Chamblee54

This is a repost. The comments in the first paragraph are still true. These things too shall pass away.
PG was looking for something to write about, and saw lots of options. The Georgia Republican party is in moral free fall. The debate on climate change was resisting easy answers. PG decided to edit some pictures, when he saw a bumper sticker…”Those who forget Vietnam are condemned to repeat it”.
PG was in grammar school during the escalation of that undeclared war. As the mood of the nation turned against the war, PG moved on to high school. The “Peace with Honor” agreement was signed before he got a draft lottery number.
There was a lot of bitter debate about Vietnam. As the light at the end of the tunnel got dimmer and dimmer, it became obvious that there were no good choices. It is a lot easier to start a war than it is to end one.
Listening to the talk today, and comparing it to what he heard forty years ago, PG wonders if it was the same war. “The only reason we lost in Vietnam is because they wouldn’t let our troops win”. How many more of our men would have died, and how many more Vietnamese would have died, if “they” would have “let our troops win”? And what would victory have looked like? As it stands now, 58,000 American soldiers ( a substantial percentage of whom were drafted) died, as well as untold millions of Vietnamese men, women, and children.
The reason many today do not remember Vietnam was because they never knew it to begin with. Much of what was told in the press was lies. Much of what has been repeated is filtered through layers of rhetoric. And now, we find ourselves in two wars.
BHO was born in 1961. From 1967 to 1971, he lived in Indonesia. ( Which is closer to Vietnam than Hawaii). What he heard about the war is probably in one of his books. The point is, BHO has not forgotten Vietnam, because he probably did not know much. BHO is now sending 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan.
George W. Bush made the initial commitments to Afghanistan and Iraq. He was in the Texas Air National Guard during Vietnam. In that war, men were drafted into service. You were told that either you went onto the service, or you went to jail. One alternative to active duty was the National Guard.
George W. Bush did not go to Vietnam, unlike Al Gore and John Kerry. Did he knew enough, about Vietnam to forget ?