Why Vietnam Still HAUNTS American Politics: Inside Netflix’s 'Turning Point' | Chuck Todd

Chuck Todd opens with a personal reflection on his father's connection to Vietnam before welcoming distinguished guests Ambassador John Negroponte and filmmaker Brian Knappenberger to discuss the new documentary series Turning Point and the lasting impacts of the Vietnam and Iraq wars on American politics and society. The conversation explores how Vietnam fundamentally shifted America's perception of itself, with Ambassador Negroponte sharing his firsthand experiences from the conflict. They examine how televised coverage transformed public perception of war, debate whether Vietnam was "worth it" in the context of the Cold War, and analyze why America ultimately lost the conflict. The discussion dives deep into how Vietnam became the Baby Boomers' defining generational experience, shattering trust in government institutions.

They explore the military's evolution into a predominantly Republican constituency, the long-term political fallout of pardoning draft dodgers, and the devastating impact of drug use among soldiers during the conflict. The guests offer a rare perspective on how the Vietnamese people recovered from the war's effects and draw striking parallels between the withdrawals from Saigon and Afghanistan. They reflect on how these historical conflicts continue to shape modern American politics, noting that despite multiple Vietnam veterans running for president, none have ever won the office. 

They conclude with a thought-provoking consideration of how future generations might commemorate the 75th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, leaving listeners with a deeper understanding of how America's past military engagements continue to influence its present and future.

Timeline:

00:00 Introduction

00:30 Chuck’s personal connection to Vietnam was his dad

02:30 Vietnam + Iraq still haunt American politics

04:10 John Negroponte and Brian Knappenberger join the Chuck Toddcast! 

06:35 What do you hope people take away from Netflix's Turning Point?

08:55 Vietnam's shadow loomed over the Iraq wars 

10:55 We rarely talk about the war itself, mostly just the fallout 

12:40 Vietnam shifted America's perception of itself 

13:25 Ambassador Negroponte's experience of being in Vietnam 

16:55 Was Vietnam viewed as a proxy war at the time? 

20:00 The Iraq war has the same effect on our political psyche as Vietnam

23:00 How did daily press coverage affect the ability to control the narrative 

25:00 Vietnam being televised drastically changed the public's perception 

27:00 Embedded reporters caused new challenges for managing the narrative 

28:15 Was Vietnam worth it since we won the cold war? 

30:05 Why did we lose the war? 

32:45 Watergate ruined historians ability to document presidents 

34:15 Vietnam was the boomer's coming of age story, shook their trust in government 

35:30 Many January 6th rioters were Vietnam vets

37:40 The importance of equipping and training local forces 

39:10 Why did the military become a Republican constituency? 

40:40 Pardoning the draft dodgers had long term political impacts 

42:40 The horrible impact of drug use by soldiers in Vietnam 

47:40 The perspective from the side of the north? 

49:10 When did the Vietnamese recover from the effects of the war? 

52:25 No Vietnam vet has ever been president 

55:10 The military is America's only institution that has bipartisan support 

58:35 How similar/different were the withdrawals from Saigon and Afghanistan? 

59:25 What will the retrospective be on the 75th anniversary of the fall of Saigon

1:02:35 Chuck’s thoughts on the interview

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Well, Happy Friday. That's right, I've snuck in a special
edition of the Chuck Todcast both of course in the
audio and visual space, my guests for this. It's a
special on the fitbook. We just passed the fiftieth anniversary
of the Fall of Saigon, essentially the end of the
Vietnam War. And look, Vietnam has sort of defined our

(00:27):
for half the country or anybody over the age of fifty,
Vietnam has been a definer of our politics. I mean,
I can just tell you about my own family. My
father will tell you he's no longer with us, but
he'll tell he would say to me, he's only the
reason he became a Republican is he blamed LBJ for
Vietnam and the death of his best friend. His best

(00:48):
friend died in a training accident after being drafted to
go into Vietnam. I'll you know, I'll never forget. When
I was going through my dad's things, he had a
whole file folder on every time he had to deal
with potentially going to Vietnam. And he didn't have to go,
and he didn't want to go. He had a medical deferment.

(01:09):
At first he had flat feet, and then when that
didn't work. He got lucky with his lottery number. But
what was interesting is how he had saved all of
it and he had all this information. And I'll tell
you why it had a huge impact on me. Anytime
any of these guys that have run for office over
the last twenty years, thirty years who claimed they couldn't
remember how they got out of Vietnam, or couldn't remember this,

(01:32):
or couldn't remember that. All I would remember is my
dad's file folder. And I'm like, if you were that
concerned about getting out of Vietnam, you knew every gosh
darn detail of how you got out or what was
going to take. And so I will tell you I've
always been a bit more of a harsher person on
any of these politicians that would you know. Look, I

(01:55):
don't begrudge anybody who tried to get out of it.
Just be honest that you were trying to get out
of it. Don't pretend that there was some other reason
that you got out of it. And it is those experiences.
In many ways, a lot of Baby boomers politics were
either defined or redefined by the impact of the Vietnam War.

(02:16):
So my guests today are Brian Knappenberger. He is the
man behind the terrific documentary that's all over Netflix right now.
Turning point about Vietnam and John Negroponte, who is of
course a longtime ambassador, mostly in Republican national security circles.
He was in Vietnam from sixty four to sixty eight.

(02:41):
He was there, and in this interview you'll hear I mean,
in many ways he kind of still supports the idea.
You know, he doesn't begrudge the idea of being there
and still believes there was a righteous cause for going.
So it's an important counterbalance in this conversation that you're
going to hear. But look, we get into that sort

(03:03):
of the whole how in many ways Vietnam is sort
of still haunting our politics today. You could argue Vietnam
plus the Iraq War coupled together, right, has now impacted
multiple generations and sort of impacted multiple presidencies and how

(03:25):
they manage national security and how we make these decisions.
So look, I think it's a no matter what age
group you belong to, I think you're going to enjoy
this conversation. And if you've seen turning point, then you'll
really enjoy this conversation as sort of an after action
type of conversation. So look, it's a special that I'm

(03:47):
dropping because it's kind of standalone. I don't want to
get any modern politics, you know, stuck to it here.
But it's I think it's it's a fascinating conversation and
I think you'll appreciate it. So enjoy this special extra
edition of the Chuck Podcast this week. Well, today we

(04:13):
have a special treat. As many historians and folks of
a certain gener a certain age may know, we're coming
up this is the fiftieth anniversary of the Fall of Saigon.
It's hard to believe Vietnam War, the Vietnam War is
that far in our past. For so many Americans, it
does not feel like something that is that far in

(04:34):
our past. And yet here I am in my fifties,
and I was born during the Vietnam War, and I
think one of my guests, Brian Nappenberger, was also born
during the Vietnam four We're also joined by a former
ambassador to Vietnam for the United States, John Negroponte, who
was ambassador who was in Sigon for four years sixty

(04:56):
four to sixty eight. So Brian Appenberger is the documentarian
behind a terrific five part series about the Vietnam War
on Netflix. By the time you're hearing this, I hope
you've already been watching at least one, possibly two episodes.
They're terrific, and it's an attempt to tackle the war

(05:17):
from all sorts of angles during the moment itself, the
cultural impact, the political impact. But I will shut up
here a minute. Brian, you describe what you're hoping people
get out of Turning Point and fifty years later as
an historian, where Vietnam was sort of you know, I
always felt like I was culturally and politically brought up

(05:38):
in response to the Vietnam War in my household. I'm
sure you felt that way too. We didn't experience it.
So I'm constantly consuming scholarship on Vietnam to just understand
how my dad's brain worked. And he's no longer with us,
but he was of that era. I have this distinct
memory after he died of finding this file folder. He

(06:02):
didn't have to go, but he had kept meticulous records
of all of his deferments, and then when his lottery
number happened to be high, everything it took he And
that's why I've never accepted a politician who says they're
not sure how they got out of Vietnam. I'm like,
oh yeah. My dad, who was no rich guy or anything.
He kept meticulous notes about his status. But for me,

(06:27):
it was all about not being there. That was always
the goal of people you were there, having not having
a gone. Or my uncle who immediately threw his uniform
away when he came back to the States after having
served and to this day doesn't like talking about it.
So what what what do you hope people take away
from Turning Points.

