traxter said:
Is anyone here a student of the Vietnam war, or remember it themselves? I'm specifically curious how we kept escalating till we were fully in it.
What was the mindset of politicians? What was the public opinion?
There are obvious political undertones to my post, but my question on an Iran war thread got deleted by the mods because it was deviating from the threat topic. But it was in response to someone saying that we need to go all in, Iran is at its weakest, and it's time to win once and for all.
And I'm trying to figure out if America had a similar mindset at the start of Vietnam. Did we see it as a must win conflict from the start? Or did we see it as a can't lose conflict?
Every time we escalated, did we legitimately think that would lead to victory? Or were we at some point just playing for that armistice and to not lose?
What stopped us from saying "you know what? I think enough is enough, this country isn't worth it."
I was born in 1953, so I was 12 to around 20 years old during what they call the combat phase of the war. My views changed during the conflict due, in part, to my age throughout, from a preteen to just out of my teens. You have to remember, most of my peer group had father's who fought in World War II, we played "army" almost every day. While I had no idea bout the politics of the war, at least not early on, I do not remember anybody I was around that spoke out against the war. Had to fight communism was the mantra. Back then we had three TV stations, outside antenna time period, and newspapers. We had drills where we would get under our desks in case they dropped an atomic bomb on us! I recall the nightly body count on the news. I wondered if we were going to run out of the enemy, seemed as if we were always killing way more of them than they were killing of our guys. I do remember thinking the body count information was our propaganda.
I remember my dad getting very upset when they charged Lt. Calley with premeditated murder (my dad did not understand the totality of that situation). When they reported that on the news, he slammed both fists on the arms of his recliner and I can remember just like it was yesterday when he said "premeditated murder? Well every time I killed a Jap, you can *********be sure it was premeditated." I said nothing. His views changed after that. I do not remember him being for or against the war prior to that, but after that event he changed. When I went for my Army physical, more than a few guys were getting disqualified for the draft. They had notes from their doctor that they had fainting spells, or would get dizzy from exertion, or some other issue and were getting disqualified for the draft. When I was classified 1-A he was visibly disappointed. He asked what I was going to do and I said wait for my draft notice and report. My lottery number was 12. He said yes, you have to do that. You have a duty to serve. But don't go to Vietnam, leave. We are not trying to win that war, don't go. My dad was wounded on Tarawa and Saipan and hearing those words from him really was strange and hard to process.
It was a ****ty period of time to be in high school. Watching the seniors graduate each year and off to a stupid civil war thousands of miles away. Girls could not wear jeans or pantsuits (lol) to school. Guys' hair could not be close to touching their ears. And the closing of the black school, meaning all blacks and all whites on the same campus. Prior to that, there was almost no interaction between the two races. Nothing good happened, but nothing bad happened either. The black kids didn't want to be at a white school and white kids didn't want black kids in the white school. And I think both sets of parents felt the same way. Not a single leader in either group stepped up. There were fights in the halls, usually 3 or 4 a week. And in 1968, many 17 and 18 year old males were practically grown men physically. They could fight. I stayed out of the way.
And, of course, Vietnam.
