fighting that will be the result there.
Sure, with massive firepower we can occupy and subjugate a country. But is that the mission?
Littlejohn,
If you look at what Nixon did, he did just that.
Do they even teach about the Paris Peace Accords in school anymore?
We brought the North Vietnamese to the treaty table through bombs and threats.
The North Vietnamese signed a peace treaty and they then broke that peace treaty.
When it came time for the United States to honor their threats against the North if they broke that peace treaty, guess who stood in the way?
The Democrats.
Ben,
The North Vietnamese were backed with Armor from the Soviets and fresh supplies.
We were no longer providing that same support for the South. Thanks to the Democrats.
You people ignore the fact that it was the Cold War which had the Soviets backing communism and the US backing Democracy all over the world.
Vietnam was no different.
Nathan – FYI: The president at the time was Gerald Ford.
Ben,
FYI, it was the Democrats who passed a law stopping any funding or military action on part of the US.
Are you absolutely refusing to look at history now?
Nathan – it was a bi-partisan agreement that it was time for the million-man ARVN to stand or fall on its own. We could not continue to do it all for them.
For me that is not simply history – I lost too many friends there.
Ben,
I think it was called the Foreign Assistance Act.
It cut all military funding and severly limited our troop levels to around 4,000.
Basically it was an open invitation to North Vietnam to invade because we were not going to do anything.
Actually I wouldn’t say the US backed democracy all over the world against communism, we backed anyone who was against communism, Pinochet, Noriega(even though he was a drug dealer) the Shah. Nazi war criminals like Klaus Barbie, and Bin Laden. Considering the CIA wacked Diem its no wonder South Vietnam only half assed supported us.
Why could the million-man ARVN not defend themselves? They out-numbered the VC.NVA. Why cannot the several hundred thousand ARI take over the fight. They outnumber the dead-enders about 100-to-1.
Like Halberstam I believed in the VietNam War in its early days. I thought the “best and the brightest” that JFK had assembled knew what they were doing. It was only later, especially upon my step-brother’s return, that I turned against the war. That is after it had become clear that we did not have the VietNamese people on our side.
The more veterans I got to know the more my position against that war grew.
Here’s a question why should American soldiers die for a country that wont stand and defend it’s self.
Ben,
Where did you get the 100-1 figure? That my friend is an out right lie.
The ARVN only out numbered the NVA on paper.
We didnt know the full strength of the NVA.
When the peace accords were signed the NVA had something like 2 divisions in South Vietnam across the border.
That is what let them get such an early strike in.
If you recall the North refused to admit they were even part of the war during the war. The entire time we were fighting NVA the North denied it.
So they refused to acknowledge the 2 divisions they already had in the South.
When they got an early start on things the ARVN commander made the mistake of ordering a strategic withdrawl so they could fortify the south and hold there.
While the ARVN was in withdrawl many units got caught up in skirmishes, almost all got bogged down in civilian retreats, many of the bridges were still damaged from the war, all those added up to the North advancing on a crumbling ARVN which never made it to refortify.
It was one of the worst strategic withdrawls in history.
You have to willfully ignore and pervert the truth to chop it up to the ARVN simply folding like a cheap suit case.
The ARVN didnt have any of the air support that they had under US forces.
The ARVN had only been by its self for barely a couple of years.
The ARVN wasnt funded or equiped like the NVA.
The economy of the South was already taking a really big hit due to the Arab Oil embargo in 73.
You have to be so willfully ignorant of everything that was happening Ben to make the comments you make.
You must ignore history all together to make the statements you do.
There were so many things surrounding the defeat of the South and it wasnt because the ARVN simply folded and the people didnt support the governement.
Let us address the real problem of why we were in Vietnam and why we are in Iraq:
I am a 2 tour Vietnam Veteran who recently retired after 36 years of working in the Defense Industrial Complex on many of the weapons systems being used by our forces as we speak.
Politicians make no difference.
We have bought into the Military Industrial Complex (MIC). If you would like to read how this happens please see:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/03/spyagency200703
Through a combination of public apathy and threats by the MIC we have let the SYSTEM get too large. It is now a SYSTEMIC problem and the SYSTEM is out of control. Government and industry are merging and that is very dangerous.
There is no conspiracy. The SYSTEM has gotten so big that those who make it up and run it day to day in industry and government simply are perpetuating their existance.
The politicians rely on them for details and recommendations because they cannot possibly grasp the nuances of the environment and the BIG SYSTEM.
So, the system has to go bust and then be re-scaled, fixed and re-designed to run efficiently and prudently, just like any other big machine that runs poorly or becomes obsolete or dangerous.
This situation will right itself through trauma. I see a government ENRON on the horizon, with an associated house cleaning.