Speaker 2 (06:47):
Well, it's you know, I had a very similar experience
to you in that, you know, my father was in
Vietnam when when I was born, and you know, through
my early childhood, I was trying to piece together what
that war was about and what it meant. And I
think that created creation of this series, you know, is

(07:08):
really about a belief that the Vietnam War had this
lasting impact on us, and that that's an impact that
we're very much still feeling that the America that existed
before the United States engaged militarily in Vietnam was just
a radically different country than the America that emerged after
our troops came home, and that America, that new America,

(07:29):
you know, really contain the roots of a lot of
what plagues our society today or is a part of
our society today. Widespread alienation, deep cynicism, this profound distrust
in government. That it seemed to show a kind of
breakdown in civic institutions, and it made us question our
role in the world. You know, how should the US

(07:50):
intervene militarily and international conflicts?

Speaker 1 (07:53):
You know, the nineteen fifties in some way was almost
peak trust, right, there was like in some ways, at
least for certain Americans. I mean, I don't want to
sit here, and there was there was African Americans did
not have peak trust in the in the government in
the nineteen fifties, I want to acknowledge that, but there
was a But among white Americans there was, there was
real trust of the government. Eisenhower was a hero. So

(08:17):
here here was the president that saved the you know,
the general that saved the world, who was America's president.
So that added to the level of trust. And then
just a rapid fire series of events, right the Kennedy
assassination escalation into Vietnam Watergate. I might add in the
the decision to pardon the draft dodgers, but I want

(08:39):
to get into that a little bit later. And in
some ways you're right it was sort of this the
cynicism of today, its roots are in are in this
decision to go to Vietnam.

Speaker 2 (08:48):
Yeah, I think so. I mean I think in your
intro you even mentioned that the war does not feel
like it's in our past, and it doesn't. And this
is this is one of the ways, I mean, you.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
Get it hunted both Iraq wars. Yes, yeah, yeah, right,
like it haunted both Iraq wars, I'd argue, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (09:04):
Way, yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:06):
And I think the Nixon example is interesting. I mean
you get into these deep, you know, divisions that it
exposes in America and those lessons of you know, here's
a president found to be backing a break in at
the offices of a political opponent, you know, actively lying
to the American people, this imperial president who said things
like if the president does it, that it's not illegal. Right,

(09:27):
he resigns in disgrace before he's impeached. But you know,
you can't help but draw parallels to our current political environment.

Speaker 1 (09:36):
So what was I mean, you know, what I'm fascinated
with this documentary for you is that you've done documentaries
where you've lived the experience that you're making the history
about nine to eleven. Arguably in the Cold War, right,
this is something that you didn't really live, right, you
had to go back and understand it. Yeah, through what lens?

(10:00):
Do you feel like you made the Vietnam War this documentary?

Speaker 3 (10:05):
Right?

Speaker 1 (10:05):
Through what lens do you feel like you used to
make this documentary?

Speaker 2 (10:08):
Yeah? I think it's I think it's you know, I've
heard so much about it and I think it does
go back to my father's servant servy there. I think,
you know, we it was hearing stories slowly over the year.
He was clearly somebody who fit into that category of
not really wanting to talk about it too much. It
would come out in these very sort of kind of

(10:30):
it was just as dramatic sort of ways. He would
sort of tell me a story or something. And so
you're you're in this, you're almost a solving a mystery.
What happened?

Speaker 3 (10:40):
You know?

Speaker 2 (10:40):
Why is there this much pain still for different people
around Vietnam? As you start to talk to other people,
Why is there so much uncertainty about it, and also
just what happened? What are the events of the war.
This is something I don't think most people really know.

Speaker 1 (10:55):
I don't think we ever talked about the war itself.
It's always about the fallout of the war, right, It's
about what happened to those who couldn't didn't want to serve,
versus who were forced to serve. You're right, we don't
actually talk about what happened on the ground as much.
But I want to tap into something else you and
I both stumbled into. And I'll be very curious what

(11:16):
Ambassador Negroponte thinks of the following ways that both you
and I lived. Both of our fathers lived this experience.
My father's move from the Democratic Party of the Republican
Party was anger at LBJ over Vietnam. And look, personal
events always dictate these things. His best friend, my dad

(11:39):
had not the easiest childhood, and I'll just leave it
at that, but his best friend, that sort of was
his stabilizing force in childhood, got killed in a training
basically on his way to being Sentinam. He was drafted
and in the training mission died there. And you know,
I now realize my dad never got over losing him,

(12:00):
so for him, he blamed Johnson and it was it
was visceral. It was visceral. You said your father had
that same feeling towards Nixon, and it's like, I run
into this. You either are angry at Nixon or you're
angry at Johnson.

Speaker 3 (12:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
Absolutely, I mean this, this, this was And why does
the Vietnam War create such a deep it's such deep
feelings in everybody.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
It is personalizing it, right, Yeah, I personalize it so much.

Speaker 2 (12:29):
I think it's because both you know, people aren't lost
losses like your like your father experienced. This hit people
personally with people that they knew, friends, brothers. But it
was also something that's bigger, right, who are we as
a country? There was something about the Vietnam War that
shifted our identity of who we are and how we
related to the world and our presence and our kind

(12:53):
of leadership in the world. And that's the thing that
people have a hard time kind of dealing with and
struggle and have tried to answer since then, some of
the questions that came up. So I think it's both
things as a personal but it's also who are we
as a country?

Speaker 1 (13:09):
Right? Ambassador. You're hearing this, and I know you've you've
gone through this so many times, but I'm fascinated to
know what you thought the war, what was going on
in nineteen sixty four when you were there, when, what
you were leaving when you left in sixty eight, and
what you feared you left.

Speaker 3 (13:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (13:30):
First, but let me say just a small correction, Chuck.
You said I'd been ambassador at Vietnam. I've been an
ambassador five times, but not to Vietnam.

Speaker 3 (13:42):
And I got there when I got there when I
was twenty four years old.

Speaker 4 (13:48):
When I got there in nineteen sixty four, after studying
Vietnamese in Washington for a number of months, we had
about at twenty thousand trainers, no people who were designated
as combat troops.

Speaker 1 (14:04):
Let me back you up a match. You were mainly
a quick language school. Where were you working and what
was the what did you think your mission was that
you had to take?

