[ETL]

The North Vietnam military senior commanders repeatedly said that they counted on the U.S. antiwar movement to give them the confidence to persevere in the face of their staggering battlefield personnel losses and defeats. The antiwar movement prevented the feckless President Lyndon Johnson from granting General Westmoreland’s request to enter Laos and cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail or end his policies of publicly announced gradualist escalation. The North Vietnamese knew cutting this trail would severely damage their ability to prosecute the war. Since the North Vietnamese could continue to use the Ho Chi Minh Trail lifeline, the war was needlessly prolonged for the U.S. and contributed significantly to the collapse of South Vietnam.

Excellent piece of writing once again, Frank! I would (or could, not having served myself) only add that the "anti-war" movement in the U.S. then, like today, was led by groups and individuals who were/are PRO-communist. Most of the marchers, similarly like today, were just easily manipulated dupes who really hadn't a clue what was going down. They simply saw war as violent and wanted an end to it, without any understanding of the occasional necessity for it. They were brainwashed by left-wing, communist-sympathizing 'teachers' at school, countless musicians and other entertainers drumming 'anti-war' messages into their heads, and left-wing 'news reporters' like Cronkite who continually mangled the truth in order to sway public opinion against the war and a U.S. victory. They were rarely, if ever, informed of the oppression and brutality of communism.

PS: I don't know whether or not you write professionally, but if you don't, you damn well should! Seriously. America needs people like you to get this message out to future generations. You would also be excellent, no doubt, doing public speaking tours at colleges and universities, assuming you can find a few that wouldn't turn their back on you.
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"'The Black Book of Communism,'; a scholarly accounting of communism’s crimes, counts about 94 million murdered by the supposed champions of the common man (20 million for the Soviets alone), and some say that number is too low."

Forgetting the Evils of Communism: The amnesia bites a little deeper
By Jonah Goldberg, August 2008:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZmY0MjI1MDgyYjg1M2UwNDMzMTk2Mjk5YTk0ZTdlMWE=

[DMZFrank]

Thank you for the kudos, and spread the word so all will know the shameful nature of the Communist “victory” in collusion with our home grown seditionists and the honor, yes even glory attendant to most of the American troops who served there.