The next president will come and go along with his appointees and politicos. The event to watch is the collapse of the MIC.
For more details see:
http://rosecoveredglasses.blogspot.com/2006/11/inside-pentagon-procurement-from.html
Nathn – my 100-1 is for the ARI; not the old ARVN. There are several hundred thousand ARI; there are only a few thousand dead-enders. This was according to Rumsfield when he was still Sef Def last year.
Nathan, You are the “dupe”
North Vietnamese Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap made sure we never lost a battle with the exception of the one which sent us home.
Gen. Giap would show our recon 30,000 VC and regulars, then give Westmoreland 3 days to drag all his heavy artillery, Tanks Etc. into place for the “decisive battle” he knew Westmorland wanted.
By the time Westmoreland was in place, Gen Giap had withdrawn all but maybe a thousand snipers who laid boo-bee traps as they retreated giving Westmoreland the “victory” he needed.
The only “victory” Gen. Giap didn’t give us was the one which sent us scrambling for the Helos to go home.
We did the same to the British and they cried foul, as they left.
You need to upgrade your reading or shut the f-ck up.
When I was in Viet Nam in ‘65 and ‘66, I remember ducking bullets fired by buddists and ARVN—at each other. This was in Danang.
I also remember working AFK supply, in the south china sea, and watching ARVN planes flying out of Danang dumping bombs in the ocean.
The stupidity of the war got to me then and turned me against the war. If a country is not willing to protect itself, what business do we have going in and sacrificing American soldiers? And the same applies to Iraq; we had no business invading, and should get the hell out. We’ve done enough damage to this countries reputation as it is. Thanks, George.
Vietnam was, for the Vietnamese, a war of independence. They’d been fighting it for decades; against the Japanese, against the French, and ultimately against the United States.
For a nation of peasants, it really didn’t matter much about political specifics in Hanoi or Saigon; they simply wanted to wade in their rice paddies without getting shot at.
The central error (or lie) of Vietnam was assuming it was a war of communist expansion. The only-est reason Ho Chi Mihn allied with Russia and China was that he was thwarted in 1954 by the United States’ preventing his democratic election to the presidency of a unified Vietnam. The post-colonial powers in Saigon didn’t want to lose power. Ho, the Vietnamese George Washington, committed the horrific crime of earning an overwhelming majority of votes. So Eisenhower called off the 1954 elections. Ultimately, Vietnam was a civil war; the North against the South; nationalists vs. internationalists (post-colonial power-grabbers).
The key parallel between Vietnam and Iraq goes back to nuances of language. Just what, for example, qualifies the combatants in Iraq as “insurgents?!”
Just what are they “insurge-ing” against? An occupying force from halfway around the world? Imagine, for a moment, if an invasion from (for the case of hypothetical) Swedish invaders occupied Wichita and backed the Lutherans. Think, perhaps, the Baptists and the Catholics might object just a little bit? Might fight back?
Would that be an “insurgency?”
The occupying troops of the United States have superior strength of contemporary military technology. Any Iraqi “insurgent” would be foolish to fight the occupying force on the invaders’ terms, so they’ve chosen guerilla tactics. Just as in Vietnam.
And, just as in Vietnam, the presence of United States warriors is a catylist for continued killing and mayhem.
Removing the catylist won’t quench the fire, but eventually it will burn itself out.
French Indo-China became a unified Vietnam, the Cambodian killing fields, the Laotian outback, and a more-or-less global *cold* spot where once was a “hot spot.”
It wasn’t pretty, but they had to work it out for themselves.
Whether the US leaves Iraq today, tomorrow, next year, or ten years from now, the people in Iraq will fight it out amongst themselves. The Sunnis or the Shi’ites will prevail in some manner. The Kurds will go off in their own direction. It won’t be pretty to look at, but eventually that area we call Iraq will be as benign to the American conscience as the former French Indo-China is today.
The healing begins with ridding the region of the catylist. The first step to resolution is removing Americans from the line of fire.
Good point about the ARVN aircraft JM. Why couldn’t THEY bomb the VC/NVA dorung those last battles?
I think you answered my question.
Your comments echo many I heard from innumerable vets back then.
Interesting article on Halbesrom on slate.com. seems he wasn’t a very nice guy. but then, lot of overachievers aren’t.
Lurker-Poster–
Good analysis. That sums it up pretty well.
We had our chance for a democracy in Vietnam, and we chose to back the old-line colonialism.
We paid for that.
And paid. And paid. And paid . . .
I am curious, if Vietnam was such a great idea why do Republicans go to such lengths to blame Democrats for getting us in, and more importantly, why didn’t more Republicans participate? Other than McCain and Hagel, no other major Republicans, elected or otherwise, were in uniform. That is, unless you want to count Randy “Duke” Cunningham, who is now starring in the prison production of La Cage Aux Follies.
