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Speaker 1: Well, Happy Friday. That's right, I've snuck in a special

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Speaker 1: edition of the Chuck Todcast both of course in the

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Speaker 1: audio and visual space, my guests for this. It's a

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Speaker 1: special on the fitbook. We just passed the fiftieth anniversary

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Speaker 1: of the Fall of Saigon, essentially the end of the

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Speaker 1: Vietnam War. And look, Vietnam has sort of defined our

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Speaker 1: for half the country or anybody over the age of fifty,

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Speaker 1: Vietnam has been a definer of our politics. I mean,

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Speaker 1: I can just tell you about my own family. My

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Speaker 1: father will tell you he's no longer with us, but

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Speaker 1: he'll tell he would say to me, he's only the

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Speaker 1: reason he became a Republican is he blamed LBJ for

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Speaker 1: Vietnam and the death of his best friend. His best

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Speaker 1: friend died in a training accident after being drafted to

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Speaker 1: go into Vietnam. I'll you know, I'll never forget. When

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Speaker 1: I was going through my dad's things, he had a

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Speaker 1: whole file folder on every time he had to deal

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Speaker 1: with potentially going to Vietnam. And he didn't have to go,

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Speaker 1: and he didn't want to go. He had a medical deferment.

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Speaker 1: At first he had flat feet, and then when that

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Speaker 1: didn't work. He got lucky with his lottery number. But

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Speaker 1: what was interesting is how he had saved all of

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Speaker 1: it and he had all this information. And I'll tell

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Speaker 1: you why it had a huge impact on me. Anytime

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Speaker 1: any of these guys that have run for office over

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Speaker 1: the last twenty years, thirty years who claimed they couldn't

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Speaker 1: remember how they got out of Vietnam, or couldn't remember this,

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Speaker 1: or couldn't remember that. All I would remember is my

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Speaker 1: dad's file folder. And I'm like, if you were that

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Speaker 1: concerned about getting out of Vietnam, you knew every gosh

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Speaker 1: darn detail of how you got out or what was

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Speaker 1: going to take. And so I will tell you I've

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Speaker 1: always been a bit more of a harsher person on

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Speaker 1: any of these politicians that would you know. Look, I

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Speaker 1: don't begrudge anybody who tried to get out of it.

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Speaker 1: Just be honest that you were trying to get out

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Speaker 1: of it. Don't pretend that there was some other reason

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Speaker 1: that you got out of it. And it is those experiences.

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Speaker 1: In many ways, a lot of Baby boomers politics were

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Speaker 1: either defined or redefined by the impact of the Vietnam War.

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Speaker 1: So my guests today are Brian Knappenberger. He is the

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Speaker 1: man behind the terrific documentary that's all over Netflix right now.

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Speaker 1: Turning point about Vietnam and John Negroponte, who is of

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Speaker 1: course a longtime ambassador, mostly in Republican national security circles.

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Speaker 1: He was in Vietnam from sixty four to sixty eight.

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Speaker 1: He was there, and in this interview you'll hear I mean,

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Speaker 1: in many ways he kind of still supports the idea.

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Speaker 1: You know, he doesn't begrudge the idea of being there

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Speaker 1: and still believes there was a righteous cause for going.

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Speaker 1: So it's an important counterbalance in this conversation that you're

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Speaker 1: going to hear. But look, we get into that sort

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Speaker 1: of the whole how in many ways Vietnam is sort

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Speaker 1: of still haunting our politics today. You could argue Vietnam

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Speaker 1: plus the Iraq War coupled together, right, has now impacted

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Speaker 1: multiple generations and sort of impacted multiple presidencies and how

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Speaker 1: they manage national security and how we make these decisions.

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Speaker 1: So look, I think it's a no matter what age

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Speaker 1: group you belong to, I think you're going to enjoy

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Speaker 1: this conversation. And if you've seen turning point, then you'll

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Speaker 1: really enjoy this conversation as sort of an after action

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Speaker 1: type of conversation. So look, it's a special that I'm

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Speaker 1: dropping because it's kind of standalone. I don't want to

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Speaker 1: get any modern politics, you know, stuck to it here.

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Speaker 1: But it's I think it's it's a fascinating conversation and

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Speaker 1: I think you'll appreciate it. So enjoy this special extra

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Speaker 1: edition of the Chuck Podcast this week. Well, today we

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Speaker 1: have a special treat. As many historians and folks of

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Speaker 1: a certain gener a certain age may know, we're coming

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Speaker 1: up this is the fiftieth anniversary of the Fall of Saigon.

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Speaker 1: It's hard to believe Vietnam War, the Vietnam War is

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Speaker 1: that far in our past. For so many Americans, it

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Speaker 1: does not feel like something that is that far in

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Speaker 1: our past. And yet here I am in my fifties,

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Speaker 1: and I was born during the Vietnam War, and I

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Speaker 1: think one of my guests, Brian Nappenberger, was also born

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Speaker 1: during the Vietnam four We're also joined by a former

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Speaker 1: ambassador to Vietnam for the United States, John Negroponte, who

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Speaker 1: was ambassador who was in Sigon for four years sixty

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Speaker 1: four to sixty eight. So Brian Appenberger is the documentarian

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Speaker 1: behind a terrific five part series about the Vietnam War

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Speaker 1: on Netflix. By the time you're hearing this, I hope

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Speaker 1: you've already been watching at least one, possibly two episodes.

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Speaker 1: They're terrific, and it's an attempt to tackle the war

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Speaker 1: from all sorts of angles during the moment itself, the

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Speaker 1: cultural impact, the political impact. But I will shut up

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Speaker 1: here a minute. Brian, you describe what you're hoping people

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Speaker 1: get out of Turning Point and fifty years later as

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Speaker 1: an historian, where Vietnam was sort of you know, I

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Speaker 1: always felt like I was culturally and politically brought up

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Speaker 1: in response to the Vietnam War in my household. I'm

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Speaker 1: sure you felt that way too. We didn't experience it.

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Speaker 1: So I'm constantly consuming scholarship on Vietnam to just understand

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Speaker 1: how my dad's brain worked. And he's no longer with us,

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Speaker 1: but he was of that era. I have this distinct

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Speaker 1: memory after he died of finding this file folder. He

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Speaker 1: didn't have to go, but he had kept meticulous records

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Speaker 1: of all of his deferments, and then when his lottery

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Speaker 1: number happened to be high, everything it took he And

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Speaker 1: that's why I've never accepted a politician who says they're

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Speaker 1: not sure how they got out of Vietnam. I'm like,

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Speaker 1: oh yeah. My dad, who was no rich guy or anything.

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Speaker 1: He kept meticulous notes about his status. But for me,

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Speaker 1: it was all about not being there. That was always

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Speaker 1: the goal of people you were there, having not having

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Speaker 1: a gone. Or my uncle who immediately threw his uniform

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Speaker 1: away when he came back to the States after having

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Speaker 1: served and to this day doesn't like talking about it.

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Speaker 1: So what what what do you hope people take away

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Speaker 1: from Turning Points.

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Speaker 2: Well, it's you know, I had a very similar experience

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Speaker 2: to you in that, you know, my father was in

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Speaker 2: Vietnam when when I was born, and you know, through

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Speaker 2: my early childhood, I was trying to piece together what

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Speaker 2: that war was about and what it meant. And I

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Speaker 2: think that created creation of this series, you know, is

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Speaker 2: really about a belief that the Vietnam War had this

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Speaker 2: lasting impact on us, and that that's an impact that

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Speaker 2: we're very much still feeling that the America that existed

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Speaker 2: before the United States engaged militarily in Vietnam was just

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Speaker 2: a radically different country than the America that emerged after

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Speaker 2: our troops came home, and that America, that new America,

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Speaker 2: you know, really contain the roots of a lot of

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Speaker 2: what plagues our society today or is a part of

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Speaker 2: our society today. Widespread alienation, deep cynicism, this profound distrust

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Speaker 2: in government. That it seemed to show a kind of

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Speaker 2: breakdown in civic institutions, and it made us question our

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Speaker 2: role in the world. You know, how should the US

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Speaker 2: intervene militarily and international conflicts?

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Speaker 1: You know, the nineteen fifties in some way was almost

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Speaker 1: peak trust, right, there was like in some ways, at

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Speaker 1: least for certain Americans. I mean, I don't want to

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Speaker 1: sit here, and there was there was African Americans did

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Speaker 1: not have peak trust in the in the government in

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Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, I want to acknowledge that, but there

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Speaker 1: was a But among white Americans there was, there was

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Speaker 1: real trust of the government. Eisenhower was a hero. So

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Speaker 1: here here was the president that saved the you know,

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Speaker 1: the general that saved the world, who was America's president.

