because politicians, to nearly a whole, can not admit mistakes. It was Kennedy and Johnson that drew us into that conflict and no one after that was big enough to end it. Johnson probably came the closest to realizing it was a mistake but he just quit rather than be saddled with one in the loss column. You just have to read what Westmoreland had to say about Vietnam well after it to know there's just a huge disconnect from reality no one seemed to acknowledge.
The problem with a lot of people like Trump and Cheney is their cavalier attitude towards the military. It's a plaything to them, an opportunity to puff out their chest and play soldier and let others do the dirty work (I'll fight to the last drop of your blood). And they are not alone in that attitude, there are plenty of militia type people who love to play soldier, swagger around with guns and talk tough. Those people wouldn't last 2 hours in a real combat situation (and neither would I).
My mother only peripherally talks about what she heard from my father's friends when they came back from Vietnam. I'll never push her to tell me what they said because it's macabre and would upset her terribly (and I won't put her through that this late in life, and my father passed years ago). My father's side of the family suffered for nearly 4 years under Japanese occupation. My uncle was tall for his age so he and my grandfather were pressed into service by the Japanese shortly after the island of Guam fell; he spent the first night in a bomb crater crying for his mother, he was 9 years old. He also told one of his kids about the time he was almost late to shine the Japanese officers boots and fell into a pit filled with dismembered bodies. My brother in law joined shortly after Sept 11th. He got assigned to black ops operations in SE Asia to fight a muslim insurgency. He told my brother he had to kill a 10 yo kid; it was him or the kid (how do you live with that, what the hell are we asking people to do in "our name"?!?)
Sorry, war is hell. It sucks. I'm with Gen Meade; never ask someone to do something on the battlefield you are not willing to do yourself. That attitude nearly cost him the command of the Arm of the Potomac. It pisses me off that we haven't come to terms with how the military is used. I suppose all wars are a dirty business and sometimes they are forced upon us, generally by people who have no appreciation for the sacrifice they are asking others to make. I'm especially upset that we don't seem to give one iota about what our combat veterans have to suffer through or that they are going to be exposed to extreme violence, like my brother in law, and probably be given no help as to how to cope with the trauma they are exposed to. It's no surprise to me that the suicide rate is so high among our returning combat vets or that they are prone to extreme violence when they return state side. And that's on all of us because this is just swept under the rug or chalked up to the price "we" (not the veterans themselves) have to pay. It's b--ls--t!
IMO we need to go back to a clean draft because unless the American people have to collectively saddle the burden our politicians seem so eager to ask of our military personnel we're never going to learn that war is expensive. It costs lots of $, at times it exposes people (both military and civilians) to extreme traumatizing violence, separates families for long periods of time exposing them to periods of extreme anxiety and generally taxes the soul of humanity. It's too easy and pushed off onto other folks, some of them willing, some of them with no other choice and sometimes under false pretenses. We all need to have "skin in the game". Sorry for the long rant.
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