3 dollar gasoline is gutting our middle class, and as long as we let Israel run rampant and pose a real threat to Middle East stability, the gutting of our middle class will continue.
3 dollar gasoline is pushing-up the stock market { 13,000 } making the rich richer and widening the gap.
The price of the Israeli driven murdering spree needs to be cut off. Safety is found in getting along or getting out.
Bob,It was Ike who started sending “advisors” over to Nam, not JFK, as the republicans would have us believe. That is another part of history that has been left out.
Yes, J M, and it was all LBJ’s fault for continuing and escalating the war.
LBJ President for five years and one month.
RMN President for five years and eight months.
Of course, Nixon had a secret plan to end the war. Peace with Honor and all that jazz.
This truly is a bizarro world. Here we have the wingnuts still arguing in favor of the war in VIETNAM. If they had had their way, we would still have troops there, and our KIA would probably number in the millions by now.
Its the same thing with Iraq – blind support for government policy because, well because its government policy, and we all know disagreeing with the government, even when said govt is clearly in the wrong, is treason;)
I guess I’ll never understand the way a right-wing brain functions. Jesus, still arguing that Democrats ‘lost’ Vietnam. They have to know how extreme they look making such a moronic and ahistorical argument.
People should visit the Vietnam War Memorial. More than half of the names got there after Nixon took office.
For absolute f*cking certain, LBJ screwed up with his Vietnam policy. But his Texas-bred hubris couldn’t allow him to face up to the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time.
And a Republican said he’d change all that. Excpet Nixon lied. He had no “secret plan” to end the war in Vietnam. His plan to end the war in Vietnam turned out to be *expanding* the war in SouthEast Asia. (Is any of this beginning to sound familiar?)
Okay, here’s some questions for all the Republicans out there:
Define “winning” the war? Define how Viet Nam could have been won, and how it should have been done? Define Winning the war in Iraq?
Nixon, disregarding his stupidity in listening to his advisers on Watergate, was one of the better presidents we had. He started OSHA, opened more colleges to minorities than any president before or since, and ended Viet Nam, albeit at the insistence of the American people.
His list of accomplishments is pretty good. Problem was, he was basically an a**h***.
And now we have a president that has destroyed our country but he is a pretty good drinking buddy.
Bobby boy! It is not the president that is destroying our country. It is all the anti government jerks like you that are giving the terrorist exactly what they want (ie: turning against the government and continuously bitching about the war) that is ruining our great country! There is no comparison between Iraq and Vietnam. For one, and people like you seem not to grasp it, most of those sent to Vietnam were drafted! They were forced to go, unlike in Iraq where the soldiers unselfishly volunteered to fight for their country. Also, war was never declared against North Vietnam. If it had been the outcome would have been much different, and probably would have been over faster. Unfortunately, we had a democrat in office, refusing to let our guys kick the butt that they could have. There were many many sorties flown over strategic targets that our pilots were not allowed to bomb. If they had been allowed to destroy these key targets, the industrialized development that resulted in many of our servicemen dying could have been avoided. The point is you all need to wake up and get it through your thick skulls! The war on terror is not going away! Not now or ever! Live with it! Quit cowering to the terrorist by giving them all the unpatriotic treasonous, anti government crap!
J M,
Not only did Eisenhower send advisors, he also sent the first “peace-keeping troops” into Vietnam. Not that I think he sent them for any other reason or at least believed they were for any other reason. JFK was pressured into sending more troops. Nobody was about to declare war. But JFK realized that sending more was not the right thing. He was never allowed to correct what he came to believe was wrong.
Remember, Ike was the one who, upon his leaving the Presidency, warned us about the Military Industrial Complex.
Thank you, Ken Larson, for reminding us.
Forgot your medication today, Sick?
Turning against the government – the majority of Americans want us out of Iraq right now. The government is supposed to be our government, a reflection of us, not the government of special interests. Seventy percent of Americans want us out – that is the democracy that we are supposedly spreading in the world.
War on Drugs, War on Poverty, War on Communism, War on Terror…
I’ll tell ya what, Sick of All the Sh**, your “WARS” continue to prove to be failures. There are far more drugs on the streets now than there were when THAT war was declared, far more people living in poverty when THAT one was declared. Communism killed itself.
When will people learn that there’s no such thing as a WAR on an ideology? It’s merely a talking point by the guys in suits, so they can do whatever they want to do, all in the name of WAR.
Sos,Where did you drag that info out of, a toilet? Tell me how we could have won in Viet Nam? My answer is we couldn’t. Just like in Iraq, we can’t win.