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Speaker 1: So that added to the level of trust. And then

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Speaker 1: just a rapid fire series of events, right the Kennedy

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Speaker 1: assassination escalation into Vietnam Watergate. I might add in the

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Speaker 1: the decision to pardon the draft dodgers, but I want

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Speaker 1: to get into that a little bit later. And in

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Speaker 1: some ways you're right it was sort of this the

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Speaker 1: cynicism of today, its roots are in are in this

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Speaker 1: decision to go to Vietnam.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so. I mean I think in your

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Speaker 2: intro you even mentioned that the war does not feel

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Speaker 2: like it's in our past, and it doesn't. And this

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Speaker 2: is this is one of the ways, I mean, you.

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Speaker 1: Get it hunted both Iraq wars. Yes, yeah, yeah, right,

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Speaker 1: like it haunted both Iraq wars, I'd argue, yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 3: Way, yeah.

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Speaker 2: And I think the Nixon example is interesting. I mean

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Speaker 2: you get into these deep, you know, divisions that it

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Speaker 2: exposes in America and those lessons of you know, here's

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Speaker 2: a president found to be backing a break in at

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Speaker 2: the offices of a political opponent, you know, actively lying

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Speaker 2: to the American people, this imperial president who said things

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Speaker 2: like if the president does it, that it's not illegal. Right,

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Speaker 2: he resigns in disgrace before he's impeached. But you know,

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Speaker 2: you can't help but draw parallels to our current political environment.

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Speaker 1: So what was I mean, you know, what I'm fascinated

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Speaker 1: with this documentary for you is that you've done documentaries

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Speaker 1: where you've lived the experience that you're making the history

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Speaker 1: about nine to eleven. Arguably in the Cold War, right,

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Speaker 1: this is something that you didn't really live, right, you

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Speaker 1: had to go back and understand it. Yeah, through what lens?

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Speaker 1: Do you feel like you made the Vietnam War this documentary?

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Speaker 3: Right?

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Speaker 1: Through what lens do you feel like you used to

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Speaker 1: make this documentary?

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Speaker 2: Yeah? I think it's I think it's you know, I've

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Speaker 2: heard so much about it and I think it does

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Speaker 2: go back to my father's servant servy there. I think,

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Speaker 2: you know, we it was hearing stories slowly over the year.

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Speaker 2: He was clearly somebody who fit into that category of

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Speaker 2: not really wanting to talk about it too much. It

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Speaker 2: would come out in these very sort of kind of

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Speaker 2: it was just as dramatic sort of ways. He would

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Speaker 2: sort of tell me a story or something. And so

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Speaker 2: you're you're in this, you're almost a solving a mystery.

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Speaker 2: What happened?

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Speaker 3: You know?

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Speaker 2: Why is there this much pain still for different people

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Speaker 2: around Vietnam? As you start to talk to other people,

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Speaker 2: Why is there so much uncertainty about it, and also

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Speaker 2: just what happened? What are the events of the war.

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Speaker 2: This is something I don't think most people really know.

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Speaker 1: I don't think we ever talked about the war itself.

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Speaker 1: It's always about the fallout of the war, right, It's

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Speaker 1: about what happened to those who couldn't didn't want to serve,

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Speaker 1: versus who were forced to serve. You're right, we don't

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Speaker 1: actually talk about what happened on the ground as much.

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Speaker 1: But I want to tap into something else you and

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Speaker 1: I both stumbled into. And I'll be very curious what

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Speaker 1: Ambassador Negroponte thinks of the following ways that both you

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Speaker 1: and I lived. Both of our fathers lived this experience.

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Speaker 1: My father's move from the Democratic Party of the Republican

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Speaker 1: Party was anger at LBJ over Vietnam. And look, personal

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Speaker 1: events always dictate these things. His best friend, my dad

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Speaker 1: had not the easiest childhood, and I'll just leave it

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Speaker 1: at that, but his best friend, that sort of was

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Speaker 1: his stabilizing force in childhood, got killed in a training

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Speaker 1: basically on his way to being Sentinam. He was drafted

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Speaker 1: and in the training mission died there. And you know,

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Speaker 1: I now realize my dad never got over losing him,

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Speaker 1: so for him, he blamed Johnson and it was it

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Speaker 1: was visceral. It was visceral. You said your father had

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Speaker 1: that same feeling towards Nixon, and it's like, I run

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Speaker 1: into this. You either are angry at Nixon or you're

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Speaker 1: angry at Johnson.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely, I mean this, this, this was And why does

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Speaker 2: the Vietnam War create such a deep it's such deep

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Speaker 2: feelings in everybody.

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Speaker 1: It is personalizing it, right, Yeah, I personalize it so much.

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Speaker 2: I think it's because both you know, people aren't lost

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Speaker 2: losses like your like your father experienced. This hit people

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Speaker 2: personally with people that they knew, friends, brothers. But it

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Speaker 2: was also something that's bigger, right, who are we as

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Speaker 2: a country? There was something about the Vietnam War that

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Speaker 2: shifted our identity of who we are and how we

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Speaker 2: related to the world and our presence and our kind

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Speaker 2: of leadership in the world. And that's the thing that

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Speaker 2: people have a hard time kind of dealing with and

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Speaker 2: struggle and have tried to answer since then, some of

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Speaker 2: the questions that came up. So I think it's both

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Speaker 2: things as a personal but it's also who are we

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Speaker 2: as a country?

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Speaker 1: Right? Ambassador. You're hearing this, and I know you've you've

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Speaker 1: gone through this so many times, but I'm fascinated to

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Speaker 1: know what you thought the war, what was going on

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Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty four when you were there, when, what

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Speaker 1: you were leaving when you left in sixty eight, and

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Speaker 1: what you feared you left.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: First, but let me say just a small correction, Chuck.

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Speaker 4: You said I'd been ambassador at Vietnam. I've been an

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Speaker 4: ambassador five times, but not to Vietnam.

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Speaker 3: And I got there when I got there when I

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Speaker 3: was twenty four years old.

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Speaker 4: When I got there in nineteen sixty four, after studying

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Speaker 4: Vietnamese in Washington for a number of months, we had

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Speaker 4: about at twenty thousand trainers, no people who were designated

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Speaker 4: as combat troops.

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Speaker 1: Let me back you up a match. You were mainly

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Speaker 1: a quick language school. Where were you working and what

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Speaker 1: was the what did you think your mission was that

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Speaker 1: you had to take?

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Speaker 4: Well, Line was a career Foreign Service officer and I

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Speaker 4: started my career in nineteen sixty nineteen sixty. A fall

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Speaker 4: of nineteen sixty, I'd had an assignment to Hong Kong.

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Speaker 4: I went back to Washington and they soon because things

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Speaker 4: were hoting up in Vietnam, asked me to take a

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Speaker 4: forty four week It wasn't so short, forty four week

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Speaker 4: language training courts.

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Speaker 3: I went out there to.

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Speaker 4: The political section of the US Embassy in Saigon as

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Speaker 4: a so called provincial reporter, and I did a lot

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Speaker 4: things like what a journalist would do. I was assigned

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Speaker 4: to cover six different provinces in South Vietnam. There was

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Speaker 4: forty two of them in all, six or seven. Now,

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Speaker 4: we go out every week. I'd collect information on the economic, political, diplomatic, security, military,

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Speaker 4: et cetera situation in the field that I'd come back

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Speaker 4: the next week and write up my reports, get my

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Speaker 4: laundry done and all of that.

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Speaker 3: We didn't have internet and all of that.

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Speaker 4: You know that, we didn't have very good telephones either,

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Speaker 4: so you had to actually physically come back to the

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Speaker 4: embassy and rite up telegrams and so forth.

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Speaker 3: So that's what I came to.

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Speaker 4: The North Vietnamese had not yet starting to to send

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Speaker 4: regular North Vietnamese Army troops into South Vietnam. I got

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Speaker 4: there in May of sixty four, the first time we

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Speaker 4: detected North Vietamese troops in South Vietnam as part of

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Speaker 4: their decision to escalate the situation in the South. Their

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Speaker 4: tactics so far had not succeeded in causing South Vietnam

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Speaker 4: to fall into their Communist hands, so they decided to

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Speaker 4: send their army and we.

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Speaker 3: Capt sued a couple of their people.