Speaker 4 (14:13):
Well, Line was a career Foreign Service officer and I
started my career in nineteen sixty nineteen sixty. A fall
of nineteen sixty, I'd had an assignment to Hong Kong.
I went back to Washington and they soon because things
were hoting up in Vietnam, asked me to take a
forty four week It wasn't so short, forty four week

(14:35):
language training courts.

Speaker 3 (14:36):
I went out there to.

Speaker 4 (14:38):
The political section of the US Embassy in Saigon as
a so called provincial reporter, and I did a lot
things like what a journalist would do. I was assigned
to cover six different provinces in South Vietnam. There was
forty two of them in all, six or seven. Now,
we go out every week. I'd collect information on the economic, political, diplomatic, security, military,

(15:06):
et cetera situation in the field that I'd come back
the next week and write up my reports, get my
laundry done and all of that.

Speaker 3 (15:13):
We didn't have internet and all of that.

Speaker 4 (15:15):
You know that, we didn't have very good telephones either,
so you had to actually physically come back to the
embassy and rite up telegrams and so forth.

Speaker 3 (15:24):
So that's what I came to.

Speaker 4 (15:28):
The North Vietnamese had not yet starting to to send
regular North Vietnamese Army troops into South Vietnam. I got
there in May of sixty four, the first time we
detected North Vietamese troops in South Vietnam as part of
their decision to escalate the situation in the South. Their

(15:48):
tactics so far had not succeeded in causing South Vietnam
to fall into their Communist hands, so they decided to
send their army and we.

Speaker 3 (15:59):
Capt sued a couple of their people.

Speaker 4 (16:01):
We are the Southamese military, actually in about June of
nineteen sixty four, and so that was the beginning of
the establishment of a large North Vietnamese presence in the South,
which at the end of the war in seventy five,

(16:22):
there was something like fourteen divisions of North Vietnamese troops
and stuff Vietnam. So what starts as a guerrilla war
ends up really as a conventional military defeat of Saigon
by the North Vietnamese army. So this stuff about it
being a guerrilla war, well, it was during a certain phase,

(16:43):
but basically the North Vietnamese were committing committed to throwing
whatever they had into it to achieve their ultimate objective,
which was the reunification of the country. Did you owe
I was there during that early stage of conten Yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:59):
Did you owe view? It was the conventional wisdom at
the time among those people you reported to that essentially
we were in a proxy war with China or a
proxy war with the Soviets here or was it not
seen as that yet?

Speaker 4 (17:15):
No, only was seen as part of the Cold War.
It was a regional conflict in a Cold War context.
And just like in Korea, where there had been a
dividing line between North and South Korea and became the
South Korea's defense, I think we saw it as a
way of dealing with a form of North Vietnamese aggression.

(17:38):
It got all bollocked up in the kind of politics
and psychology that the two of you were discussing earlier.
But I mean, I think initially we saw it as
a fairly straightforward situation that the guys, the people I
worked for, Henry Cabot, Lodge, Ellsworth Bunker, William Westmoreland General,

(18:00):
the commanding General, they had grown up in the nineteen
twenties and thirties. They saw this as sort of like
a Munich, like a you know, they're responding to no appeasementression.

Speaker 1 (18:14):
Don't make that mistake, right, it does, boy, that's right fighting.
That's the old fighting the last war. So this is yeah,
caught fighting the last war.

Speaker 4 (18:23):
Everybody is always fighting the last war. I mean that's
the way wars go. I think you guys overplay in
your discussion the lasting impact of Vietnam, because I think
we'd finally got We had what we called the Vietnam syndrome,
and for a number of years after that, and I
went on to many different jobs. In fact, I was

(18:44):
Henry Kissinger's victor for Vietnam when he negotiated the peace
agreement and h and I was with Bush and Reagan
and Bush later on, we sort of finally got over
the Vietnam syndrome, I would say, when Bush decided to,
you know, invade Panama and get rid of Norriega, replaced Norjega,

(19:05):
and then he went into the first Iraq War, right
the Kuwait War, And at that point I think we
had finally at least gotten over the aspect of the
Vietnam syndrome that said, don't send you that's true.

Speaker 1 (19:20):
Do you think we actually it's It's interesting. I tend
to agree that we're probably over the Vietnam hangover when
it comes to the impact on our politics and the
military in fact, but I would argue that we're in
another one now, and it's the Iraq War. Like I
think the second Iraq war has probably had a last

(19:40):
has this impact on our psyche political psyche left and
right right now? That is very similar to what Vietnam
did to America in the seventies and eighties.

Speaker 4 (19:52):
Well, I mean I had a lot to do with that.
I was at the UN when we passed resolutions. You
accept that, yes, I mean I think partially, partially, But
I want to identify another trend for you, which I
don't know whether you've considered. Is it what is it
about these conflicts that we get into them and then

(20:16):
after having you know, trained a whole generation of people
to fight the war, to learn the reason why to
be committed to the policy Vietnam.

Speaker 3 (20:26):
Afghanistan and now potentially Ukraine.

Speaker 1 (20:32):
Although no boots on the ground in Ukraine, but let's say.

Speaker 4 (20:35):
No, no, and yet we still might pull the plug, right,
But what is it about this propensity that we have
to get into these conflicts but not be able to
think it far enough through to assure our own selves
that we're really going to stay the course. What kind
of friend are you, or an ally or a supporter

(20:56):
of somebody if halfway through the deal you decide to
pull the plug. I'm not denying the social consequences that
Vietnam had on people here in this country. But you know,
in terms of what we did to them, by the
time the peace talks were over in nineteen seventy two

(21:18):
and early seventy three, our exposure in Vietnam was very limited.
We had fifty thousand troops, not five hundred thousand, and
they were relegated entirely to support functions.

Speaker 1 (21:29):
Describing the last year of Afghanistan. By the way, also,
I know, yes.

Speaker 4 (21:34):
Yeah, but I mean that's the truth in Vietnam back
in seventy three. And yet I mean I was Kissinger's
man on Vietnam at that time. You know, they just
didn't want to go into the second administration. They didn't
want to go into the second administration in the second term,
as Henry used to say, reading battle field reports for

(21:55):
breakfast every morning. They just didn't want it. I mean
Nixon was tired. Yeah, I heard him say it to
Joe and Lie. We went out to see Joe and
Lyons June and with a month earlier, and it was
exactly that. Henry said, we don't want to be leading

(22:17):
battlefield and.

Speaker 1 (22:20):
Mhm, I know, in the middle it was a good
your kissing your impersonation. I know it's mandatory, right if
you work for Hendry.

Speaker 3 (22:34):
My favorite impression, My favorite.

Speaker 1 (22:37):
Nugget about Henry's impersonation, about Henry's accent is that his
brother didn't have one.

Speaker 3 (22:43):
Correct, and he was older.

Speaker 1 (22:44):
Yes, yeah, it was intentional. Arnold. By the way, somebody
told me, Arnold Schwarzenegger can turn it on and off
to he was. Yeah, he's been. But Brian, let me
introduce the thesis to respond to the to the ambassador
on this. Yeah, it's called daily press coverage, daily news coverage. Something.
Korea was more controlled World War two even more controlled.

Speaker 3 (23:08):
Right.

