Conservatives quickly realized that there were globalists on the left supporting the war to spread their Communist agenda and globalists on the right into it for profit. Isolationists, who I think of as today's Constitutional Conservatives, are still looking for someone who thinks of us as any more than voting fodder.
The original anti-war people didn't want anyone going to war, and didn't really understand why people did. When the leftists took over the protests, it became something very different, something the original anti-war conservatives never bought into.
Purest delusion. The anti war movement was, from the outset, a Communist-led organization, a follow-on from the “ban the bomb” movement (hence the “peace symbol” which was originally the “ban the bomb” symbol).
I could care less about the useless, testicle-less YAF. Words, not risk.
Vietnam was a center of effort for the communist world. Their new “National Liberation War” - externally-assisted civil war - was the centerpiece of Soviet intervention. Vietnam’s harbors threatened the sea lanes like the Straits of Malacca, which in turn controlled supplies to Japan, South Korea, and the Phillipines. The Soviets and all of the Warsaw Pact and China knew what the issues were, even if self-protecting dimwits didn’t.
Those of us who went knew what the issues were and who were the enemy. We took the load for all of you comfortable “experts” who rationalized your way into supporting the Soviets as “conservatives”.
Make what excuses you will. You made the choice all those years ago to let other young men carry the fight in your place and you have to live with it.