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Vietnam was not an "honest mistake." It was another example of Truman's "Policy of Containment" being put into practice. With such a policy there can never be a victory, and there was never any intention of "winning" in Vietnam. At the very best the "Policy of Containment" would lead to a stalemate, like in Korea. In the worse case the "Policy of Containment" would end up like Vietnam, where we failed to contain the enemy.
The military is designed to be victorious in war, they were never intended to simply contain an enemy. If the goal is not to defeat an enemy, the military should not be used. That was the biggest problem with Vietnam. We could have easily defeated the Vietnamese had we not fought merely to contain them. The US never lost a single engagement with the enemy in Vietnam, yet we lost the war specifically because of Truman's "Policy of Containment."
Yeah, take it from someone who was there, we could never have won in Vietnam. Not in any conventional sense. They were fighting for much more than we were. But, in a way we did win. Today, we are sort of allies, I guess. I am sitting on a couch that was made in Vietnam and watching a TV announcer who is the granddaughter of a refugee of that conflict. Jane Fonda seems far away and inconsequential.
There's a lesson for young people, though: You may not realize it yet, but you're naive and ignorant. Many of you say outrageously stupid and arrogant things that will haunt you when you get older, especially in the age of the internet. Most of us oldsters are guilty of having been young and stupid as well, and said our fair share of dumb things, so this is not an indictment of any particular generation. We just weren't able to capture our every waking moment on video to be preserved on the internet forever.
Her sincerity is in question. Plus who really cares?
I am guessing that the service men and women who served in Viet Nan who lost friends care. While she did her thing to boost the enemies moral and lower our military moral was in my opinion a low point in the war.
I watched an interesting documentary on Fonda. She grew up in a very well to do environment and felt she needed to use her "white privilege"" to help stop the war.
Do those US servicemen who flew over the North at the time forgive her? Does time heal all wounds?
Guess it depends on the individual.
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