Speaker 1 (23:08):
The first war that had no that had sort of
lost control of the media narrative was Vietnam, right, and
then arguably right. You know you saw this right in
the in the initial invasion of Iraq, there was an
attempt to manage media in ways within embedding of reporters.
But again, the daily battlefield reports is he just you

(23:30):
can't help but wonder how much daily media coverage has
made it harder in a small d democracy to fulfill
what the ambassador is saying, Right, Why is it so
hard for US policy, for US leaders to fulfill a policy,
you know, of sticking to the you know, sticking to
the friend in South Vietnam, sticking with the friend in Afghanistan,

(23:54):
sticking with the friends in Ukraine. Well, it's political pressure, right,
and it's one of the those things. Perhaps if Korea
had more less controlled media attention, that that doesn't have
the same that that ends up having a bigger impact.
I don't know what.

Speaker 4 (24:12):
Yeah, that's a great point. And we had in Psychon,
and we had great press people there. I'm talking about
both the correspondence. I'm you know, when you're a young
officer in the state, you befriend the press much more easily,
given you're willing.

Speaker 3 (24:29):
You're always say so, we knew these.

Speaker 4 (24:31):
Guys really well, you know, Johnny Apples of this world
and uh war just and so forth.

Speaker 3 (24:39):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (24:40):
But we had the five o'clock follies, that's what we
called it, the five o'clock press conference. Every gosh, John Day.
I used to say to myself exactly what yours? I said,
what are we doing spoon feeding these people?

Speaker 1 (24:53):
So you couldn't have done it with d Day, right,
I mean you just could though, I mean I mean, so, Brian,
what do you think of that, and do you think
that that to fair? I mean, look, it is what
it is. Welcome to the you know, yeah war, this
war was televised.

Speaker 2 (25:06):
I think that's a big part of the story of
Vietnam is the is this, you know, the Vietnam arrives
at a point in history where the technology of filmmaking
and the technology of image making and recording devices is
changing dramatically, even in the eleven years in which the
United States is there. You know, suddenly you have handheld
recording devices, handheld cameras, you have people with who are

(25:30):
able to get still cameras, and you know, just the
whole thing is is technologically at a place in which
which you can capture some of the events that are going.

Speaker 4 (25:38):
And if I remember correctly, at the beginning, you had
to fly the tape back to the United States. Yeah right, right, yeah,
for your good broadcast. But I think by the end
that was no longer the case.

Speaker 1 (25:49):
Satellite was just kicking in.

Speaker 3 (25:50):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:51):
I mean, look, I think one of the people we
interviewed in the in the series is Dan Rather, you know,
and I think that there's a couple of things going on.
I mean, first of all, you you know, you do
have this technology that's bringing this into people's living rooms
in a way that's making it very very visceral for
people that that's making it connect and understand the war

(26:12):
in a way that they hadn't before, or at least
the brutality of it. But you know, you have a
generation of journalists that have basically cut their teeth in Vietnam.
Dan Rather is one of those, and he talks about
the you know, the emphasizes in the interview this role
of the press to kind of bear witness two events

(26:32):
and to report honestly and to speak truth to power.
And there's there's all sorts of examples of this. So
you know, morally Safer example is totally fascinating and it
feels just as relevant today as it does as it
did then. I mean this this idea that morally Safer,
this CBS News correspondent would go in and would find
out that American troops are burning these South Vietnamese villages,

(26:56):
taking zippo lighters to the dashed hutsmb.

Speaker 4 (27:01):
I think that the trouble is when you catch one
of those incidents or whatever, it's sort of mushrooms into
being the whole story and it's.

Speaker 3 (27:11):
Not the whole story, I promise you.

Speaker 1 (27:15):
But there's your that's the problem, right, And this is
where one and you're right, the one symbolic. You know,
you may have one rogue platoon, but if it got
caught on camera.

Speaker 4 (27:27):
Especially if it's well documented, absolutely, so what are you
doing in Iraq? You're embedding these people in the units.
It's like having a body camera on you, but you're
in combat, right, and they see everything you do.

Speaker 1 (27:43):
Well, you know, I'm I'm I'm a believer that transparency
is better at the end of the day, but I
understand that it could become a problem when you're trying
to manage a median aerative.

Speaker 4 (27:57):
Yeah, and when you're trying to put here's the issue,
how trying to put incident X into the context or
perspective of the entire conflict, And you know, then you
get into fairly subjective judgments. I agree, but you know,
you still have to make the judgment as to whether

(28:17):
or not it's the right thing for us to be
in that conflict.

Speaker 1 (28:21):
All right, let me ask you this, ambassador. We lost
the Vietnam War but won the Cold War. What does
that tell us about whether Vietnam was worth it.

Speaker 4 (28:30):
Well, maybe it tells you that these regional conflicts were
not as important as we thought they were. You could
make that argument, I guess. In other words, it may
not have had much to do with the downfall of
the Soviet Union. On the other hand, Afghanistan did have
something to do with the fall of the Soviet Union

(28:51):
because the Soviets were sick and tired of their occupation
of Afghanistan, and they came to us. In the late
nineteen eighties, I was on the National Security Council with
Colin Kow and they came to us and said, we
want to discuss withdrawal from Afghanistan. And I'm, being a

(29:11):
hardcore old warrior at the time, said Colan, don't believe him.

Speaker 3 (29:15):
That's a trick. It's a trick. And his answer to
me was really good. He said, you know, John.

Speaker 4 (29:21):
If you'd had as many beers as I've had with
Soviet generals and Soviet admirals, you would know they want.

Speaker 3 (29:29):
To get the hell out of there. That's interesting, that's interesting.

Speaker 1 (29:34):
How do you rectify that question, right, which is we
win the Cold War, but we lost Vietnam. Therefore was
Vietnam War that or not? Which has always been a
tough question for to deal with.

Speaker 4 (29:43):
Beetle Well, I mean, I'm sorry we lost Vietnam, frankly,
and you know, I'm not in the school that thinks
it was a travesty, nor do I think it was
a great human rights situation. And because I knew all
those government officials, rands down down the village and province level,
I knew them all because of my experience as a

(30:05):
provincial reporter.

Speaker 1 (30:09):
What's your assessment of why we lost a.

Speaker 3 (30:12):
Loss of political will? I think that we got to the.

Speaker 4 (30:15):
Point in the fall of nineteen seventy two where if
we had wanted to maintain a residual presence in South Vietnam,
with let's say, twenty five thousand troops and you know,
continued air support and some continued economic assistance, we might

(30:36):
have been able to pull that off. But I'm the
first to admit that the political atmosphere had become poisonous, right,
I mean, it was just it just became too hard.
We'd spent our political capital with most with many of
the American people, and certainly with.

Speaker 3 (30:57):
The Congress.

Speaker 2 (30:58):
Well, you know, you have a you have a population trying, trying,
struggling with why we're even in Vietnam in the first place, Well,
what is the goal? And you know, I think in
the very early days of Vietnam, back to the Cold War,
I mean, obviously discussion is so rooted in this Cold
War thinking that this stark idea that there's good and bad,

(31:21):
that the nation of the world, nations of the world
had to pick sides, could yeah, and.

Speaker 4 (31:26):
Well not only that, but also that if Vietnam fell,
there was the danger that then the Vietnamese might go
on to other parts of Southeast Asia, which they in
fact did not do.

Speaker 3 (31:39):
Right.

