precisely...

That was the Kennedy speech rationalizing his escalation in the name of "bearing any burden" -- which he and his successors proceeded to impose on everyone else who were told to "ask what they could do". The insanity backfired on them when the country "showed" the opposite, recognizing that what Kissinger was doing was the opposite of defending freedom and that his wars on behalf of corrupt "democracy" had nothing to do with it.

or have them wear "orange" for the rest of their lives....

There's something to be said for putting all those who advocate such positions in combat, preferably in the front lines.

he basically defended the political policy in Vietnam to "show" the communists world-wide, that the U.S. was committed to "sacrificing" as many American G. Is as it took to defend "democracy"...

I'd love to hear more about the conversation with Kissinger. Welcome back to the Gulch.

hey bob...going back thru the daily "Galt's Gulch" postiongs as I get caught up after 5 months in the wilderness of Yellowstone...your two-parter on this issue is spot-on....my first instructor-pilot in summer of 1970 was the first medal of honor winner in Vietnam and all my other instructors were guys who survived 100 missions over the North...the conversations in the O Club bar after hours was enlightening to say the least...they were all marking time until they reached full retirement pay and then they were gone....then years later, I was being flown from one location to another as a pilot with American Airlines and was seated next to Henry Kissinger for 5 hours...that was an interesting conversation...that man is pure evil...

I just found the link to that Vietnam Expert Forum. The file dates are messed up as it's been transferred a few times. This is a representation of what these guys professed: "The simple fact is, we lost the war in Vietnam and it was the fault of our military, not the politicians, not the news media, not Jane Fonda and not the weather. We lost the war in Vietnam because we sent over troops too young and too un-educated (along with being too stupid to avoid drug and alcohol abuse) to win the war. We sent over Generals too incompetent to pacify a country the size of Texas. And we sent over racists who treated the Vietnamese the way we treated blacks in our country. (The Vietnam War and Civil Rights Movement were simultaneous.)"

That's completely sick, it's a good thing they stayed hidden in behind some electronic fence, just like they do today. If you're at all interested I posted some of the forums trash here.
https://1drv.ms/f/s!Akbl1haEdnuVicYps...

Actually I doubt all the facts, even my own anymore. My curiosity here is and has been only to know where your opinions (facts) come from and when you got them. Where were you and what were you doing between 1963 and 1972? Is your opinion recent, from someone else’s experience, from some book, or some "documentary"? Did you actually experience or did you learn from someone else? Your Vietnam views seem quite different (at least to me) than most views I have seen expressed, not of all the people, but more of the people that I personally know, have met, and maybe even associate with. We all typically tend to associate with those that mostly agree with us, the other's tend to turn us away, so maybe my opinions are totally wrong. II am usually the first to admit that I could be wrong, but might also be unwilling to change my view because someone else disagrees with me. But then again at this stage in my life I also could care less. At least I can still listen, and sometimes I even express my opinion, right or wrong.

How did this blog turn from “Kill anything that moves” to “Vietnam”? (I know, it was Dino right up at the top). What keeps me going, even responding to anything Vietnam history comes from one of the big website blogs (I actually forgot which, I think it was on Yahoo). I was really turned off by this blog about Vietnam that consisted of a bunch of so called experts that weren't even born at that time we were there. Perhaps their mentality and expertise on the issue was derived from their father's exposure to Agent Orange. After writing them several times about some actual experiences expressing what it was like for me to have actually killed someone, from the first time to the last, they actually told me that I should just go away, I was no longer welcome, because I didn’t know what I was talking about, even though I was the only one of the group that even came close to what they were talking about, they didn’t want to hear about it. They told me to go and find another site that more aligns with my misperceptions of the war and the morons that actually fought it. They discussed things like the poor, ignorant, uneducated, derelicts, mostly black, young men being drafted and how they were not properly trained to fight, ill equipped, lost most of the battles, how we indiscriminately killed women and children, and burned out villages, we’ve all got a bag or two of ears, etc. Everything they believed was pure myth and garbage perpetrated by who knows and for what purpose. What bothered me the most was that they were so adamant in their beliefs that they would not even listen to anyone that was even alive at the time. Other actual veterans were also banned so they could keep their beliefs and educate others about this war they read about someplace. Today our universities seem to be teaching this idea of ignoring whatever you don’t want to hear, what doesn’t coincide with your personal beliefs. Shut off your mind and everything will be to your self satisfaction.

