A big target – but skinny

I served as a Marine infantryman in Vietnam during 1969 and 1970. I managed to catch malaria, get hit by a handful of scrap metal and gain a permanent distrust for the US government, one that had been festering in me after the killings of John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King.

Little did I know then that the lessons I learned, the cynicism proven so correct, nearly a half century of entropy, America the slowly rotting corpse we see today, those signs were there then for any to see.

Forth three years later, the Vietnam War continues to define America, not through the accomplishments of war veterans instilled with courage and leadership gained through surviving a brutal struggle but quite the opposite.

Vietnam was a great evil. If genocide on such shallow pretense could be perpetrated there, why not anywhere or everywhere? All that was needed was to instill, not just obedience, that would be easy.

What kind of nation would elect, again and again, criminals and degenerates to high office, each designated the “leader of the free world?”

The flotsam and jetsam of the Vietnam War, the short-lived “Age of Aquarius” and the national descent into something no one has been able to adequately describe, are enjoying their waning days.

Vietnam is still important, the war at least, but few understand why.

The coming home early method

Within the first five years of the “end of the war,” 50,000 veterans had already died. Survival rates for amputees was low, thousands died of infection and neglect in filthy veterans hospitals......