Speaker 2 (31:39):
So when you when when you sort of think about this,
I mean, you know, you after eleven years of this
war and this doubts on the part of the American
public whether this was even a real concern or not
or and certainly as we know now, you know, going
through the series, you listen to these tape We listen
to hundreds in it hundreds of hours of these White

(32:02):
House recordings from all three the only three presidents to
really record themselves, right, Nixon, they that's not such a
good idea, but it listen to these time.

Speaker 1 (32:12):
Just a quick aside, there's a great alternative history show,
the from the It's on Apple about going to Mars
and the space race and this alternative history that has
that has America losing the race to the moon, the
Soviets win the race of the Moon. How would America

(32:32):
react all this stuff? And one of the premises in
that is that Nixon only serves one term, not two,
and therefore the taping mechanisms never found out about. And
then we get like six more presidents and all of
these incredible tape recordings of all this. I mean, in
some ways that's Watergate ruined. Watergate ruined historian's ability to

(32:53):
have incredible firsthand knowledge of these presidents thinking, you know,
it's a bummer.

Speaker 3 (32:59):
These guys. Yeah, you know why these guys did that.

Speaker 4 (33:03):
I mean, I'm pretty certain that the recordings were was
in system was installed because both Kissinger and Nixon thought
it would help them better sell their books after.

Speaker 3 (33:18):
Their term of off. I'm not kidding you. Oh, they
were both.

Speaker 1 (33:22):
They both were that narcissistic. Sorry, I'll say it, you
don't have to. Yeah, they were. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:29):
People in the series make the case that they just
sort of forgot after but you know, it just sort
of let it roll that they couldn't go out.

Speaker 3 (33:34):
I mean, I think Luke nextor who you've probably read.

Speaker 4 (33:39):
He did the book on the Nixon Tapes, which is
an excellent book, and it's a very revealing set of conversations.

Speaker 2 (33:48):
The tool, I guess this is my main What I
was saying is that that when you listen to those
recordings over those three presidents, you understand a very candid
way how they felt about the war, and you can
so easily compare that to what's being said, you know,
in public about the war. And that major disconnect which
people started to understand late in the war is one

(34:11):
of those it's one of those poor changes in the
way we see what our government is doing.

Speaker 1 (34:17):
And with oh, Brian and that completely agree. Look at
the boomers today. I always sit there and say, look
at the generation. Look at baby boomers today right there,
what is their coming of age moment?

Speaker 3 (34:27):
Right?

Speaker 1 (34:27):
It is Vietnam, It's the sixties and all of this.
And the more scholarship there is, the more they found
out their government didn't tell them the full truth about Yeah, okay,
clearly the CIA was doing something with Oswald. Why won't
you tell us the full story?

Speaker 5 (34:40):
Right?

Speaker 1 (34:41):
You go through all these things and guess what, it's
the boomers that are the ones questioning government and shaking
things up in some ways. The boomers keep getting elected president,
which is interesting to me. No Vietnam veteran though, has
ever gotten to the presidency, which is also I don't
think an accident, right, the Kerry got but the only,
the only better Vietnam vetteran even to get it get

(35:04):
that close, I guess McCain as well. But the fact
that we never elected, when I think culturally, is fairly
significant as well.

Speaker 2 (35:11):
Yeah, well you have to ask what and this is
I guess back to what the ambassador was saying a
little bit. But you know, aren't aren't these the isn't
this the legacy of the Vietnam War that we're feeling
these lessons that were learned or not learned. You know,
a huge when you look at an event like January sixth,
you know a huge disproportionate number of people storming the
Capitol were military veterans. You know, it's a high percentage

(35:35):
of people. So and and I was struck, you know,
from Iraq and Afghanistan, but also from Vietnam. And I
was struck that there's you know, they were flying some
people were flying the now defunct flag of South Vietnam
on January sixth as people storm the Capitol. So as
you sort of a kind of unravel what that means, right,

(35:56):
you know, I think it's very much true that that
that legacy is we're still feeling the shadow of Vietnam.

Speaker 3 (36:02):
But there are other lessons. Let me just say this.

Speaker 4 (36:07):
You know, that's one angle, and particularly the impact on
the psyche of the American people and American politics.

Speaker 3 (36:15):
But there's another aspect to this, which I think is
very important.

Speaker 4 (36:18):
And I've happened to have been involved in about three
or four of these conflicts, so I have a basis
for comparison. There's also the issue of how we fought
the war, and I think it's important. First of all,
the draft was very unjust, and you got to acknowledge

(36:40):
that that contributed to a lot of bitterness about the
way the war was.

Speaker 1 (36:47):
You had if you were had access to get out,
you got out, right.

Speaker 3 (36:52):
We all got deferments right.

Speaker 4 (36:54):
Second, so Creighton Abrams, you know LBJ thought about choosing
him in sixty four. If he'd chosen Abrams instead of Westmoreland,
we might have ended up in much less of a pickle.
But Westy just kept on asking for more and more troops.
Even after the Tet offensive, when the Yet Kong were
practically decimated, he goes and asks for two hundred and

(37:15):
six thousand more troops. I've always put forward the hypothetical,
what if instead west he had ridden the cable saying,
mister President, the Viet Kong have suffered a terrible defeat,
you could now safely withdraw two hundred thousand troops. It
might have turned around to psychology completely. I did a
review of it when I first got there. Colin Powell,

(37:36):
who was Secretary of State, asked me to do the review,
and I pointed out to Washington that there was no
money in there for building up the security forces of Iraq,
and I recommended reprogramming two billion dollars count them, two
billion dollars from that seventeen to training and equipping Iraqi forces,

(37:57):
and Washington accepted my recommendation. So I mean I at
least I applied a lesson I felt I had learned right.
And General Casey, who was the commanding general, we worked
very closely together and we got that done. And actually
Iraq is still it hasn't gone down the tubes. By
the way, even though people don't like what we did

(38:20):
in Iraq, I understand that, and it was a very
very debatable decision by President Bush. But it has not
ended up in the Iraq going down the drink.

Speaker 1 (38:34):
Well, it's not yet in the sphere of influence of Iran, right,
which was the great fear that we were just liberating,
liberating Iraq in order to become a province of Iran.

Speaker 4 (38:42):
Right, there's some danger still in that regard, but no,
I think we're a little better often then. Anyway, how
you fight these wars is another issue. I'm not saying
it's the primary issue, but you can learn lessons there too.

Speaker 1 (39:01):
Ran I am fascinated by the sort of the post
Vietnam impact, right. My wife asked me this question recently,
and I had a thesis, and I'm curious of yours
if you agree in this that you know why how
did the military become a Republican constituency? And I go
back to Carter's decision to pardon the Draft Dodgers as

(39:25):
a as a line in the sand. I grew up
in Miami. The Bay of Pigs is a reason why
every Cuban today is still more likely to be a
Republican than a Democrat. They blame Kennedy for not going back.
They're angry at Kennedy to this day. You have exile.
So many Cubans were raised. Hey, don't trust the Democrats
on this. The Republicans have your back. Type of mindset

(39:45):
is that you do. We think the pardoning of the
draft Dodgers had that kind of impact politically.

Speaker 3 (39:52):
I hadn't. I've not really thought of it.

Speaker 1 (39:54):
I really haven't, Brian, what you're in dealing.