What we have done is create a generation of terrorist, willing to us women and children, to blow up and kill anyone and anything they don’t like. So how the hell, sos, do you win against that?
Invading Afghanistan was the right thing to do. There, we had a definite goal. If we had not invaded Iraq, Afghanistan would be over. As it is, the Taliban is making a comeback, and doing so with more recruits than they would have if we had NOT invaded Iraq. The consequences of invading Iraq are not good.
Invading Iraq was the wrong thing to on multiple levels. It was a bad move that has only caused the rest of the world to look at us in a not too complimentary light.
I also ask you this: What could we have done in this country to beef up the protection of our borders with all the money spent on a war that should have never happened.
And I resent being called treasonous and anti-government. I am a Viet Nam vet. I volunteered to serve. I was not drafted. What I define as treasonous is some flaky, war hawk sending our best into harms way to revenge what he considers pay back for some tinpot dictator threatening his dad.
If Saddaam was a problem, then North Korea is an even bigger problem. Do we invade them? How about Paksitan; they support terrorism schools. How about Chile, Brazil, France, ad naseum. Hell, lets declare war on the whole world because sos thinks they might house bad people.
You may be sick of all the sh**, but I’m sick of a president lying to the American people and his minions calling anyone who disagrees with him terrorist lovers. Freakin morons.
Well said, J M Walker. Very good.
Good luck arguing with someone like sick of all this sh**. Someone with that strong of pro-government feelings and hard-wired propaganda acceptance is beyond reason. Just shut your eyes, hope harder, and clap harder – everything will turn out alright|-]
“Basically it was an open invitation to North Vietnam to invade because we were not going to do anything“.
Nathan I am taking you to task over that statement, “we were not going to do anything”.Sir we had done quite a bit as it was, we were duty bond by the mutual aid pact. From 1961 to 1975 we do something, WE DID NOT FAIL TO DO ANYTHING! One of the prim arguments that Henry Kessenger is NOW putting out was that the Veitnamzation was the wrong idea. That we should have done it all, pushed aside the So. Vietnamese and done all the fighting. Overran all of Vietnam and tore it apart and build it right.
He is now saying that same thing about Iraq, that it is a mistake to make the Iraqi fight for their own country. BTW the only outsider who has unfetter access to Bush and Cheney and at least once a month comes to the White House to advise them is Henry Kessenger.
Anyway, “Basically it was an open invitation to North Vietnam to invade because we were not going to do anything“.
Not going to do anything? There are at least 58,000 of your fellow Americans that would also disagree with that statement.
Writerdog,
We didn’t do anything did we?
When the North Vietnamese launched their preliminary attacks what did we do?
Did we send in air power?
Did we bomb Hanoi?
Did we mine Hanoi harbor?
Did we send in the military?
We didn’t do anything except try to evacuate as many as we could.
You can disagree with my statement all you want. History proved its truth.
We basically gave the North an invitation to invade because of our no longer supporting the South.
So you can act as indignant as you would like.
And the end result in ‘Nam was that instead of a right-wing kleptocracy running the country like in Nigeria or Nicaragua, you’ve got communist totalitarianism.
To the average peasant, there’s little difference.
Besides, give them enough time and they’ll own all our debt like Communist China, the debt we keep racking up to fight the unfunded war in Iraq . . .
BTW Nathan I knew what you meant, it was not said as a comment upon those that served or those living during the Vietnam era. I just want you to be mindful of the words. For your generation Vietnam is a text book study, some words by a pundit, some of which never walked through a rice paddy or down a path where the jungle is so thick that you can not see three feet off the path.
But for those of my generation Vietnam was our reality, either by serving or knowing some one there.We had over ten years of nightly news, of body counts, of waking up on your eighteen birthday and feeling like you just rolled out of bed into the Artic ocean at the realization that you now more then likely. Whether you liked it or not. Whether you believed in the war or not. You would be drafted, your friends would be drafted or a family member. The time, effort and blood of those years still are often fresh to us. It was a defining moment to us. One way or another those of my generation were effected by that war, many on this blog are from that generation. For them the sacrifice are a reality still in the mind. I work with a guy who was 9th Marine, his Vietnam reality was disembarking from a plane and the two Marine in front of him being killed by snipers.
Much like those of your generation are being effected by Iraq, some day in thirty years or so. There will be some one that only knows of Iraq from reading about it or studying it in school. I wish you a long life and on that day when some one talks about this war and make a statement that is devoid of taking into account the scarifies made by your generation, the real meaning of what it was like to watch it on a daily basis. To know many whom served and suffered during these years. That you can remind them that it was about real loss and real people. And not just a politic point and a look back through the fog of time.
We’re in Vietnam again alright.
Maybe this time we’ll stick it out and win.