well i guess it depends on what age i'm in the thirty something so i know i mean i lived through it uh are you old enough to know about the war
um just barely yeah i'm uh twenty nine so uh
oh
okay well yeah you're old enough but it was on the fringe
yes but just uh yeah exactly had some friends over that were that were in it
it ended when i was in uh college in uh
when i turned nineteen in nineteen seventy i can't even remember at this point um when i turned nineteen it was the year that uh the draft was still going on if i had been a male or in Israel i'd have been number two
really
yeah so i learned a lesson in gender um in terms of the war i don't know um
wowie
uh-huh
see actually i don't really know that much about it i just know socially the impact it had here and what you hear in the media you know um i guess i think it was not that great that we were in there
um in terms of for how long it lasted
right
you know what do you think
um-hum
well i think it's uh basically the same way it's certainly has affected uh US policy though there's no question it had an overwhelming effect of how we approached the the thing in uh Iraq
um-hum
um-hum
because uh the whole thing that was bad about Vietnam was no different from Iraq i mean it was uh one country picking on a smaller weaker one
right the devastation yeah
yeah the only difference was that the government said okay if we're going to support this smaller country then we're going to support it a hundred percent and we're going to consider ourselves against in war against these people as well
um-hum
yeah and in full faction yeah
which uh right which really wasn't the attitude with Vietnam it was sort of a president's war rather than a country's war
yeah it just kind of dragged on um i don't know how you were historically but i was was a little bit older before i realized just how long it had been going on since LBJ and i mean i had yeah
right yeah it seemed to me like it was it seemed like it was going on forever yeah
it really well yeah in fact because in terms of when your
there's at least ten years between us so in terms of when you were in school i'm sure that it was you know the majority of your high school and junior high years um
um-hum
one of the things i didn't like was the weapon the weapons i can't even say it the weaponry that systems that they used um it just didn't seem that um
yeah
i don't know technically we knew what we were doing either then you heard about the things like agent orange et cetera and you'd think
right
you know just uh how could the government or the Pentagon uh whomever whomever's in charge there been so careless
yeah right
um
of course now uh now everyone's more uh you know environmentally uh intelligent than they were back then i mean back then it wasn't commonly known that saccharin was bad for you and all these other things that people
conscious yeah
Nutrisweet yeah and all these other things that's true uh
that people know about themselves now
um monetarily too i just don't think we've done enough for the uh Vietnamese people as a whole um in South Vietnam in general in helping them restore themselves
um-hum
you know and i don't know if it's because there aren't any oil fields there
yeah i don't know if they uh i don't know if they have that resource or not
yeah i mean i don't think they do but i just think it's kind of a shame that uh you still hear things about the children that are orphans there and um so on a whole i don't know war isn't good and that one i probably um
yeah
my main opinion would be we shouldn't have done it
right
well that's what i know about the Vietnam War unless you have
yeah yeah well you know a little uh a little bit more than i do explain it said i didn't uh get to live through it that the people that i know that it did
um-hum
uh felt very strongly most of i work for a government contractor so most of the guys i work with are uh well at least some of the guys i work with rather are veterans
um-hum
um-hum oh Vietnam
and uh from Vietnam and i haven't talked to any of them that that weren't you know glad that they went or or rather thought that the reason they went was a good one
jeez yeah
um-hum and that that
you know most of them are very very strongly that that the reason for America to be there was a good one they just felt that the way America backed them up wasn't wasn't at all right
uh-huh
in terms of the personal yeah the bitterness is more on a personal level than on a
yeah in term of
yeah personal level and and the finances how they started you know like air attacks and stuff like that dropped off like crazy because the Congress wouldn't approve you know yeah
uh-huh
the money's after yeah i mean i think it started actually like like in the late fifties i mean like in fifty eight fifty nine
um i i
so it really i mean because i know in nineteen sixty three i mean i was nine years old when Kennedy was shot
um-hum
so i mean i remember um right around then that that's when i first started hearing about Vietnam but then as i got older and studied in school i realized it was even going on before that
yeah
you know and you think to yourself oh my goodness Eisenhower that sounds ancient yeah and i know i know you know a lot of the Vietnam vets that are my age in their later thirties um guys that i know that
yeah right
they're just kind of bitter you know they they you know i hate to quote that movie Born on the Fourth of July but it's that kind of idea
uh-huh
you know they just don't feel that socially they were given like a friend of mine called it the yellow ribbon syndrome yeah they weren't given the yeah so
right right the ticker tape parade and all that
well i won't keep you anymore that's probably about as much as we both but thanks for talking to me ah yes is that where you're at
okay
yes uh were you calling from Texas
no i'm in Falls Church Virginia
oh i know where that is that's beautiful where you're at
yeah right right near DC
DC yeah are you a native of there
ah pretty much yep been
yeah uh Dallas it is uh ninety two degrees here today but at least the humidity is uh below forty percent which makes it kind of like Phoenix
yeah it's about the same weather here little bit little bit cooler like eighty nine but basically the same thing
really
well you yeah well you're not missing too much then
yeah right
really well take it easy okay bye-bye
okay bye-bye
