Sharing My Story

During my junior and senior year of high school
the Vietnam War was starting to heat up.
President Johnson apparently felt he could
have both guns and butter. As a young
man approaching draft age I had mixed
feelings about the Vietnam War. I saw
America’s intentions as just in helping
a pro-western, non-communist government
resist communist takeover. The noble ideal
was not to let happen what had taken place
in China, the Eastern European countries,
Cuba and elsewhere. However Vietnam turned
out to be another Korea. A “pulled punches war”
(as popular radio newscaster and commentator
Paul Harvey would say)—a war that we couldn’t
lose, but we couldn’t win either. Our national
leadership was afraid of massive Chinese or
Soviet ground forces entering the conflict or
even worse igniting a nuclear conflagration
over the war.

Those voices on the conservative side that
counseled either victory or pullout were ignored.
It seemed as if our government was using
our armed forces (much of it made up of
draftees) to project it global geo-political
policies rather than achieving a military
victory that the American people could
fully support.