Speaker 3 (39:58):
I mean, you were one of you was talking about
your migration from the Democratic to the Republican Party.

Speaker 4 (40:06):
Mine was after the was Jimmy Carter, the failure with
regard to Iran and the fact that we were humiliated
by having these hostages helped for almost.

Speaker 5 (40:20):
A year or whatever length of period it was the
year in a couple of months, and I that's why
I voted for Ronald Reagan in nineteen eighty and then remained.

Speaker 4 (40:31):
A Republican after that. Yeah, oriented after that, although I
honestly believe, maybe naively, that politics should stop at the
water's edge.

Speaker 1 (40:42):
Yeah, I bowed it at that too, Brian. What what
did you feel like you found during this documentary about
that question or about that issue in general.

Speaker 2 (40:50):
Well, it's not something that it makes sense, I think
the it's not something that I heard a lot of
people talking about or you know, I.

Speaker 1 (41:02):
Just know there's a lot of there's still older military veterans,
you know, still look at draft dodgers with skepticism. It's
why it was such a big deal with with Bill Clinton. Honestly,
I think it was a bigger deal for Bill Clinton
because he was a Democrat, and it was less of
a deal for Bush and Cheney because they were Republicans.

Speaker 3 (41:18):
Yeah, and dan Quail and dan Quayle.

Speaker 1 (41:20):
And Quail, but it was less of an issue on
the right than it was on the left because of that,
I think. But that's just the thesis.

Speaker 2 (41:25):
Yeah, I think that, you know, there's the veterans when
they came back, you know, it was it was a
very very difficult time, and you know, obviously a lot
has been there's a lot of work has been done
trying to understand the experience of veterans when they when
they came back from Vietnam. You know, they even my
dad said that he experienced the sort of baby killer

(41:48):
thing where where people were kind of who were maybe
rightly or had legitimate concerns about whether or not you
should be in Vietnam, may have may have been protesting it,
but also took out a lot of that anger on
people that were enlisted that you know that either enlisted
or were drafted, which are and these are people that
we asked as a country to go to war.

Speaker 1 (42:10):
And I'll tell you want to talk about something, you
want to talk about something that I think culturally Americans
have learned is, you know, don't don't hold the infantry
men responsible for policy decisions. And to this day, look
at you know, every NAT's game I go to, we
wave the hats for the troops, right, because I think

(42:30):
we all realize that, you know, to go back to
what the ambassador said, that should stop at the water's edge, right,
can't blame those that either enlisted for a variety of
reasons or were drafted back then, you know, you can't
hold them responsible for policy choices.

Speaker 4 (42:47):
And I mentioned one other issue because it shocked me
when I learned about it.

Speaker 3 (42:52):
I left you.

Speaker 4 (42:54):
As I mentioned, I was there three and a half
years and I ended up eventually going to Henry Kissinger's
Nationalecurity Council staff. And one time, I think in nineteen
seventy one or so, I went with General Haig, who
was Kissinger's deputy at the time, to Vietnam and I
visited one of our hospitals, Field Hospitals, and the doctor

(43:17):
sat me down and told me about the levels of
drug addiction of our troops and that some people were
using so many vials of heroin the day. And I mean,
it was a horror scene and that I don't think
had been the case at the beginning of our involvement,
But somehow drugs got into this whole picture. And I

(43:40):
think that happened to the Russians in Afghanistan as well.

Speaker 3 (43:44):
And it's one.

Speaker 1 (43:46):
Way in unstain. I mean, I hate to put it,
that was terms, but it's how it was.

Speaker 3 (43:50):
A big issue.

Speaker 4 (43:51):
It was a big issue, and you remember the Army
finally cleaned it up, but by cracking down very hard,
but only after we got out of Vietnam.

Speaker 2 (44:02):
Yeah, you get a lot of this when you talk
to Vietnam veterans today. Obviously, they they did this sense
that there, you know that the Vietnam mission felt very
murky to them, that they didn't quite understand why they
were there, They were losing friends, and and that that
so many of them kind of turned to you know,

(44:22):
the marijuana heroin was obviously very plentiful. So many people
came back with these addictions. And so we talked to
a few of a few men who went through that
when they came back. So that combined with the the
sort of anger that some of them felt directed at
them for the war and a lack of a kind

(44:42):
of celebration of what of their service when they came back,
really caused a lot of problems for people. And of course,
as you know, we know this is where the studying
of this eventually, through lots of great work by a
lot of great people, that led to the diagnosis of PTSD.
And you know those this comes out of the Vietnam
War trying and I understand a lot of this.

Speaker 3 (45:05):
How do you explain that this happened to the Vietnam
vets but less so to the other.

Speaker 4 (45:10):
Ones who came back, like the ones who think, well,
I guess I puzzle over that.

Speaker 1 (45:15):
Are you sure we didn't that we didn't have these issues.
I just think we're more aware.

Speaker 4 (45:20):
No, no, or no, we have them, but we don't
treat We treat them more respectfully. I mean, I felt
I think the Vietnam.

Speaker 3 (45:29):
Vets felt they were not treated with right and.

Speaker 1 (45:32):
I think that's why we treat the Iraq and Afghanistan
veterans with a lot more respect at least.

Speaker 3 (45:36):
So that's one of the lessons we learned is.

Speaker 1 (45:38):
Yeah, when in a war we won, Brian, right, there
were plenty of World War two veterans that did come
back with these same issues, but in some ways that
got less attention. Part of that is just generational, right,
men didn't talk about those things. A little bit of that.
But but but some of it also had to do
with we just didn't because we won, We didn't look

(46:02):
backwards as much.

Speaker 2 (46:03):
Yeah, maybe I think that's maybe true.

Speaker 4 (46:05):
Yeah, Well, then we don't do drugs very well anyway, right,
we don't do we don't deal with the addiction in
our society very well.

Speaker 3 (46:16):
Is that a fair statement?

Speaker 1 (46:18):
It's true. We don't know, because we we I think
we know dealing with it as a crime is a
bad idea. We have figured we kind of have figured
that out sort of, and then we still end up
dealing with it like a law enforcement issue when ultimately
it's a. It clearly is a mental health challenge, but
we still don't know how to do mental health.

Speaker 3 (46:35):
Yeah, we don't know.

Speaker 1 (46:37):
But Brian, get take me through more of the five.
You know, how much of this is about the war
itself and the policy debates during the war. How much
is it about the cultural impact.

Speaker 3 (46:48):
Down the line?

Speaker 1 (46:49):
How would you say you split your time on that?

Speaker 2 (46:51):
Well, we tried to try to do both of those
things justice, you know, one of the we did focus
quite a bit on presidents and decisions of administrations and
how those ripple effects affected real people on the ground.
But you know, I think we also tried to get
just a range a range of voices in this as well.
So you know, some often the events of this war

(47:14):
told from the American perspective only, so you know, you know,
in Vietnam, this was a civil war as much as
anything else, and so you know, the understanding of these
events can't be separated from the fact that there are
these two different parts of the country, very different visions
for what their future might look like. So we tried
We talked to viet Cong obviously, we talked to people

(47:37):
from the South. We had talked from people to people
who fought for the North to try to get as
much of a kind of full range of perspectives as
we could.

Speaker 1 (47:47):
So now I found that I assume you've been to
this show on Max that's about sort of Vietnam but
from the perspective of the North. Yeah, I actually have
a lot of a satire. It's it was an interesting
I can't remember the name of it.