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Speaker 4: We are the Southamese military, actually in about June of

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Speaker 4: nineteen sixty four, and so that was the beginning of

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Speaker 4: the establishment of a large North Vietnamese presence in the South,

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Speaker 4: which at the end of the war in seventy five,

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Speaker 4: there was something like fourteen divisions of North Vietnamese troops

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Speaker 4: and stuff Vietnam. So what starts as a guerrilla war

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Speaker 4: ends up really as a conventional military defeat of Saigon

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Speaker 4: by the North Vietnamese army. So this stuff about it

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Speaker 4: being a guerrilla war, well, it was during a certain phase,

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Speaker 4: but basically the North Vietnamese were committing committed to throwing

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Speaker 4: whatever they had into it to achieve their ultimate objective,

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Speaker 4: which was the reunification of the country. Did you owe

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Speaker 4: I was there during that early stage of conten Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Did you owe view? It was the conventional wisdom at

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Speaker 1: the time among those people you reported to that essentially

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Speaker 1: we were in a proxy war with China or a

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Speaker 1: proxy war with the Soviets here or was it not

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Speaker 1: seen as that yet?

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Speaker 4: No, only was seen as part of the Cold War.

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Speaker 4: It was a regional conflict in a Cold War context.

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Speaker 4: And just like in Korea, where there had been a

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Speaker 4: dividing line between North and South Korea and became the

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Speaker 4: South Korea's defense, I think we saw it as a

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Speaker 4: way of dealing with a form of North Vietnamese aggression.

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Speaker 4: It got all bollocked up in the kind of politics

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Speaker 4: and psychology that the two of you were discussing earlier.

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Speaker 4: But I mean, I think initially we saw it as

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Speaker 4: a fairly straightforward situation that the guys, the people I

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Speaker 4: worked for, Henry Cabot, Lodge, Ellsworth Bunker, William Westmoreland General,

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Speaker 4: the commanding General, they had grown up in the nineteen

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Speaker 4: twenties and thirties. They saw this as sort of like

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Speaker 4: a Munich, like a you know, they're responding to no appeasementression.

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Speaker 1: Don't make that mistake, right, it does, boy, that's right fighting.

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Speaker 1: That's the old fighting the last war. So this is yeah,

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Speaker 1: caught fighting the last war.

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Speaker 4: Everybody is always fighting the last war. I mean that's

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Speaker 4: the way wars go. I think you guys overplay in

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Speaker 4: your discussion the lasting impact of Vietnam, because I think

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Speaker 4: we'd finally got We had what we called the Vietnam syndrome,

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Speaker 4: and for a number of years after that, and I

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Speaker 4: went on to many different jobs. In fact, I was

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Speaker 4: Henry Kissinger's victor for Vietnam when he negotiated the peace

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Speaker 4: agreement and h and I was with Bush and Reagan

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Speaker 4: and Bush later on, we sort of finally got over

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Speaker 4: the Vietnam syndrome, I would say, when Bush decided to,

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Speaker 4: you know, invade Panama and get rid of Norriega, replaced Norjega,

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Speaker 4: and then he went into the first Iraq War, right

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Speaker 4: the Kuwait War, And at that point I think we

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Speaker 4: had finally at least gotten over the aspect of the

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Speaker 4: Vietnam syndrome that said, don't send you that's true.

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Speaker 1: Do you think we actually it's It's interesting. I tend

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Speaker 1: to agree that we're probably over the Vietnam hangover when

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Speaker 1: it comes to the impact on our politics and the

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Speaker 1: military in fact, but I would argue that we're in

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Speaker 1: another one now, and it's the Iraq War. Like I

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Speaker 1: think the second Iraq war has probably had a last

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Speaker 1: has this impact on our psyche political psyche left and

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Speaker 1: right right now? That is very similar to what Vietnam

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Speaker 1: did to America in the seventies and eighties.

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Speaker 4: Well, I mean I had a lot to do with that.

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Speaker 4: I was at the UN when we passed resolutions. You

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Speaker 4: accept that, yes, I mean I think partially, partially, But

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Speaker 4: I want to identify another trend for you, which I

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Speaker 4: don't know whether you've considered. Is it what is it

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Speaker 4: about these conflicts that we get into them and then

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Speaker 4: after having you know, trained a whole generation of people

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Speaker 4: to fight the war, to learn the reason why to

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Speaker 4: be committed to the policy Vietnam.

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Speaker 3: Afghanistan and now potentially Ukraine.

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

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Speaker 4: No, no, and yet we still might pull the plug, right,

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Speaker 4: But what is it about this propensity that we have

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Speaker 4: to get into these conflicts but not be able to

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Speaker 4: think it far enough through to assure our own selves

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Speaker 4: that we're really going to stay the course. What kind

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Speaker 4: of friend are you, or an ally or a supporter

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Speaker 4: of somebody if halfway through the deal you decide to

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Speaker 4: pull the plug. I'm not denying the social consequences that

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Speaker 4: Vietnam had on people here in this country. But you know,

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Speaker 4: in terms of what we did to them, by the

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Speaker 4: time the peace talks were over in nineteen seventy two

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Speaker 4: and early seventy three, our exposure in Vietnam was very limited.

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Speaker 4: We had fifty thousand troops, not five hundred thousand, and

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Speaker 4: they were relegated entirely to support functions.

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Speaker 1: Describing the last year of Afghanistan. By the way, also,

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Speaker 1: I know, yes.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, but I mean that's the truth in Vietnam back

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Speaker 4: in seventy three. And yet I mean I was Kissinger's

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Speaker 4: man on Vietnam at that time. You know, they just

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Speaker 4: didn't want to go into the second administration. They didn't

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Speaker 4: want to go into the second administration in the second term,

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Speaker 4: as Henry used to say, reading battle field reports for

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Speaker 4: breakfast every morning. They just didn't want it. I mean

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Speaker 4: Nixon was tired. Yeah, I heard him say it to

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Speaker 4: Joe and Lie. We went out to see Joe and

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Speaker 4: Lyons June and with a month earlier, and it was

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Speaker 4: exactly that. Henry said, we don't want to be leading

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Speaker 4: battlefield and.

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Speaker 1: Mhm, I know, in the middle it was a good

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Speaker 1: your kissing your impersonation. I know it's mandatory, right if

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Speaker 1: you work for Hendry.

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Speaker 3: My favorite impression, My favorite.

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Speaker 1: Nugget about Henry's impersonation, about Henry's accent is that his

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Speaker 1: brother didn't have one.

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Speaker 3: Correct, and he was older.

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Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, it was intentional. Arnold. By the way, somebody

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Speaker 1: told me, Arnold Schwarzenegger can turn it on and off

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Speaker 1: to he was. Yeah, he's been. But Brian, let me

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Speaker 1: introduce the thesis to respond to the to the ambassador

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Speaker 1: on this. Yeah, it's called daily press coverage, daily news coverage. Something.

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Speaker 1: Korea was more controlled World War two even more controlled.

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Speaker 3: Right.

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Speaker 1: The first war that had no that had sort of

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Speaker 1: lost control of the media narrative was Vietnam, right, and

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Speaker 1: then arguably right. You know you saw this right in

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Speaker 1: the in the initial invasion of Iraq, there was an

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Speaker 1: attempt to manage media in ways within embedding of reporters.

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Speaker 1: But again, the daily battlefield reports is he just you

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Speaker 1: can't help but wonder how much daily media coverage has

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Speaker 1: made it harder in a small d democracy to fulfill

402
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Speaker 1: what the ambassador is saying, Right, Why is it so

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Speaker 1: hard for US policy, for US leaders to fulfill a policy,

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Speaker 1: you know, of sticking to the you know, sticking to

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Speaker 1: the friend in South Vietnam, sticking with the friend in Afghanistan,

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Speaker 1: sticking with the friends in Ukraine. Well, it's political pressure, right,

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Speaker 1: and it's one of the those things. Perhaps if Korea

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Speaker 1: had more less controlled media attention, that that doesn't have

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Speaker 1: the same that that ends up having a bigger impact.

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Speaker 1: I don't know what.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a great point. And we had in Psychon,

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Speaker 4: and we had great press people there. I'm talking about

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Speaker 4: both the correspondence. I'm you know, when you're a young

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Speaker 4: officer in the state, you befriend the press much more easily,

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Speaker 4: given you're willing.

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Speaker 3: You're always say so, we knew these.

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Speaker 4: Guys really well, you know, Johnny Apples of this world

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Speaker 4: and uh war just and so forth.

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Speaker 3: Uh.

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Speaker 4: But we had the five o'clock follies, that's what we

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Speaker 4: called it, the five o'clock press conference. Every gosh, John Day.

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Speaker 4: I used to say to myself exactly what yours? I said,

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Speaker 4: what are we doing spoon feeding these people?

