Full disclosure: In high school (graduated 1967) we discussed the war in my US Government class and there were only a couple of kids who were against the war. I was not one of them. This was against a backdrop of what they discussed last night. The proverbial end-of-the-tunnel, any-day-now, the South Vietnamese are a real democracy, we have to stop the dominoes from falling horseshit that they had been trumpeting to everyone. Sadly we had and still have a government which does not think that the citizens deserve the truth.
By the time Tet happened I was just starting my second semester in college and it was sobering. Not only had we been lied to, the enemy had a will to fight which staggered us. Tet, militarily was a disaster but the unintended consequences in terms of public opinion balanced the scale. I came to realize that the protesters were right. We couldn't believe a word we were being told. And this series, with the powers-that-be admitting in their own words that all they cared about was not being the guy who "lost" the war backs that up. The generals were pompous assholes and the politicians were craven cowards.
The worst part is we never fucking learn. We are getting, and have been getting, the same song and dance in Afghanistan. "Oh, just give us more troops and we will beat the Taliban and turn the Afghans into a "real democracy." We won't. But we are the perpetual victims of our own bullshit.
![[Image: 040315_Quagmire.jpg]](https://images.weserv.nl/?url=blogs.post-gazette.com%2F2015_Rogers_Cartoons%2F040315_Quagmire.jpg)
By the time Tet happened I was just starting my second semester in college and it was sobering. Not only had we been lied to, the enemy had a will to fight which staggered us. Tet, militarily was a disaster but the unintended consequences in terms of public opinion balanced the scale. I came to realize that the protesters were right. We couldn't believe a word we were being told. And this series, with the powers-that-be admitting in their own words that all they cared about was not being the guy who "lost" the war backs that up. The generals were pompous assholes and the politicians were craven cowards.
The worst part is we never fucking learn. We are getting, and have been getting, the same song and dance in Afghanistan. "Oh, just give us more troops and we will beat the Taliban and turn the Afghans into a "real democracy." We won't. But we are the perpetual victims of our own bullshit.
