As a returning Viet Nam vet I was conflicted over my involvement and really could invite abusiveness from both extremes in the debates about the war. I pointed guns from a Navy destroyer and we killed a lot of people, but never saw the conflict up close and personal like many brothers I have come to know since. A few years ago while in Peru as a missionary I became aware of "The Politically Incorrect History of the Vietnam War" and read it when I could get it back in the US months later. It completed my understanding of the processes that got us there and the processes that "snatched defeat from the jaws of victory". The people that thank us now usually don't understand the war as it was, understand that we "lost it", and share a national guilt for mistreating the people that laid their lives on the line for national purposes that had merit and where if the treaties the US had in place hadn't been defunded by congress the perceptions would be reversed. Few of the people involved long ago or at present understand all that we were caught up in. We have our soldiers and sailors and airmen caught up in similar circumstances now and I am glad that many honor and welcome us all back from the challenges of war We are not losers and may our nation never be.

Anonymous
College Place, WA