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Speaker 1: So you couldn't have done it with d Day, right,

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Speaker 1: I mean you just could though, I mean I mean, so, Brian,

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Speaker 1: what do you think of that, and do you think

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Speaker 1: that that to fair? I mean, look, it is what

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Speaker 1: it is. Welcome to the you know, yeah war, this

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Speaker 1: war was televised.

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Speaker 2: I think that's a big part of the story of

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Speaker 2: Vietnam is the is this, you know, the Vietnam arrives

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Speaker 2: at a point in history where the technology of filmmaking

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Speaker 2: and the technology of image making and recording devices is

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Speaker 2: changing dramatically, even in the eleven years in which the

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Speaker 2: United States is there. You know, suddenly you have handheld

436
00:25:25,400 --> 00:25:30,400
Speaker 2: recording devices, handheld cameras, you have people with who are

437
00:25:30,400 --> 00:25:32,600
Speaker 2: able to get still cameras, and you know, just the

438
00:25:32,680 --> 00:25:36,359
Speaker 2: whole thing is is technologically at a place in which

439
00:25:36,520 --> 00:25:38,960
Speaker 2: which you can capture some of the events that are going.

440
00:25:38,800 --> 00:25:41,360
Speaker 4: And if I remember correctly, at the beginning, you had

441
00:25:41,400 --> 00:25:45,760
Speaker 4: to fly the tape back to the United States. Yeah right, right, yeah,

442
00:25:45,800 --> 00:25:48,000
Speaker 4: for your good broadcast. But I think by the end

443
00:25:48,040 --> 00:25:49,480
Speaker 4: that was no longer the case.

444
00:25:49,520 --> 00:25:50,679
Speaker 1: Satellite was just kicking in.

445
00:25:50,760 --> 00:25:51,480
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.

446
00:25:51,800 --> 00:25:53,520
Speaker 2: I mean, look, I think one of the people we

447
00:25:53,600 --> 00:25:56,639
Speaker 2: interviewed in the in the series is Dan Rather, you know,

448
00:25:56,720 --> 00:25:59,320
Speaker 2: and I think that there's a couple of things going on.

449
00:25:59,320 --> 00:26:02,919
Speaker 2: I mean, first of all, you you know, you do

450
00:26:03,080 --> 00:26:06,960
Speaker 2: have this technology that's bringing this into people's living rooms

451
00:26:07,000 --> 00:26:09,119
Speaker 2: in a way that's making it very very visceral for

452
00:26:09,200 --> 00:26:12,640
Speaker 2: people that that's making it connect and understand the war

453
00:26:12,640 --> 00:26:14,920
Speaker 2: in a way that they hadn't before, or at least

454
00:26:14,920 --> 00:26:18,680
Speaker 2: the brutality of it. But you know, you have a

455
00:26:18,720 --> 00:26:22,440
Speaker 2: generation of journalists that have basically cut their teeth in Vietnam.

456
00:26:23,240 --> 00:26:25,679
Speaker 2: Dan Rather is one of those, and he talks about

457
00:26:26,040 --> 00:26:29,320
Speaker 2: the you know, the emphasizes in the interview this role

458
00:26:29,359 --> 00:26:31,840
Speaker 2: of the press to kind of bear witness two events

459
00:26:32,800 --> 00:26:35,720
Speaker 2: and to report honestly and to speak truth to power.

460
00:26:35,800 --> 00:26:38,720
Speaker 2: And there's there's all sorts of examples of this. So

461
00:26:38,800 --> 00:26:42,720
Speaker 2: you know, morally Safer example is totally fascinating and it

462
00:26:42,760 --> 00:26:46,000
Speaker 2: feels just as relevant today as it does as it

463
00:26:46,040 --> 00:26:49,400
Speaker 2: did then. I mean this this idea that morally Safer,

464
00:26:49,680 --> 00:26:52,480
Speaker 2: this CBS News correspondent would go in and would find

465
00:26:52,480 --> 00:26:56,600
Speaker 2: out that American troops are burning these South Vietnamese villages,

466
00:26:56,960 --> 00:27:03,960
Speaker 2: taking zippo lighters to the dashed hutsmb.

467
00:27:01,640 --> 00:27:04,520
Speaker 4: I think that the trouble is when you catch one

468
00:27:04,560 --> 00:27:09,159
Speaker 4: of those incidents or whatever, it's sort of mushrooms into

469
00:27:09,280 --> 00:27:11,880
Speaker 4: being the whole story and it's.

470
00:27:11,720 --> 00:27:13,399
Speaker 3: Not the whole story, I promise you.

471
00:27:15,480 --> 00:27:18,000
Speaker 1: But there's your that's the problem, right, And this is

472
00:27:18,040 --> 00:27:21,879
Speaker 1: where one and you're right, the one symbolic. You know,

473
00:27:22,160 --> 00:27:26,080
Speaker 1: you may have one rogue platoon, but if it got

474
00:27:26,080 --> 00:27:27,120
Speaker 1: caught on camera.

475
00:27:27,440 --> 00:27:31,440
Speaker 4: Especially if it's well documented, absolutely, so what are you

476
00:27:31,600 --> 00:27:34,639
Speaker 4: doing in Iraq? You're embedding these people in the units.

477
00:27:34,680 --> 00:27:38,360
Speaker 4: It's like having a body camera on you, but you're

478
00:27:38,400 --> 00:27:41,400
Speaker 4: in combat, right, and they see everything you do.

479
00:27:43,640 --> 00:27:47,400
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I'm I'm I'm a believer that transparency

480
00:27:47,480 --> 00:27:49,280
Speaker 1: is better at the end of the day, but I

481
00:27:49,400 --> 00:27:54,840
Speaker 1: understand that it could become a problem when you're trying

482
00:27:54,840 --> 00:27:56,000
Speaker 1: to manage a median aerative.

483
00:27:57,119 --> 00:28:00,600
Speaker 4: Yeah, and when you're trying to put here's the issue,

484
00:28:00,680 --> 00:28:06,480
Speaker 4: how trying to put incident X into the context or

485
00:28:06,600 --> 00:28:10,320
Speaker 4: perspective of the entire conflict, And you know, then you

486
00:28:10,359 --> 00:28:13,560
Speaker 4: get into fairly subjective judgments. I agree, but you know,

487
00:28:14,200 --> 00:28:17,800
Speaker 4: you still have to make the judgment as to whether

488
00:28:17,920 --> 00:28:20,480
Speaker 4: or not it's the right thing for us to be

489
00:28:20,560 --> 00:28:21,480
Speaker 4: in that conflict.

490
00:28:21,760 --> 00:28:24,600
Speaker 1: All right, let me ask you this, ambassador. We lost

491
00:28:24,600 --> 00:28:26,560
Speaker 1: the Vietnam War but won the Cold War. What does

492
00:28:26,600 --> 00:28:28,560
Speaker 1: that tell us about whether Vietnam was worth it.

493
00:28:30,920 --> 00:28:34,360
Speaker 4: Well, maybe it tells you that these regional conflicts were

494
00:28:34,400 --> 00:28:38,440
Speaker 4: not as important as we thought they were. You could

495
00:28:38,480 --> 00:28:40,480
Speaker 4: make that argument, I guess. In other words, it may

496
00:28:40,520 --> 00:28:43,960
Speaker 4: not have had much to do with the downfall of

497
00:28:44,000 --> 00:28:47,479
Speaker 4: the Soviet Union. On the other hand, Afghanistan did have

498
00:28:47,560 --> 00:28:50,960
Speaker 4: something to do with the fall of the Soviet Union

499
00:28:51,000 --> 00:28:55,040
Speaker 4: because the Soviets were sick and tired of their occupation

500
00:28:55,880 --> 00:29:00,600
Speaker 4: of Afghanistan, and they came to us. In the late

501
00:29:00,720 --> 00:29:03,840
Speaker 4: nineteen eighties, I was on the National Security Council with

502
00:29:04,320 --> 00:29:06,400
Speaker 4: Colin Kow and they came to us and said, we

503
00:29:06,520 --> 00:29:11,200
Speaker 4: want to discuss withdrawal from Afghanistan. And I'm, being a

504
00:29:11,240 --> 00:29:15,520
Speaker 4: hardcore old warrior at the time, said Colan, don't believe him.

505
00:29:15,640 --> 00:29:18,680
Speaker 3: That's a trick. It's a trick. And his answer to

506
00:29:18,720 --> 00:29:21,920
Speaker 3: me was really good. He said, you know, John.