Speaker 3 (48:02):
You're talking about.

Speaker 1 (48:04):
Yes, yes, yes, yes, boy, ambassador. I'm curious if you
if anybody's talked to you into watching this TV show
called The Sympathizer, which was a bit more from the
perspective of the North than the South.

Speaker 3 (48:20):
No, I I've not seen it, but I just made
a note of it.

Speaker 1 (48:23):
Yeah, it's it's sort of dark, dark satire. You know,
it's serious, but there's some satire to it. But I
found that, Brian so necessary. Right, We just don't you know,
when you you got to understand what it's just like
with World War Two, we're all trying to figure out
we're all Germans Nazis or was the you know, and
we know all Germans weren't Nazis, right, it was sort

(48:45):
of sometimes that happens and not all you know, and
getting that perspective. You know, obviously uh is helpful. But
as a civil war, when did Vietnam recover from this
civil war?

Speaker 3 (48:57):
Right?

Speaker 1 (48:57):
Arguably it took America maybe you know, World War two
before we've you know, or the Civil Rights Act before
we fully recovered from our civil war, depending on how
you want to look at it. When when do we
feel like the Vietnamese recovered from that civil war?

Speaker 2 (49:11):
Ah, wow, that's a great question.

Speaker 4 (49:12):
The the.

Speaker 2 (49:15):
You know, I think you know, obviously, the Vietnam War
itself opened up wounds in Campodia and other things that
took a long, very long time in order to play out,
and lots of people, you know, over the years after
the fall of Saigon still tried to escape and tried
to leave Vietnam so and tried to you know, people

(49:37):
that felt persecuted, people that were in re education camps.
You know, this war lasted a very long time for
those people. And of course, you know a lot of
people from from the South became refugees in the United
States and the war. I mean, if you talk to them,
a lot of them are in the series, a lot
if you talk to them, you know, it's still very

(49:58):
very raw for them. As well, so, you know, it's
a tough question to answer. I think, you know, the
you know Vietnam has you know, is economically done, well,
it's done, you know, it's it's come to terms with
some of its past in a lot of ways. I think,

(50:18):
you know, there's been some there's been some kind of
shifts recently with Trump and tariffs and all of that,
but it's been a very very close trading partner. They've
worked very closely with the United States to look for
remains of the soldiers that were missing over the years,
and so that relationship has has improved significantly. But you know,

(50:41):
in the in the hearts of people, especially people who
were left their homeland, and would you know that this
this war is still very much kind of raw for them.

Speaker 4 (50:52):
Still many of them left twice m because they left
North Vietnam after the Geneva Agreements of nineteen fifty four,
there was a transfer of a million people to the South,
and then many of those same people then or their
descendants came to the United States. But I'll give John

(51:15):
McCain and others great credit for despite having fought the
war and despite having been actually there were a couple
of the prisoners of war. McCain and the fellow also
who was the first ambassador to Vietnam, to the unified Vietnam,
they wanted to reopen, relate. They didn't want to keep

(51:36):
the grudge forever.

Speaker 3 (51:37):
And I think they're right.

Speaker 1 (51:38):
You know, when the.

Speaker 3 (51:38):
War is over, it's over.

Speaker 4 (51:39):
You got to you got to try to rebuild a
relationship of some kind. And I think we've done a
pretty good job at that with today's Vietnam, even though
we don't agree with it all of their politics, right,
I mean, I think it's and I think John McCain
and others who advocated for the relationship deserve our gratitude

(52:00):
for having done that, because you know, we could have
kept the grudge for even longer, and that would not
have been good.

Speaker 1 (52:06):
Brian, what do you make of the fact that we're
gonna we have one, two, three four. I'm sort of
on the fence about whether Obama counts as a baby
boomer president or not because he never turned he wasn't
eighteen during the Vietnam War. To me, if you were
eighteen during the Vietnam War at any point in time

(52:27):
in that tenure period, then then you're part of that era.
But We've had four baby Boomer presidents, but not one
as a Vietnam veteran.

Speaker 2 (52:38):
Yeah, I don't know what you what you make of that,
And even some of.

Speaker 1 (52:41):
That wasn't true with our World War Two veterans. Right,
We've got a lot of presidents out of World War Two,
starting with Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson. I mean, all these guys
fought World War Two, yeah, Bush, You know, only Reagan
was of that era and didn't he was sort of right,
he was doing his work.

Speaker 3 (53:03):
Right.

Speaker 1 (53:03):
Well, you know, some would say he was helping, that's
one way to help with the effort, but the boy
was he was actually an outlier of his generation, where
we don't even have the outlier of our of that
Vietnam generation. Brian.

Speaker 2 (53:16):
I think it points directly to the complicated relationship and
nature that we have with this war and how much
it really exposed and how much we're still kind of
dealing with it. We don't. It's not an easy war
to to think about it. It's not an easy war
to try to understand the impact and the legacy that
it has had on us. But you're absolutely right, of course,

(53:37):
I mean World War Two gave us heroes that became presidents.

Speaker 1 (53:42):
And build our United States. Congress just filled it. And
in fact, those those bipartisan groups were really important to
keeping us on the rails. I mean I've always thought that,
and in fact, the lack of Vietnam veterans now in
the US Senate is you know they that was a
bipartisan team. Your Bobkerry or Chuck Hagel, your John Kerry
or John McCain. You know, they would band together and

(54:06):
it would help create some bonds. And perhaps Iraq creates
that in another ten or fifteen years as that generation
matures and take some leadership. But I don't know, you know,
it might, yeah, it might. Yeah, I think you're right.

Speaker 4 (54:21):
I mean when I most of my career, which ended
up being forty four years, but in the early part
of my career, I mean I always went up to
Capitol Hill a lot from the State Department. I mean,
in the beginning, you could count on these World War
Two veterans to carry forward our nationals.

Speaker 1 (54:39):
Bob doing dan in away here there you go, right right,
They were in the same hospital together, you know, they bonded,
you know, and that that mattered.

Speaker 3 (54:50):
Yep, yep, And that's a big loss.

Speaker 4 (54:52):
I think you're right about Iraq, although I don't know
if there are enough of them in the Yeah, I'm
not sure, not yet, but they are they could be.

Speaker 1 (55:02):
And it is interesting, Brian, for all the think about
what's happened to the Vietnam vets, and yet think about
the one government institution that still has bipartisan support in
the country. It's the military. And I don't think following
Vietnam culturally, one would have expected that, right.

Speaker 4 (55:23):
That's why I would add one thing, And I saw
it in Iraq. I saw it myself with my own eyes,
the competence of our military. They have become so proficient
in what they do. I mean, I think of them
as a class of people amongst the best educated people

(55:44):
in our country.

Speaker 1 (55:45):
What do you think volunteer army is better than a
drafted army? And do you think that's the reason.

Speaker 3 (55:50):
I'm not so sure that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:54):
I do think shared sacrifice is something we're missing as
a country. But Brian, I want you to tackle that
question too, please.

Speaker 2 (55:58):
Well, I for for a half feat when you were
asking that question, I thought you were going to talk
about the VA. The VA is uh you know, has
been has been a source of controversy and uh, but
it was created.

