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I think of Vietnam as two wars, one running from our initial advisor role in 1962 through Tet '68 when the Vietcong were utterly mangled, to a bloody stalemate wherein the rules of engagement favored the other side prohibitively, thence to 1973 and the Paris peace treaty, when we withdrew and "declared victory." The ARVNs were, of course, somewhat taken aback, and we left them trained and capable of fighting a low-level surrogate conflict, or so we thought. We'll never really know, because in 1975 the North Vietnamese began the second Vietnam War, completely different tactically from its predecessor. It was essentially an armored blitzkrieg down the central North/South highway. The ARVNs had little artillery, virtually no air support, and had lost the will to fight due to political incompetence, theirs and especially ours, and as a result of a feeling of abandonment after a decade of worldwide propaganda. It didn't take long for the last helicopters to leave Saigon. That part I saw.

About a year later the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia, thinking it would be an easy task to take a country whose government under Sihanouk - he ain't no FReepin' Prince - had attempted to maintain "neutrality" while its neighbor was being raped from his territory. That fellow had been ousted in '70 and his successor, Pol Pot, had been working the country over ever since, and he managed to make life hell for both his own people and the invaders.

The upshot of the was was too big to go into here, but some interesting items include Laos and Cambodia, which fell to the communists, validating the much-derided Domino Theory, China, who ended up in an artillery duel with the NVA over some territorial violations, Thailand, whose stubborn failure to fall marked the high-water mark of communism in the Far East, and of course, the Vietnamese people themselves who risked their lives to escape to freedom as Boat People. The latter provided us with a highly-educated, technically-competent and fiercely loyal population that helped fuel the high-tech boom of the 80s.

You can return to Saigon today, a good friend of mine told me - I haven't - because that's what the locals still call it. He related to me the conversation he'd had with a guy in a cafe who had supported the VC during the war - that guy was spouting about how the revolution had betrayed them and that they'd throw the communists back out, just wait and see. That was 1992. I wish him luck.

For many of us, myself included, the Vietnam war isn't over yet. It will end when the entire rotten facade of communist government finally falls. And that will happen.

And the Viet commies are still methodically killing the Montagnards.

For many of us, myself included, the Vietnam war isn't over yet. It will end when the entire rotten facade of communist government finally falls. And that will happen.

I agree 100%

It makes me sick to know people like McCain and the like opened up relations with the same dam commies that we were fighting.

LBJ and the demonrats cannot run a war, and Nixon didn't do a good job either