507
00:29:21,760 --> 00:29:25,080
Speaker 4: If you'd had as many beers as I've had with

508
00:29:25,280 --> 00:29:29,400
Speaker 4: Soviet generals and Soviet admirals, you would know they want.

509
00:29:29,240 --> 00:29:33,640
Speaker 3: To get the hell out of there. That's interesting, that's interesting.

510
00:29:34,000 --> 00:29:36,560
Speaker 1: How do you rectify that question, right, which is we

511
00:29:36,600 --> 00:29:39,480
Speaker 1: win the Cold War, but we lost Vietnam. Therefore was

512
00:29:39,600 --> 00:29:41,440
Speaker 1: Vietnam War that or not? Which has always been a

513
00:29:41,440 --> 00:29:43,640
Speaker 1: tough question for to deal with.

514
00:29:43,680 --> 00:29:46,600
Speaker 4: Beetle Well, I mean, I'm sorry we lost Vietnam, frankly,

515
00:29:47,520 --> 00:29:50,600
Speaker 4: and you know, I'm not in the school that thinks

516
00:29:50,640 --> 00:29:53,320
Speaker 4: it was a travesty, nor do I think it was

517
00:29:53,360 --> 00:29:58,880
Speaker 4: a great human rights situation. And because I knew all

518
00:29:58,920 --> 00:30:03,520
Speaker 4: those government officials, rands down down the village and province level,

519
00:30:03,560 --> 00:30:05,880
Speaker 4: I knew them all because of my experience as a

520
00:30:05,920 --> 00:30:06,880
Speaker 4: provincial reporter.

521
00:30:09,200 --> 00:30:12,480
Speaker 1: What's your assessment of why we lost a.

522
00:30:12,320 --> 00:30:15,400
Speaker 3: Loss of political will? I think that we got to the.

523
00:30:15,440 --> 00:30:19,280
Speaker 4: Point in the fall of nineteen seventy two where if

524
00:30:19,880 --> 00:30:24,840
Speaker 4: we had wanted to maintain a residual presence in South Vietnam,

525
00:30:25,720 --> 00:30:28,640
Speaker 4: with let's say, twenty five thousand troops and you know,

526
00:30:28,800 --> 00:30:36,160
Speaker 4: continued air support and some continued economic assistance, we might

527
00:30:36,200 --> 00:30:40,160
Speaker 4: have been able to pull that off. But I'm the

528
00:30:40,200 --> 00:30:45,040
Speaker 4: first to admit that the political atmosphere had become poisonous, right,

529
00:30:45,520 --> 00:30:49,200
Speaker 4: I mean, it was just it just became too hard.

530
00:30:49,240 --> 00:30:53,760
Speaker 4: We'd spent our political capital with most with many of

531
00:30:53,800 --> 00:30:55,600
Speaker 4: the American people, and certainly with.

532
00:30:57,080 --> 00:30:58,000
Speaker 3: The Congress.

533
00:30:58,640 --> 00:31:02,520
Speaker 2: Well, you know, you have a you have a population trying, trying,

534
00:31:02,560 --> 00:31:06,960
Speaker 2: struggling with why we're even in Vietnam in the first place, Well,

535
00:31:06,960 --> 00:31:09,480
Speaker 2: what is the goal? And you know, I think in

536
00:31:09,520 --> 00:31:12,040
Speaker 2: the very early days of Vietnam, back to the Cold War,

537
00:31:12,080 --> 00:31:16,800
Speaker 2: I mean, obviously discussion is so rooted in this Cold

538
00:31:16,880 --> 00:31:21,240
Speaker 2: War thinking that this stark idea that there's good and bad,

539
00:31:21,320 --> 00:31:23,200
Speaker 2: that the nation of the world, nations of the world

540
00:31:23,280 --> 00:31:26,480
Speaker 2: had to pick sides, could yeah, and.

541
00:31:26,320 --> 00:31:30,960
Speaker 4: Well not only that, but also that if Vietnam fell,

542
00:31:31,080 --> 00:31:34,640
Speaker 4: there was the danger that then the Vietnamese might go

543
00:31:34,680 --> 00:31:37,280
Speaker 4: on to other parts of Southeast Asia, which they in

544
00:31:37,320 --> 00:31:38,240
Speaker 4: fact did not do.

545
00:31:39,040 --> 00:31:39,240
Speaker 3: Right.

546
00:31:39,400 --> 00:31:43,520
Speaker 2: So when you when when you sort of think about this,

547
00:31:43,680 --> 00:31:46,560
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, you after eleven years of this

548
00:31:46,800 --> 00:31:49,640
Speaker 2: war and this doubts on the part of the American

549
00:31:49,680 --> 00:31:52,920
Speaker 2: public whether this was even a real concern or not

550
00:31:53,160 --> 00:31:56,480
Speaker 2: or and certainly as we know now, you know, going

551
00:31:56,520 --> 00:31:59,360
Speaker 2: through the series, you listen to these tape We listen

552
00:31:59,360 --> 00:32:02,200
Speaker 2: to hundreds in it hundreds of hours of these White

553
00:32:02,200 --> 00:32:05,640
Speaker 2: House recordings from all three the only three presidents to

554
00:32:05,720 --> 00:32:08,960
Speaker 2: really record themselves, right, Nixon, they that's not such a

555
00:32:09,000 --> 00:32:11,080
Speaker 2: good idea, but it listen to these time.

556
00:32:12,120 --> 00:32:15,440
Speaker 1: Just a quick aside, there's a great alternative history show,

557
00:32:17,440 --> 00:32:23,160
Speaker 1: the from the It's on Apple about going to Mars

558
00:32:23,200 --> 00:32:26,040
Speaker 1: and the space race and this alternative history that has

559
00:32:27,520 --> 00:32:30,640
Speaker 1: that has America losing the race to the moon, the

560
00:32:30,680 --> 00:32:32,480
Speaker 1: Soviets win the race of the Moon. How would America

561
00:32:32,480 --> 00:32:35,320
Speaker 1: react all this stuff? And one of the premises in

562
00:32:35,360 --> 00:32:38,680
Speaker 1: that is that Nixon only serves one term, not two,

563
00:32:39,080 --> 00:32:42,000
Speaker 1: and therefore the taping mechanisms never found out about. And

564
00:32:42,040 --> 00:32:44,920
Speaker 1: then we get like six more presidents and all of

565
00:32:44,960 --> 00:32:47,440
Speaker 1: these incredible tape recordings of all this. I mean, in

566
00:32:47,480 --> 00:32:53,080
Speaker 1: some ways that's Watergate ruined. Watergate ruined historian's ability to

567
00:32:53,160 --> 00:32:57,040
Speaker 1: have incredible firsthand knowledge of these presidents thinking, you know,

568
00:32:57,040 --> 00:32:57,920
Speaker 1: it's a bummer.

569
00:32:59,400 --> 00:33:02,560
Speaker 3: These guys. Yeah, you know why these guys did that.

570
00:33:03,680 --> 00:33:09,160
Speaker 4: I mean, I'm pretty certain that the recordings were was

571
00:33:09,200 --> 00:33:14,240
Speaker 4: in system was installed because both Kissinger and Nixon thought

572
00:33:14,440 --> 00:33:17,840
Speaker 4: it would help them better sell their books after.

573
00:33:18,840 --> 00:33:21,680
Speaker 3: Their term of off. I'm not kidding you. Oh, they

574
00:33:21,680 --> 00:33:22,080
Speaker 3: were both.

575
00:33:22,600 --> 00:33:26,120
Speaker 1: They both were that narcissistic. Sorry, I'll say it, you

576
00:33:26,160 --> 00:33:28,120
Speaker 1: don't have to. Yeah, they were. Yeah.

577
00:33:29,480 --> 00:33:31,160
Speaker 2: People in the series make the case that they just

578
00:33:31,200 --> 00:33:33,200
Speaker 2: sort of forgot after but you know, it just sort

579
00:33:33,200 --> 00:33:34,920
Speaker 2: of let it roll that they couldn't go out.

580
00:33:34,960 --> 00:33:39,640
Speaker 3: I mean, I think Luke nextor who you've probably read.

581
00:33:39,720 --> 00:33:42,960
Speaker 4: He did the book on the Nixon Tapes, which is

582
00:33:43,000 --> 00:33:48,520
Speaker 4: an excellent book, and it's a very revealing set of conversations.