Speaker 1 (56:10):
The VA was created in some ways as a response
to distrust by by soldiers of the Pentagon, right, yes,
that's why we have it.

Speaker 3 (56:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (56:17):
Yeah, it's looking like it's getting good here. I don't
know the stats, but I just not Yeah.

Speaker 1 (56:23):
I will promise you this. If it is getting gutted,
that's bad politics, and that will get restored pretty quickly.
Like that is the one thing you can I think
that they're touching a few things that are third rails
and that they're going to find out or are going
to electrocute them politically. Yeah, I mean, there's she'll see.

Speaker 3 (56:40):
There are these.

Speaker 2 (56:40):
Rumors that you know, as eight eighty thousand people might
be getting fired from the VA, that this is This
is devastating, and honestly, it's it's a it's disrespectful to
the people who really deserve.

Speaker 1 (56:51):
Well, especially when you have such a It's always been
tenuous the trust between in the VA, more so than
most because right who is getting the line's share of
healthcare right now, it's the Vietnam veteran generation, and who
began with the most distrust of the military. The Vietnam
Veteran generation right like it is. It is not an accident.

(57:11):
So it's like, guys, you're messing this. Of all generations
to start short circuiting things, that's the last one you
should be doing.

Speaker 2 (57:18):
Yeah, I think it's important. I like the idea of
you know, your point about Carrie and McCain being in
the in the Senate and you know, having people that
understand wars that have been through this that that aren't glorifying,
you know, the military.

Speaker 1 (57:34):
And that matters to my uncle, who's still a lot
of Vietnam VET. He's like, he doesn't he didn't like
the chicken hawks. He gets really angry at chicken hawks,
as he calls it. He says, I want people who
have had to deal with war deciding whether something's worth
sending troops over for. He'll support it, but he wants
to know that somebody in there has had to pull
a trigger. He's actually had to do the worst part.

(57:57):
He goes, because if you can stare that, if you
can stare into that abyss and you still believe this
is righteous, okay, but but you've got to you've got
to be able to have stared into that, it's not.
It's an interesting.

Speaker 4 (58:11):
Gentlemen, when when I was in Vietnam, we used to
talk all night about the war.

Speaker 3 (58:16):
But are we gonna talk? How much longer are we
gonna talk?

Speaker 1 (58:20):
We're about done here? Well, let me let me wrap
you all right, I'm gonna rap you this. This is great,
and let me wrap up right, But athbassador, I will
let you go. But let me let you go with
this question, which is the fall of Saigon, the leaving
Saigon and leaving Afghanistan? How similar? How different?

Speaker 4 (58:44):
I would say they're very similar in the sense that
we kind of just got tired of each of these
conflicts and couldn't figure out a sustainable way, uh to
leave those two countries.

Speaker 3 (58:59):
And I think there was a sustainable way.

Speaker 4 (59:02):
That would have not involved great cost for the United States,
but might have prevented a lot of misery.

Speaker 1 (59:11):
Yeah, well, I am happy to let you go if
you need to run, and I will ran. Let me
wrap up with you this way, which is, how do
you think that the seventy fifth anniversary of the fall US?
I got what does that retrospective look like?

Speaker 3 (59:30):
Right?

Speaker 1 (59:30):
With most of it, with all of the folks that
were involved with Vietnam no longer around. Really, it will
be people like you and I who are who are
in our seventies or eighties telling stories about our fathers.

Speaker 2 (59:45):
Yeah, this is the great human drama as it marches on, right,
I think that Vietnam is important to the lessons of
Vietnam are important to keep alive.

Speaker 3 (59:57):
You know.

Speaker 2 (59:57):
We tell these stories about what we've been through, and
hopefully history plays the role of helping us be better
educated about the decisions that we'll be facing in twenty
five years. And there are lots of decisions, and there
are lots of lessons to be learned from Vietnam. I mean, really,
these military lessons are profound, and Vietnam War forced this

(01:00:18):
incredible reckoning with our role in the world. Who are
we what sorts of interventions should we should we use
our military to intervene in? Where is it important to
take a stand and where is it and what are
all the corrupting factors that might play into those decisions.

(01:00:39):
I mean, this is something that we really need to understand.
We learned lessons from Vietnam, but as I think what
we've been saying here, you know, some of those lessons
were largely ignored, leading to similar repeat disasters in Afghanistan.
In Iraq. So the storytelling and the history history is important, right,
nothing is really the past.

Speaker 3 (01:00:59):
This is well.

Speaker 1 (01:01:00):
I found it interesting listen to what John said about
why were we we didn't want to pull another Munich?

Speaker 3 (01:01:07):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
What got us into Vietnam? We weren't going to do
another Munich? Right? Why are so many of us and
I consider myself somebody who's very supportive of doing everything
we can for Ukraine? Why are we doing that because
of the lesson of Munich and of those European lessons, right,
So you know you're right that in some ways there
are still lessons to be learned from World War two

(01:01:29):
and before World War two. Frankly, we haven't dealt with
the fall of the Ottoman Empire very well. But that's
a whole other that drives me crazy. I always joke
we resolved World War two. We never resolved World War One.
We're still dealing with the fallout of World War One
every day in the Middle East. But that's for another podcast, which.

Speaker 4 (01:01:47):
A little bit like the famous joke of Kissinger asking
Joe and Lai, the Prime Minister of China, what he
thought of the French Revolution, and Joe and la responded
it's too soon to tell.

Speaker 1 (01:02:00):
It's a great one, Ambassador. This was a treat. It
was great to get your perspective.

Speaker 3 (01:02:05):
I enjoyed talking, listening and talking to both well. I
always loved to talk to you.

Speaker 1 (01:02:10):
Yeah, no, and it was it was I actually think
we captured Brian right, this sort of debate right the
good and this is exactly I think what makes your
documentary brilliant is you do this. This is you bring
in voices that disagree, that sort of explain. When you
put it all together, you see how it all unfolded.
So thank you both. This was terrific than you.

Speaker 3 (01:02:33):
Really appreciate both of you.

Speaker 1 (01:02:42):
So I told you it was pretty lively, but back
and forth there and and I think John Negroponte, I
think it was a you know, there's there's sort of
a conventional wisdom about the war and the aftermath and
the politics of it, and he tried to challenge that
conventional wisdom, which I think made for a healthier conversation.
So I hope you appreciated that special edition. Uh, Like
I said, you know, we're gonna we're going to drop

(01:03:03):
these every now and then, especially when we think it's
it's you know, these these momentous occasions that we do
need to sometimes stop. Uh take you know, take our
temperature of where where things are, and look there's you
know we don't we don't. We don't teach enough history
these days, even though we've never had more documentaries available

(01:03:24):
to us. But in many ways, particularly in the in
the sort of fast pace of the of the news
cycle these days, sometimes we don't sit back and and
sort of uh sort of simmer if you will, in
a topic as as much as we should. Uh So,
I thought it was important to have this standalone. Hope

(01:03:46):
you appreciate it. Uh it uh So We're going to
skip any uh viewer questions for this episode, but of course,
if you've got some questions or comments about this episode
or anything else, you can drop them in the YouTube
comments section and drop them on our Instagram feeds anywhere
where we post on socials, or you can just simply
send an email to Aschuck at Thechuckcodcast dot com. So

(01:04:07):
with that, I'll see you Monday when we upload again.