I grew up in the wake of WWII, was in fact born into a military family smack in the middle of the Korean war, and found myself coming of age on a fast-track trajectory for Vietnam. What a bizarre tradition. My generation was the first to balk in significant numbers. Vietnam didn't make sense. It wasn't like WWII where there was a powerful bad guy doing certifiably bad things that had to be stopped. No, Vietnam was purely ideological, it was about defeating the spread of communism, which in the final analysis is just an idea – just one that certain folks REALLY didn't like. Still, it didn't seem worth dying over.
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