583
00:33:48,760 --> 00:33:51,719
Speaker 2: The tool, I guess this is my main What I

584
00:33:51,760 --> 00:33:54,360
Speaker 2: was saying is that that when you listen to those

585
00:33:54,360 --> 00:33:57,880
Speaker 2: recordings over those three presidents, you understand a very candid

586
00:33:57,880 --> 00:34:00,320
Speaker 2: way how they felt about the war, and you can

587
00:34:00,640 --> 00:34:03,800
Speaker 2: so easily compare that to what's being said, you know,

588
00:34:04,320 --> 00:34:07,000
Speaker 2: in public about the war. And that major disconnect which

589
00:34:07,000 --> 00:34:11,080
Speaker 2: people started to understand late in the war is one

590
00:34:11,120 --> 00:34:15,600
Speaker 2: of those it's one of those poor changes in the

591
00:34:15,680 --> 00:34:17,600
Speaker 2: way we see what our government is doing.

592
00:34:17,600 --> 00:34:19,839
Speaker 1: And with oh, Brian and that completely agree. Look at

593
00:34:19,880 --> 00:34:21,920
Speaker 1: the boomers today. I always sit there and say, look

594
00:34:21,960 --> 00:34:25,160
Speaker 1: at the generation. Look at baby boomers today right there,

595
00:34:25,480 --> 00:34:27,080
Speaker 1: what is their coming of age moment?

596
00:34:27,160 --> 00:34:27,279
Speaker 3: Right?

597
00:34:27,320 --> 00:34:29,560
Speaker 1: It is Vietnam, It's the sixties and all of this.

598
00:34:30,120 --> 00:34:32,959
Speaker 1: And the more scholarship there is, the more they found

599
00:34:32,960 --> 00:34:36,040
Speaker 1: out their government didn't tell them the full truth about Yeah, okay,

600
00:34:36,120 --> 00:34:39,319
Speaker 1: clearly the CIA was doing something with Oswald. Why won't

601
00:34:39,360 --> 00:34:40,520
Speaker 1: you tell us the full story?

602
00:34:40,880 --> 00:34:41,040
Speaker 5: Right?

603
00:34:41,440 --> 00:34:44,319
Speaker 1: You go through all these things and guess what, it's

604
00:34:44,360 --> 00:34:47,600
Speaker 1: the boomers that are the ones questioning government and shaking

605
00:34:47,600 --> 00:34:51,280
Speaker 1: things up in some ways. The boomers keep getting elected president,

606
00:34:51,320 --> 00:34:54,600
Speaker 1: which is interesting to me. No Vietnam veteran though, has

607
00:34:54,640 --> 00:34:57,799
Speaker 1: ever gotten to the presidency, which is also I don't

608
00:34:57,800 --> 00:35:00,839
Speaker 1: think an accident, right, the Kerry got but the only,

609
00:35:01,160 --> 00:35:04,200
Speaker 1: the only better Vietnam vetteran even to get it get

610
00:35:04,239 --> 00:35:06,799
Speaker 1: that close, I guess McCain as well. But the fact

611
00:35:06,840 --> 00:35:09,360
Speaker 1: that we never elected, when I think culturally, is fairly

612
00:35:09,400 --> 00:35:10,839
Speaker 1: significant as well.

613
00:35:11,560 --> 00:35:13,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, well you have to ask what and this is

614
00:35:13,920 --> 00:35:15,800
Speaker 2: I guess back to what the ambassador was saying a

615
00:35:15,840 --> 00:35:18,799
Speaker 2: little bit. But you know, aren't aren't these the isn't

616
00:35:18,800 --> 00:35:21,120
Speaker 2: this the legacy of the Vietnam War that we're feeling

617
00:35:21,160 --> 00:35:24,440
Speaker 2: these lessons that were learned or not learned. You know,

618
00:35:24,560 --> 00:35:27,640
Speaker 2: a huge when you look at an event like January sixth,

619
00:35:28,160 --> 00:35:30,960
Speaker 2: you know a huge disproportionate number of people storming the

620
00:35:30,960 --> 00:35:35,000
Speaker 2: Capitol were military veterans. You know, it's a high percentage

621
00:35:35,000 --> 00:35:37,480
Speaker 2: of people. So and and I was struck, you know,

622
00:35:37,680 --> 00:35:41,000
Speaker 2: from Iraq and Afghanistan, but also from Vietnam. And I

623
00:35:41,000 --> 00:35:43,600
Speaker 2: was struck that there's you know, they were flying some

624
00:35:43,680 --> 00:35:47,240
Speaker 2: people were flying the now defunct flag of South Vietnam

625
00:35:47,800 --> 00:35:51,399
Speaker 2: on January sixth as people storm the Capitol. So as

626
00:35:51,440 --> 00:35:55,600
Speaker 2: you sort of a kind of unravel what that means, right,

627
00:35:56,000 --> 00:35:59,000
Speaker 2: you know, I think it's very much true that that

628
00:35:59,000 --> 00:36:02,320
Speaker 2: that legacy is we're still feeling the shadow of Vietnam.

629
00:36:02,680 --> 00:36:06,080
Speaker 3: But there are other lessons. Let me just say this.

630
00:36:07,920 --> 00:36:11,080
Speaker 4: You know, that's one angle, and particularly the impact on

631
00:36:11,160 --> 00:36:15,040
Speaker 4: the psyche of the American people and American politics.

632
00:36:15,040 --> 00:36:17,560
Speaker 3: But there's another aspect to this, which I think is

633
00:36:17,640 --> 00:36:18,240
Speaker 3: very important.

634
00:36:18,239 --> 00:36:21,080
Speaker 4: And I've happened to have been involved in about three

635
00:36:21,120 --> 00:36:23,640
Speaker 4: or four of these conflicts, so I have a basis

636
00:36:23,680 --> 00:36:28,960
Speaker 4: for comparison. There's also the issue of how we fought

637
00:36:29,280 --> 00:36:33,640
Speaker 4: the war, and I think it's important. First of all,

638
00:36:33,840 --> 00:36:40,760
Speaker 4: the draft was very unjust, and you got to acknowledge

639
00:36:40,840 --> 00:36:45,520
Speaker 4: that that contributed to a lot of bitterness about the

640
00:36:45,560 --> 00:36:47,400
Speaker 4: way the war was.

641
00:36:47,840 --> 00:36:50,439
Speaker 1: You had if you were had access to get out,

642
00:36:50,560 --> 00:36:52,000
Speaker 1: you got out, right.

643
00:36:52,040 --> 00:36:53,640
Speaker 3: We all got deferments right.

644
00:36:54,080 --> 00:36:58,640
Speaker 4: Second, so Creighton Abrams, you know LBJ thought about choosing

645
00:36:58,719 --> 00:37:02,680
Speaker 4: him in sixty four. If he'd chosen Abrams instead of Westmoreland,

646
00:37:03,360 --> 00:37:05,560
Speaker 4: we might have ended up in much less of a pickle.

647
00:37:05,640 --> 00:37:08,760
Speaker 4: But Westy just kept on asking for more and more troops.

648
00:37:09,120 --> 00:37:12,920
Speaker 4: Even after the Tet offensive, when the Yet Kong were

649
00:37:12,920 --> 00:37:15,600
Speaker 4: practically decimated, he goes and asks for two hundred and

650
00:37:15,640 --> 00:37:20,000
Speaker 4: six thousand more troops. I've always put forward the hypothetical,

651
00:37:20,080 --> 00:37:23,080
Speaker 4: what if instead west he had ridden the cable saying,

652
00:37:23,120 --> 00:37:26,920
Speaker 4: mister President, the Viet Kong have suffered a terrible defeat,

653
00:37:26,960 --> 00:37:30,080
Speaker 4: you could now safely withdraw two hundred thousand troops. It

654
00:37:30,160 --> 00:37:33,640
Speaker 4: might have turned around to psychology completely. I did a

655
00:37:33,680 --> 00:37:36,000
Speaker 4: review of it when I first got there. Colin Powell,

656
00:37:36,120 --> 00:37:38,560
Speaker 4: who was Secretary of State, asked me to do the review,

657
00:37:39,400 --> 00:37:41,680
Speaker 4: and I pointed out to Washington that there was no

658
00:37:41,800 --> 00:37:47,040
Speaker 4: money in there for building up the security forces of Iraq,

659
00:37:47,160 --> 00:37:51,960
Speaker 4: and I recommended reprogramming two billion dollars count them, two

660
00:37:52,040 --> 00:37:57,120
Speaker 4: billion dollars from that seventeen to training and equipping Iraqi forces,

661
00:37:57,160 --> 00:38:01,200
Speaker 4: and Washington accepted my recommendation. So I mean I at

662
00:38:01,320 --> 00:38:05,480
Speaker 4: least I applied a lesson I felt I had learned right.

