[speaker001:] Jerry tell me about what you think about the Vietnam war
[speaker002:] okay well I'm a Vietnam era veteran and uh I was uh uh fortunate not to have to serve in the theater however uh my my support roll in the service was to support those in the theater of operation uh I'm of the old school that believes that um the uh uh contracts that we made back years ago uh needed to be honored however uh I think we could've executed the war and gotten it over a whole lot quicker oh but those are my personal thoughts and I think that if we'd let the generals run the war like we let the generals run World War Two we'd have got it over a whole lot quicker and lost a lot fewer people but as it was the politicians ran the the Korean conflict and ultimately the Vietnam thing and we managed to come out uh losers all way around and so this is what triggered ultimately triggered the us uh uh the United States per se being uh deciding to get out of the role of world policeman your views
[speaker001:] uh-huh as I understand it and I uh don't don't a lot about it uh we got in there because of France uh France was there first they had
[speaker002:] well we got into it because of a SEATO agreement back just right after World War Two that uh we pledged a mutual um uh defense of of the South Vietnamese and as it turned out they were in a civil war one with another and really we I I question us you know now of course uh hindsight is all too clear um
[speaker001:] sure
[speaker002:] so we're we we have to have to deal with with the uh situation as as we played it but
[speaker001:] Jerry what did you think of people like uh Jane Fonda another war anti antiwar activist
[speaker002:] I don't get me started on those people you know before she before Jane Fonda did did what she did I thought she was a wonderful person but after uh uh well I I just don't have anything want anything to do with her anymore because you support uh you support your government
[speaker001:] right or wrong
[speaker002:] uh okay right or wrong I don't think is is we can determine whether we were right or wrong because you're you're having to deal with again again uh I think we could've made a different agreement back in forties the forties the late forties era that would've kept out of there
[speaker001:] uh-huh uh you know I I didn't realize that we'd signed some type of deal like that I thought we came in as as first advisors to the the French and then they decided to pull out and
[speaker002:] so can you hold just second second Terry one moment please
[speaker001:] sure sure wonder what happens to this little beastie on call waiting or something huh that's neat well that's not that's okay
[speaker002:] sorry for the delay uh yeah this is the uh the the uh the mutual defense thing was we we yeah it was complicated and I don't think everybody knows the whole situation I don't but from what I can gather is we went and said yeah we will help the uh South Vietnamese uh should they ask well the French went in and tried their old style warfare and uh got soundly thrashed and we didn't do a whole lot better
[speaker001:] um no I had thought that they had uh colonies there or something
[speaker002:] well yeah that was the old French colony but see the French the French were our uh allies in NATO and they're also our allies in SEATO
[speaker001:] right
[speaker002:] which was the South East Asia Treaty Organization which has since been abandoned disbanded as far as I know you know NATO is is on the way of being disbanded uh but uh the yeah the French yeah we went in as an ally to the French and says yeah we'll we'll help you out if you get in a bind well they got in a bind and says we don't wanna you know play anymore
[speaker001:] uh-huh
[speaker002:] so uh we we kind of we kind of got started got the ball rolling ourselves versus a bunch of top secret silly organizations uh um
[speaker001:] I see
[speaker002:] oh operations operations and then a full scale you know full scale troops et cetera et cetera et cetera
[speaker001:] yeah I'm thirty two so uh I barely well I missed it seventy four is when we quit sending troops over
[speaker002:] ah yeah roughly
[speaker001:] yeah I I was just probably three three or four years old