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I thought Clinton sent a very strange message; what does this say to Vietnam veterans today? The families that lost loved ones?

Vietnamese communists were a brutal, murderous bunch; that is being re-written to justify this current relationship. No surprise, though; we did the same with Red China - but we hadn’t lost 60K Americans fighting them.

"I thought Clinton sent a very strange message; what does this say to Vietnam veterans today? The families that lost loved ones?"

Fifty years ago, the same thing could have been said about all the lives we lost to the Japanese in WWII. A better question is what do we say to the children and grandchildren of the Vietnam vets? Go fight a war with China or do we try to strengthen relations with our allies and potential allies in the region to box China in and prevent a future conflict?

Strengthening ties and bilateral relations with these countries and letting them know that America is their friend and they can count on them is the best medicine for the prevention of future conflict. When America has retreated from the world stage in the 20th century was when terrible conflicts happened. We have no choice but to do the job of being a friend to peace loving peoples or prepare to be dragged into more wars.

........my heart tells me YES to exactly what you say but then my mind reminds me that the Japanese were as brutal and so were the Germans.

Both are very important “partners” today on a wide variety of issues. I would say the Japanese much more so than the Germans. But, I’m partial as I lived in Japan from 69 to 71 and even then most Japanese just loved Americans. I never found a Japanese person that I felt was hateful towards me.

What I write here this morning reminds me too of that old saying “the best thing that can happen to a country is to go to way with the U.S.”..................lot of truth to that.