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I don’t think any sane person questions for one minute the bravery, or determination of the American soldier in Vietnam, but no one, not even the soldiers themselves can argue that much of that life spent did not need to be, had better policy and leadership existed in DC.

Yes, we killed more of the enemy than they killed of us, but how much of that life lost that was ours was preventable? That’s not an irrational or unfair question, and it is not remotely a question that questions the determination or sacrifice of the American Soldier.

I don’t argue with anything you claim was bought, but the belief that that could have been bought without less loss of life, is not an irrational one.

You guys miss the obvious: our primary mission to be in Vietnam at all was the protection of the South Vietnamese people. Killing the enemy was the primary way of doing that and they made it more difficult because the enemy routinely stayed with and among the civilians.

Yes, you can go right and kill everything in sight and "let God sort them out" but that wouldn't have been us and who we are.

We knew while were there that they war was going to be long and difficult and that options like invading North Vietnam would have been really effective but everyone also knew that the Chinese would have entered the war toute suite if we had.

I knew even as a 20 year old and all of us knew that it had to be a long, steady haul to protect the farmers and merchants and fishermen of Vietnam and that many of us would be killed or maimed. We saw it every day, yet it was so much better than the hot air we had been putting out before about "how much we stood by our allies" when we had backed down before (look up the Hungarian Revolution, 1956).

We fought the Hill Battles and Khe Sanh and Hamburger Hill and in the A Shau to intercept and defeat the North Vietnamese regulars before they could get in among the locals. It was never about territory. We even had squads of Marines (and navy corpsmen) living permanently - or at least, until they were killed or wounded - in the Vietnamese villages to protect them and to teach them how to defend themselves. I lost my best friend in CAP 4 Alpha when it was overrun in June 1967.

The Ken Burns documentary keeps pushing the "futility" of our war just as the pro-enemy Left did back then. It wasn't futile to the people we were protecting and for those ten long years they were able to farm their own land and sell their own produce and raise their kids.

They knew why we were there. So did we.