My mind a lot relates back to John Kerry testifying before Congress with his lying cronies that were never even there, some never even had served, about all the atrocities they claimed they saw. Kerry was supposed to have been a commissioned officer in the Navy, therefore it was his unconditional duty to put an immediate stop to those kinds of things, not just become a willing or unwilling participant. At least in the Army that's what we were taught. Why he did nothing about it when he was actually there we’ll never know. He went on and on about all the atrocities so it probably wasn’t just an isolated incident. He should have been court martialed and put on trial at least at a minimum for “actions unbecoming an officer”. Was the book, “Unfit for Command” based on theory, facts, or was it purely political, and for what purpose? Is it even possible to get so many military comrades to collude against him making false accusations about his actions in Vietnam? Why didn’t he sue them for slander? And why would anyone ever vote for someone with such questionable credentials to represent them? Did he ever pay the sales tax on his yacht? People tend not to really change.

In reality today I really don't care anymore, well sort of. Someplace on my hard drive I’ve probably got some transcripts from some of those discussions at Yahoo. Maybe it’s all gone now, I tried to find it, but am unwilling to spend much time looking because I really don’t care anymore. I used to care a lot more, but today I could give a hoot, fishing is more important. It has to be this way to keep my sanity. Today if I didn’t have something like fishing I’d probably be a Vietnam War statistic. At 75 years old, I'm still learning, a little. I am finally accepting the “theories” about PTSD which I used to think was just an excuse for not accepting responsibility for one’s own actions. Now, understanding the world and man a little more, thinking back I can see I’ve really had some real issues after my Vietnam experience, issues I’ve always refused to accept, fortunately nothing too serious. This very morning one of my coffee group was talking about his kids that own a helicopter service in Hawaii. He mentioned things about flying in canyons, calderas, spraying, and banking. Some of my experiences were coming back vividly. I was thinking about the butterflies (actually tracers) that were flying next to us on a recon flight. I remember the defoliants falling from the sky and sticking to our skin, I remembered the mortars and rockets. Then all of a sudden I started thinking about my special needs daughter, she still lives with us. I thought about how thankful I am that her issues did not pass on to my grandchildren. I thought about the shock we felt a few years ago when we were made aware from other surviving comrades and their spouses that over half of them have similar family medical/mental issues that got passed on to our offspring. Can I think of any other group where over half have the same issues, was there some other commonality we might all have experienced. Could that we'd all visited Disneyland (or maybe Disney World) once in our lifetime been the thing that made us so alike? Of course these children couldn’t be related to AO in anyway, the government has told us so, so it must be something else. I was remembering my comrades that came home in the box. Then all of sudden I am thinking about elite sports figures disrespecting the flag draped over my brothers.

And all this because of the original issue I found in the heading of this blog, “US government has repeated the same mistaken policies over and over again”. How can we learn anything when agreement today remains about half one way and half the other (on any and most issues) and no one is willing to give in?

Sorry, it’s just all so related, sometimes a bunch of it just has to come out. It’s just like drinking out of a spittoon, once you start you can’t stop because it’s all stuck together. It’s been fun…. No one cares… Man will never change…. Maybe the left has a good idea, if we just ban guns then perhaps we can all live in peace. Now I can relax and enjoy my fishing.

I should have added, "you can now relax and enjoy your fishing ... -- you have earned it".

What facts do you doubt? That the war was not in the interest of this country? That there was no justification for forcibly conscripting people to go there? That the people of this country had no moral "commitment" to sacrifice to the people of Vietnam? That there was no justification for sending money, equipment and men even without the draft? That the ongoing quagmire had no end in sight? That the war finally ended because the American people were fed up with it and refused to sacrifice more to it? That a government-feared Russian and Chinese communist takeover of all of Asia did not happen after we finally left?

What personal experience could you possibly have had there that refutes any of that? You should never have been conscripted and you're lucky that after all you were made to do you came back alive. You got to live the rest of your life, which many didn't, and you can now relax and enjoy your fishing despite those awful times with Vietnam.

Thank you for that enlightening information.
I'm always learning something in The Gulch.

It wasn't a matter of being deported, she was a citizen. But it was illegal to "knowingly counsel, aid, or abet another to refuse or evade registration or service in the armed forces" or to "knowingly hinder or interfere or attempt to do so in any way, by force or violence or otherwise" with the administration of the draft. Laws restricting opposition to the draft or the military during war time were exempted from the First Amendment by the Supreme Court.

