There's just no question that the United States was trying desperately to prevent the independence of South Vietnam and to prevent a political settlement inside South Vietnam. And in fact it went to war precisely to prevent that. It finally bombed the North in 1965 with the purpose of trying to get the North to use its influence to call off the insurgency in the South.
Vietnam was a country where America was trying to make people stop being communists by dropping things on them from airplanes.
Today we have two Vietnams, side by side, north and south.
When the United States fought in Vietnam, it was organized modern technology versus organized human beings, and the human beings won.
Our objective in South Vietnam has never been the annihilation of the enemy. It has been to bring about a recognition in Hanoi that its objective - taking over the South by force - could not be achieved.
I'm old and crazy, but I still give a damn. And I still think the boys got screwed over in Vietnam.
Vietnam, really more accurately, Laos, was almost after Berlin the top problem at the beginning of the Kennedy Administration in '61, foreign problem.