663
00:38:05,680 --> 00:38:08,520
Speaker 4: And General Casey, who was the commanding general, we worked

664
00:38:08,600 --> 00:38:14,320
Speaker 4: very closely together and we got that done. And actually

665
00:38:14,480 --> 00:38:17,000
Speaker 4: Iraq is still it hasn't gone down the tubes. By

666
00:38:17,040 --> 00:38:20,640
Speaker 4: the way, even though people don't like what we did

667
00:38:20,719 --> 00:38:24,120
Speaker 4: in Iraq, I understand that, and it was a very

668
00:38:24,239 --> 00:38:30,239
Speaker 4: very debatable decision by President Bush. But it has not

669
00:38:30,520 --> 00:38:34,560
Speaker 4: ended up in the Iraq going down the drink.

670
00:38:34,960 --> 00:38:37,520
Speaker 1: Well, it's not yet in the sphere of influence of Iran, right,

671
00:38:37,560 --> 00:38:39,800
Speaker 1: which was the great fear that we were just liberating,

672
00:38:40,000 --> 00:38:42,600
Speaker 1: liberating Iraq in order to become a province of Iran.

673
00:38:42,719 --> 00:38:47,960
Speaker 4: Right, there's some danger still in that regard, but no,

674
00:38:48,080 --> 00:38:52,960
Speaker 4: I think we're a little better often then. Anyway, how

675
00:38:53,080 --> 00:38:55,720
Speaker 4: you fight these wars is another issue. I'm not saying

676
00:38:55,760 --> 00:38:59,879
Speaker 4: it's the primary issue, but you can learn lessons there too.

677
00:39:01,600 --> 00:39:04,960
Speaker 1: Ran I am fascinated by the sort of the post

678
00:39:05,080 --> 00:39:11,200
Speaker 1: Vietnam impact, right. My wife asked me this question recently,

679
00:39:11,600 --> 00:39:14,000
Speaker 1: and I had a thesis, and I'm curious of yours

680
00:39:14,200 --> 00:39:16,719
Speaker 1: if you agree in this that you know why how

681
00:39:16,760 --> 00:39:21,319
Speaker 1: did the military become a Republican constituency? And I go

682
00:39:21,520 --> 00:39:25,520
Speaker 1: back to Carter's decision to pardon the Draft Dodgers as

683
00:39:25,520 --> 00:39:27,279
Speaker 1: a as a line in the sand. I grew up

684
00:39:27,280 --> 00:39:30,040
Speaker 1: in Miami. The Bay of Pigs is a reason why

685
00:39:30,120 --> 00:39:32,560
Speaker 1: every Cuban today is still more likely to be a

686
00:39:32,640 --> 00:39:35,640
Speaker 1: Republican than a Democrat. They blame Kennedy for not going back.

687
00:39:35,960 --> 00:39:38,200
Speaker 1: They're angry at Kennedy to this day. You have exile.

688
00:39:38,280 --> 00:39:41,640
Speaker 1: So many Cubans were raised. Hey, don't trust the Democrats

689
00:39:41,640 --> 00:39:45,200
Speaker 1: on this. The Republicans have your back. Type of mindset

690
00:39:45,560 --> 00:39:47,560
Speaker 1: is that you do. We think the pardoning of the

691
00:39:47,600 --> 00:39:49,840
Speaker 1: draft Dodgers had that kind of impact politically.

692
00:39:52,160 --> 00:39:54,120
Speaker 3: I hadn't. I've not really thought of it.

693
00:39:54,200 --> 00:39:57,920
Speaker 1: I really haven't, Brian, what you're in dealing.

694
00:39:58,040 --> 00:40:01,839
Speaker 3: I mean, you were one of you was talking about

695
00:40:01,880 --> 00:40:05,960
Speaker 3: your migration from the Democratic to the Republican Party.

696
00:40:06,800 --> 00:40:13,120
Speaker 4: Mine was after the was Jimmy Carter, the failure with

697
00:40:13,200 --> 00:40:17,919
Speaker 4: regard to Iran and the fact that we were humiliated

698
00:40:18,000 --> 00:40:20,520
Speaker 4: by having these hostages helped for almost.

699
00:40:20,160 --> 00:40:23,640
Speaker 5: A year or whatever length of period it was the

700
00:40:23,719 --> 00:40:28,239
Speaker 5: year in a couple of months, and I that's why

701
00:40:28,239 --> 00:40:32,120
Speaker 5: I voted for Ronald Reagan in nineteen eighty and then remained.

702
00:40:31,800 --> 00:40:36,480
Speaker 4: A Republican after that. Yeah, oriented after that, although I

703
00:40:36,560 --> 00:40:41,319
Speaker 4: honestly believe, maybe naively, that politics should stop at the

704
00:40:41,320 --> 00:40:42,160
Speaker 4: water's edge.

705
00:40:42,360 --> 00:40:45,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, I bowed it at that too, Brian. What what

706
00:40:46,000 --> 00:40:48,439
Speaker 1: did you feel like you found during this documentary about

707
00:40:48,440 --> 00:40:50,120
Speaker 1: that question or about that issue in general.

708
00:40:50,360 --> 00:40:54,160
Speaker 2: Well, it's not something that it makes sense, I think

709
00:40:54,480 --> 00:40:59,160
Speaker 2: the it's not something that I heard a lot of

710
00:40:59,160 --> 00:41:01,920
Speaker 2: people talking about or you know, I.

711
00:41:02,200 --> 00:41:04,640
Speaker 1: Just know there's a lot of there's still older military veterans,

712
00:41:04,880 --> 00:41:07,200
Speaker 1: you know, still look at draft dodgers with skepticism. It's

713
00:41:07,200 --> 00:41:11,320
Speaker 1: why it was such a big deal with with Bill Clinton. Honestly,

714
00:41:11,520 --> 00:41:13,000
Speaker 1: I think it was a bigger deal for Bill Clinton

715
00:41:13,000 --> 00:41:14,920
Speaker 1: because he was a Democrat, and it was less of

716
00:41:14,920 --> 00:41:17,920
Speaker 1: a deal for Bush and Cheney because they were Republicans.

717
00:41:18,080 --> 00:41:20,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, and dan Quail and dan Quayle.

718
00:41:20,520 --> 00:41:22,160
Speaker 1: And Quail, but it was less of an issue on

719
00:41:22,200 --> 00:41:23,759
Speaker 1: the right than it was on the left because of that,

720
00:41:23,840 --> 00:41:25,600
Speaker 1: I think. But that's just the thesis.

721
00:41:25,960 --> 00:41:28,359
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that, you know, there's the veterans when

722
00:41:28,400 --> 00:41:31,239
Speaker 2: they came back, you know, it was it was a

723
00:41:31,320 --> 00:41:33,799
Speaker 2: very very difficult time, and you know, obviously a lot

724
00:41:33,840 --> 00:41:36,879
Speaker 2: has been there's a lot of work has been done

725
00:41:36,880 --> 00:41:39,480
Speaker 2: trying to understand the experience of veterans when they when

726
00:41:39,480 --> 00:41:43,960
Speaker 2: they came back from Vietnam. You know, they even my

727
00:41:44,080 --> 00:41:47,640
Speaker 2: dad said that he experienced the sort of baby killer

728
00:41:48,480 --> 00:41:52,360
Speaker 2: thing where where people were kind of who were maybe

729
00:41:52,440 --> 00:41:56,200
Speaker 2: rightly or had legitimate concerns about whether or not you

730
00:41:56,239 --> 00:41:59,400
Speaker 2: should be in Vietnam, may have may have been protesting it,

731
00:41:59,480 --> 00:42:01,680
Speaker 2: but also took out a lot of that anger on

732
00:42:01,840 --> 00:42:04,719
Speaker 2: people that were enlisted that you know that either enlisted

733
00:42:05,239 --> 00:42:08,000
Speaker 2: or were drafted, which are and these are people that

734
00:42:08,080 --> 00:42:10,040
Speaker 2: we asked as a country to go to war.

735
00:42:10,440 --> 00:42:12,239
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you want to talk about something, you

736
00:42:12,280 --> 00:42:15,640
Speaker 1: want to talk about something that I think culturally Americans

737
00:42:15,640 --> 00:42:20,040
Speaker 1: have learned is, you know, don't don't hold the infantry

738
00:42:20,080 --> 00:42:24,239
Speaker 1: men responsible for policy decisions. And to this day, look

739
00:42:24,280 --> 00:42:26,440
Speaker 1: at you know, every NAT's game I go to, we

740
00:42:26,480 --> 00:42:30,560
Speaker 1: wave the hats for the troops, right, because I think

741
00:42:30,600 --> 00:42:33,279
Speaker 1: we all realize that, you know, to go back to

742
00:42:33,320 --> 00:42:36,480
Speaker 1: what the ambassador said, that should stop at the water's edge, right,

743
00:42:36,640 --> 00:42:40,520
Speaker 1: can't blame those that either enlisted for a variety of

744
00:42:40,560 --> 00:42:44,719
Speaker 1: reasons or were drafted back then, you know, you can't

745
00:42:44,719 --> 00:42:46,520
Speaker 1: hold them responsible for policy choices.

