An American tragedy

Obviously, Vietnam did not teach some of us anything. Rumsfeld's middle name is Hubris, but he'll never admit that he and his enabling fools in the White House were wrong. At least we can respect the tragic McNamara.

We should all be thankful that Mr. President Obama has kept us safe during his watch. We have not been attacked since the three attacks under GW's watch. Thank you, Mr. President.

I guess we should thank BJ Clinton for not taking the Sudanese up on their offer to hand over Osama Bin Laden, on three seperate occasions.

The same will be written about Rumsfeld and w. The difference is they will never admit it.

The Kennedy / Johnson view of "traditions of the country" were perverted beyond recognition. The huge gap between conservative and liberal continues today. No common ground.

Vientnam taught us that the negativity during the war and after was only in the minds of some. McNamara represents it well. His reluctance during the war resulted in "McNamara's Wall" instead of an all out attack on the north. But the important point to realize about the war is that it delayed the spread of communism throughout Southeast Asia. If Vietnam had fallen quickly, the Red march would have continued throughout SE Asia into India. The success of the Vietnam War is that it was a delaying action. The Soviet Union fell and China turned to capitalism taking baby steps toward freedom. We won.

"Mostly what Vietnam taught us was the limits that even the most powerful nation on Earth must live under..." Mostly what Vietnam taught us WERE the limits of our propensity to acquiesce to opponents in our own country are almost non existent.

Riverman1 needs to read real history.

I see jacko# has put his same post on every site. As we've said previously 'we don't have to worry about being attacked from our enemies outside our great country because they're sitting back watching prezbho, his crooked administration and the dim controlled congress do it for them'.

One more point, visit Vietnam today physically or online and tell me who won the war. Communism or capitalism?

As one of those vietnam vets and the Vietnamese McNamara and LBJ betrayed, may they both rot in hell.

Riverman1....good comments. southernguy08.....good point and congratulations on your daughter coming home. jack234....irrelevant as usual. justus4...most of what you said is true but McNamara was complicit in making decisions and imposing limitations for political reasons that got a lot of good men killed. I have hated every breath he took. dashiel....wrong as usual. Rumsfeld was a bad SecDef (again). But he had little to do with the decision to go to war. Bush may have been wrong about nukes but so was every free world intelligence agency, the U.N., and all of the Democrats. Why, because Saddam purposely created the illusion he had nukes. Rumsfeld's main deficiency was his conduct of the war (again for political and public opinion reasons) and his wrongheaded vision of an entire military that is a light weight quick reaction force. We will pay for his "restructuring" later down the road when our next enemy is a real army with tanks and we show up with wheeled vehicles and pea shooters. We had better hope we still have air superiority......oh, I forgot. OBAMA CANCELED THE F-22.

"The foundation of a just war is a domestic population that sees the need for it."?????
What kind of foolish editorial is this? A just war (like Vietnam which was a noble cause) is one that is objectively just, whether popular or not. In 1967-75 our domestic population was fooled and seduced into abandoning a very winnable war by a treasonous bunch of protestors and their accomplices in the media. The same thing is happening today. It is tough to sustain a long war in a democracy, but America needs to get tougher and do exactly that. And, yes, I was in the Army in 1968-69 and did a tour of duty in Vietnam, of which I remain unfashionably proud.

wasn't it brown n root n haliburton that profited off of vietnam and 30 years later the till was getting low so tricky dick n W got them another job under the pretense of supporting the troops.its so patroitic to charge 9.00 a gallon for fuel when the iraq gas stations are selling it for a buck n a quarter.wake up and smell the coffee people.did tricky dick really care about the camel jockeys and is the new re-gime any better than the previous one.we need to wake uo folks.

No Southernguy, it is far from like Ebonics. The Soviet Union collapsed due to financial ruin, not because of the will for capitalism there. From what I understand the people that mostly controlled things were the ones to take over the companies, land etc anyways, so there is still a big divide between the haves and have nots. The whole argument about stopping communism back then slaps in the face of the supposed push for freedom in the middle east, as we wiped out democracies in the past to install dictators we thought would be friendly to us, and help stop the spread of communism. We did not let others decide. We decided for them. Some of the people we trained and gave weapons to came back to bite us in the rear also. I noticed though we push for "freedom" in lands that have lots of oil and where religious zealots think are so important, but we could give a darn about going to war to free people in Africa, etc. The facts are, there are no winners in that war, but if you were keeping score, America lost more than it gained from that way...other than the munitions companies who gained $$$ from all the politicians keeping the war dragging on.