Ayn Rand knew that because of her outspoken views she would be a target; she mentioned that with respect to the income tax laws in particular.

As opposition to conscription increased the law prohibiting supporting "draft dodgers" was mostly ignored, although there were some prominent indictments and convictions that were later overturned, apparently for political reasons because the targets had clearly been intentionally acting contrary to that law.

I meant the pro-draft people, who want to push in-
voluntary servitude.

Maybe Ayn thought she may possibly be deported for answering that question.
The USA lived in a whole different world back then.
And so did I. When I was in the Marines, I walked around thinking that socialism was a good idea.
Such a passionate confusion of raging stormy feelings!
Keep in mind that I never heard of Ayn Rand until my most conservative brother gave me an AS1 DVD for a Christmas present.
I was already fully retired from the Alabama Department of Corrections.
But by then previously voting for Jimmy Carter had taught me vote for Ronald Reagan rather than suffering through a second term of Mr. Peanuts. Reagan's 8 years was an eye-oping experience.

Interesting. On what and where do you base these "facts"? Have you read "Vietnam - An American Amnesia" by Bruce Herschensohn? That piece quite literally confirms my beliefs (right or wrong) and position on the war, but I've only read a dozen or so. The rest I have to base on my personal experience. I'm still a believer, whatever our reason or motivation for going, we won that war hands down, as do the majority of my comrades and others that served. This seemed to me to be the time and place that the media decided they could control everything, as they seem to do today, again our friend Walter Cronkite War Correspondent. I'm still curious however, where you were in 1960, what was your perception then? By your account I guess I might have a better understanding of our reception coming home. At the time we just couldn't understand, and it's been a puzzle most of my life. Regardless the motivation, it was one of the most disgusting acts of an American I ever experienced, until now. I feel that most of the disgusting and cowardly acts people today are committing are based on false premises, no different than the reports and information put out by the media then and today, the John Kerry's, and now even the under sniper fire Hillarys’ of this world. I just wish they could experience the real thing, it just might change their whole perception of life.

I believe Nixon was honorable in pulling us out and promising material support to the South, but with Watergate and the hate the other side had for him there is no way that Congress was ever going to honor his commitment to the people of Vietnam. This is the same way things are done today. Personal power and politics, perhaps one in the same, get in the way of allowing this country to really progress into anything. What’s right anymore doesn’t count for much. I'm even surprised that we've actually gotten as far as we have. Why, because we don’t learn from history, real history. Again, I believe that’s why God eventually takes us rather than letting us hang around forever, so He can give this little globe another chance. Today, I’m getting to the point I don’t even care about much, besides fishing. What happens, happens. L:ast night a big one stripped almost all my line off the reel twice. The last time he took it all. Rather than giving him the pole and reel, I had to let him break my leader and steal my lure and line. My objective in life is to catch him again and get my lure back, then eat him.

Getting kicked out of the marines would have been too late; they already had you. It must have been frustrating for you to see no way out, trapped in a nightmare universe. Maybe they would have found it more difficult to get away with conscripting older people who understood more. The draft covered ages 18-26 and many had the sense of life to revolt, combined with unusual tenacity in investigating possible ways to avoid it and often succeeding if dedicated enough -- though some of the successes came only because of politically influential parents. (Two presidents did it that way: Bush with the National Guard and Clinton through a series of arranged deferments, including the one for Oxford where he never finished because he was a political activist who used some of the time to go the Soviet Union.) But who cares if someone calls you a "draft dodger", it's your life. When Ayn Rand was asked in public what she recommended that those threatened with the draft do she replied that it would be illegal for her to answer.

Even the recent Burns documentary acknowledges that a lot of people believed in that cause to "stop communism from spreading in Asia" at least up to the time period you report you were going there, and some believed it even somewhat later. Up until through the mid 60s it had been on the periphery, but most people could ignore it as only to be expected. They didn't like it but believed what the government said and it didn't occur to them to question it; that wasn't literal brainwashing.

But none of it could justify the draft. The country didn't turn against the war because of the left, which outside the universities was mostly despised; it turned after the government was repeatedly caught lying and middle class American boys were being relentlessly and increasingly conscripted into the slaughter, with on top of that no good reason given to stay there at all.

