[speaker001:] Uh, I'm of the age that could have gone, although I didn't and, uh, I guess, uh, looking back on it, I tend to think it was pretty, uh, mostly a mistake.
[speaker002:] [TV] [breathing] [static] Uh-huh.
[speaker001:] On the other hand, uh, the more I learn about the history, the more I see it was incremental, uh, decisions. Any one of which was sort of understandable at the time.
[speaker002:] Uh-huh.
[speaker001:] And, uh, but on the whole I think it, uh, probably was the wrong thing to do. How about you?
[speaker002:] Well, I'm, uh, [NOISE] I, I was just, uh, in high school I guess when it, when it ended.
[speaker001:] Uh-huh.
[speaker002:] Ended up being, I was in the last, last lottery.
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] And I was glad it was over by then.
[speaker001:] Right.
[speaker002:] I've never really totally understood what our purpose was over there. Just [talking] because, you know, we didn't really do anything when we went over it seems like.
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] You know, we, uh, those people that I know, I work with several that were over there, [throat clearing] and for some of them it was just kind of, I don't know, not so much a holiday, I guess that's how they tend to talk about it. But that they just kind of lived out in the woods and ever now and then, they'd go and shoot their rifles and then they'd,
[speaker001:] [Throat clearing]. *slash error
[speaker002:] come back and you know.
[speaker001:] Yeah. *slash error should be 'b'
[speaker002:] But that they weren't really allowed to do anything. I, uh, to me it seems like we only went halfway. If even halfway.
[speaker001:] [Throat clearing] Yeah, it's funny. Tonight I was, uh,
[speaker002:] [Throat clearing]. *slash error
[speaker001:] helping my kid with an essay on, uh, Stalin.
[speaker002:] Uh-huh. *slash error should be 'b'
[speaker001:] And I was thinking in the course of talking to him about it, how, uh, in World War Two, the personalties of Stalin, Hitler and Churchill more or less defined the war and actually when you think back on the big events of the war, it was, uh, it was almost a personal struggle among these three, uh, I guess you'd have to call them great men in some sense.
[speaker002:] Uh-huh.
[speaker001:] [Throat clearing] Uh, they're certainly all leaders and, uh, and, uh, with their nations pretty, pretty solidly behind each one of them.
[speaker002:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] And I got a feeling that some of that was involved in the, uh, early decisions of the Vietnam war. That the, uh, [throat clearing] people saw the cold war as, uh, you had to draw a line and, and defend it. Otherwise there'd be, they'd get you someplace else.
[speaker002:] Uh-huh.
[speaker001:] [Throat clearing] Looking back, it seems like that was only partly true. That, uh, there might have been a better place to draw the line [LAUGHTER]. Uh, I guess you can, I guess you can say that a, a certain amount of resolve and willingness to fight, uh, brought the cold war to an end. But I don't think you can just fight anywhere just, just in order to, uh, call the bully out and beat him. And I have a feeling that that's part of what was involved in the Vietnamese war. They felt like this was a place where we could draw a line,
[speaker002:] [Talking]. *slash error
[speaker001:] beat them and they wouldn't come forward. And, uh
[speaker002:] Uh-huh. *slash error should be 'b'
[speaker001:] we were wrong [LAUGHTER]. But I, uh, you know, the, like I said, the more I hear about it, the more I can see each decision that was made as being understandable. But the accumulative effect was to really get into a, a hopeless situation where, and as you say, uh, going halfway was probably worse than, uh, committing, uh, committing to a completely and, uh, winning it, whatever that would mean.
[speaker002:] Yeah. Well, I, I, I think we did, I think we did learn some lessons that we weren't, uh, we weren't prepared for, I guess the best word would be the atrocities of war.
[speaker001:] Yeah [throat clearing].
[speaker002:] Uh, I mean the other wars seemed like a valiant war. I mean
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] they seemed like a valiant thing. You knew, you knew who was good. You knew who was bad.
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] And it was a, it was a traditional m-, the traditional battle of, kind of good versus evil, if you, you know
[speaker001:] Well you're not,
[speaker002:] whichever way it is. But in, in the Vietnam war it seems like it was, a, a, the sides and the lines that were drawn are all confused as to who's good and who's bad and
[speaker001:] It's ambivalent, yeah.
[speaker002:] and, uh, you know, the, even, it seems like even the people, you know, had the South Vietnamese, the North Vietnamese and, of course, the Laotians and the Cambodians weren't even supposed to be involved. But,
[speaker001:] What, what about the domestic effects like I was thinking that maybe the most important effect it had was to make it, uh, possible and even popular to, uh, criticize the government. And they, that pendulum started to swing, uh, ma-, maybe even too far. To the point where, uh, uh, supporting a government decision in foreign policy was sort of optional [LAUGHTER]
[speaker002:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] from the Vietnam war on.
[speaker002:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] And that tradition is still, I mean it's dying now, but it's still alive as opposed to, this Desert Storm stuff may have, uh
[speaker002:] Yeah. [TV] [breathing] [static].
[speaker001:] killed it. But I think that was one of the biggest, that, you know, the, uh, th-, the domestic unrest,