The surge in opposition by ordinary people started around late 1967 and into 68 primarily because of the troop build up and the draft. Government slogans were losing credibility, with the draft causing Nixon to promise in the 1968 campaign to stop it in order to quiet the opposition and get himself elected (and causing Johnson to abdicate). It caught on much stronger after a few years of Nixon reneging (including the gimmick of the "lottery" to pretend to reform the draft by blaming it on 'chance'). By then the opposition became almost universal.

There were specific cases through about 1970 where the media campaign misrepresented certain battles that had been won as lost, and mischaracterized brutality against civilians as routine policy, climaxing with Kerry's false 1971 Congressional testimony. This is what you appear to be seeing today. But overall the war already was lost -- as a senseless, brutally incompetent and hopeless quagmire that Americans would no longer put up with. By the time Nixon finally withdrew, leaving Saigon in chaos while pretending victory and honor, no one cared about his political double talk; everyone was just glad to be out and didn't want to have to hear about it anymore.

Whatever your experiences around you locally while there, they don't justify either the Vietnam war as a national defense strategy or the draft. The final demonstration that the government propaganda had been wrong came after the Saigon government fell and the anticipated fears did not come true -- except for the predictable recriminations and slaughter within Vietnam and the period of Cambodian communist mass atrocities. But that was neither all of Asia nor a matter for US national defense.

Being drafted happened back in 1969 when I was hardly more than a grown kid. The options as I wrote them were all I saw open to me at the time.
Don't know if it was true, but back then I heard washing out of Marine boot camp got a draftee rerouted into the army. What I did accurately I learn was that Marines were being pulled out of Vietnam, leaving the army to do the fighting,
Some recruits were going AWOL, running away until they got booted out, but I decided I liked it just where I was.
I didn't care for being called a draft dodger or trying to find a job with a dishonorable discharge.
Having the paperwork to prove I had an honorable discharge plus a meritorious promotion to corporal served me well years later--not to mention first going to college GI Bill paid for.

I somewhat agree with what you're saying, but did you actually believe all that in the mid 1960's to the early 1970's, or did Vietnam War History have something to do with your beliefs? I was 24 when I went in, I had no idea and my experience there seemed to teach me it was the right thing to do. I have not been persuaded yet to change my opinion. I have seen and read too many stories that were just not true. The worst come from young history buffs. Much of what they preach is mythical nonsense. There was even a blog on the subject and mot one member was there, not even ever a veteran. Perhaps my beliefs we actually brainwashing, I just don't remember anymore. In any case, thank you for your synopsis, I'll think about it when I'm not so tired.

Many people found a variety of ways to avoid the draft. If as a last resort you might have gone to Canada, you would have done much better than homeless, let alone the threat of being killed which you fortunately were assigned out of.

What I find perplexing is why so many who opposed it went along with it anyway, without taking the initiative and doing everything they could to try to avoid it, knowing that others did. What was your experience on that?

There is no doubt in logic that no one had a moral duty to serve and the rejection of the foreign policy of the Vietnam war is not the result of "brainwashing". It served no legitimate military purpose defending this country, as was demonstrated after it was over leaving the Viet Cong in control. Those who went there sincerely believing otherwise were victims of an incompetent, statist adventure begun by Kennedy and Johnson. Those who were forced to go and/or who were killed were worse victims. There was no excuse for it.

The legitimate desire to not want people in foreign nations to be overrun by communist dictatorship does not impose a selfless obligation on the US military. If anyone had wanted to go there on his own to help people, sacrificing his own life, he was free to do so without turning it into the national nightmare and slaughter it became. But even helping the Vietnamese, few of whom appreciated it, against the Viet Cong communists was largely futile because their society was too primitive to understand and implement political freedom. The best they could understand was the desire to be left alone in their villages, with no idea what it would take as many of them sympathesized with the Viet Cong. The South Vietnamese government was a hopelessly corrupt and rudderless, statist regime, even if not as bad as the ideological communists. It was incapable of defeating the Viet Cong even with the enormous military aid from this country.

Subsequent generations will not have to do it all over again and again if they learn from history with the proper moral and political principles.

They sure do, but Tom is not among them.

Right on!--But some people just do not care about
basic principles, and think "the end justifies the means".

That was my rational (albeit very deeply felt at the time) opinion of my forced situation all along.
A year or two ago here in the Gulch I called my conscription "Two Years A Slave," that of course inspired by that "Twelve Years A Slave" movie.
It was either do this or go to jail with your employment prospects screwed when you get out. Being homeless in Canada was out of the equation for me.