746
00:42:47,200 --> 00:42:50,200
Speaker 4: And I mentioned one other issue because it shocked me

747
00:42:51,080 --> 00:42:52,040
Speaker 4: when I learned about it.

748
00:42:52,080 --> 00:42:53,040
Speaker 3: I left you.

749
00:42:54,120 --> 00:42:55,960
Speaker 4: As I mentioned, I was there three and a half

750
00:42:56,080 --> 00:42:59,360
Speaker 4: years and I ended up eventually going to Henry Kissinger's

751
00:42:59,440 --> 00:43:04,280
Speaker 4: Nationalecurity Council staff. And one time, I think in nineteen

752
00:43:04,360 --> 00:43:07,160
Speaker 4: seventy one or so, I went with General Haig, who

753
00:43:07,239 --> 00:43:12,440
Speaker 4: was Kissinger's deputy at the time, to Vietnam and I

754
00:43:12,600 --> 00:43:17,120
Speaker 4: visited one of our hospitals, Field Hospitals, and the doctor

755
00:43:17,200 --> 00:43:21,440
Speaker 4: sat me down and told me about the levels of

756
00:43:21,840 --> 00:43:26,399
Speaker 4: drug addiction of our troops and that some people were

757
00:43:26,520 --> 00:43:30,480
Speaker 4: using so many vials of heroin the day. And I mean,

758
00:43:31,480 --> 00:43:34,319
Speaker 4: it was a horror scene and that I don't think

759
00:43:34,400 --> 00:43:36,960
Speaker 4: had been the case at the beginning of our involvement,

760
00:43:37,080 --> 00:43:40,480
Speaker 4: But somehow drugs got into this whole picture. And I

761
00:43:40,480 --> 00:43:44,400
Speaker 4: think that happened to the Russians in Afghanistan as well.

762
00:43:44,719 --> 00:43:46,280
Speaker 3: And it's one.

763
00:43:46,120 --> 00:43:47,880
Speaker 1: Way in unstain. I mean, I hate to put it,

764
00:43:47,960 --> 00:43:50,520
Speaker 1: that was terms, but it's how it was.

765
00:43:50,520 --> 00:43:51,200
Speaker 3: A big issue.

766
00:43:51,280 --> 00:43:53,840
Speaker 4: It was a big issue, and you remember the Army

767
00:43:53,960 --> 00:43:58,920
Speaker 4: finally cleaned it up, but by cracking down very hard,

768
00:43:59,600 --> 00:44:01,800
Speaker 4: but only after we got out of Vietnam.

769
00:44:02,000 --> 00:44:04,799
Speaker 2: Yeah, you get a lot of this when you talk

770
00:44:04,840 --> 00:44:09,320
Speaker 2: to Vietnam veterans today. Obviously, they they did this sense

771
00:44:09,360 --> 00:44:12,920
Speaker 2: that there, you know that the Vietnam mission felt very

772
00:44:13,000 --> 00:44:15,719
Speaker 2: murky to them, that they didn't quite understand why they

773
00:44:15,760 --> 00:44:18,840
Speaker 2: were there, They were losing friends, and and that that

774
00:44:18,960 --> 00:44:22,319
Speaker 2: so many of them kind of turned to you know,

775
00:44:22,440 --> 00:44:27,600
Speaker 2: the marijuana heroin was obviously very plentiful. So many people

776
00:44:27,640 --> 00:44:30,080
Speaker 2: came back with these addictions. And so we talked to

777
00:44:30,120 --> 00:44:33,799
Speaker 2: a few of a few men who went through that

778
00:44:33,840 --> 00:44:37,719
Speaker 2: when they came back. So that combined with the the

779
00:44:37,800 --> 00:44:40,279
Speaker 2: sort of anger that some of them felt directed at

780
00:44:40,280 --> 00:44:42,919
Speaker 2: them for the war and a lack of a kind

781
00:44:42,920 --> 00:44:45,919
Speaker 2: of celebration of what of their service when they came back,

782
00:44:47,000 --> 00:44:49,760
Speaker 2: really caused a lot of problems for people. And of course,

783
00:44:49,800 --> 00:44:52,240
Speaker 2: as you know, we know this is where the studying

784
00:44:52,280 --> 00:44:55,360
Speaker 2: of this eventually, through lots of great work by a

785
00:44:55,400 --> 00:44:58,279
Speaker 2: lot of great people, that led to the diagnosis of PTSD.

786
00:44:58,360 --> 00:45:02,560
Speaker 2: And you know those this comes out of the Vietnam

787
00:45:02,560 --> 00:45:04,719
Speaker 2: War trying and I understand a lot of this.

788
00:45:05,320 --> 00:45:08,280
Speaker 3: How do you explain that this happened to the Vietnam

789
00:45:08,400 --> 00:45:10,320
Speaker 3: vets but less so to the other.

790
00:45:10,160 --> 00:45:12,719
Speaker 4: Ones who came back, like the ones who think, well,

791
00:45:12,800 --> 00:45:14,800
Speaker 4: I guess I puzzle over that.

792
00:45:15,360 --> 00:45:17,760
Speaker 1: Are you sure we didn't that we didn't have these issues.

793
00:45:18,640 --> 00:45:19,760
Speaker 1: I just think we're more aware.

794
00:45:20,200 --> 00:45:22,600
Speaker 4: No, no, or no, we have them, but we don't

795
00:45:22,600 --> 00:45:28,000
Speaker 4: treat We treat them more respectfully. I mean, I felt

796
00:45:28,040 --> 00:45:29,360
Speaker 4: I think the Vietnam.

797
00:45:29,040 --> 00:45:32,200
Speaker 3: Vets felt they were not treated with right and.

798
00:45:32,160 --> 00:45:34,839
Speaker 1: I think that's why we treat the Iraq and Afghanistan

799
00:45:34,920 --> 00:45:36,399
Speaker 1: veterans with a lot more respect at least.

800
00:45:36,440 --> 00:45:38,640
Speaker 3: So that's one of the lessons we learned is.

801
00:45:38,760 --> 00:45:42,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, when in a war we won, Brian, right, there

802
00:45:42,480 --> 00:45:44,680
Speaker 1: were plenty of World War two veterans that did come

803
00:45:44,719 --> 00:45:47,920
Speaker 1: back with these same issues, but in some ways that

804
00:45:48,000 --> 00:45:50,640
Speaker 1: got less attention. Part of that is just generational, right,

805
00:45:51,040 --> 00:45:53,200
Speaker 1: men didn't talk about those things. A little bit of that.

806
00:45:53,600 --> 00:45:55,680
Speaker 1: But but but some of it also had to do

807
00:45:55,760 --> 00:46:02,319
Speaker 1: with we just didn't because we won, We didn't look

808
00:46:02,360 --> 00:46:03,160
Speaker 1: backwards as much.

809
00:46:03,760 --> 00:46:05,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe I think that's maybe true.

810
00:46:05,800 --> 00:46:10,000
Speaker 4: Yeah, Well, then we don't do drugs very well anyway, right,

811
00:46:10,200 --> 00:46:13,840
Speaker 4: we don't do we don't deal with the addiction in

812
00:46:14,000 --> 00:46:16,200
Speaker 4: our society very well.

813
00:46:16,600 --> 00:46:17,640
Speaker 3: Is that a fair statement?

814
00:46:18,440 --> 00:46:21,160
Speaker 1: It's true. We don't know, because we we I think

815
00:46:21,200 --> 00:46:23,000
Speaker 1: we know dealing with it as a crime is a

816
00:46:23,040 --> 00:46:25,560
Speaker 1: bad idea. We have figured we kind of have figured

817
00:46:25,560 --> 00:46:28,160
Speaker 1: that out sort of, and then we still end up

818
00:46:28,200 --> 00:46:31,080
Speaker 1: dealing with it like a law enforcement issue when ultimately

819
00:46:31,160 --> 00:46:33,520
Speaker 1: it's a. It clearly is a mental health challenge, but

820
00:46:33,920 --> 00:46:35,520
Speaker 1: we still don't know how to do mental health.

821
00:46:35,880 --> 00:46:37,320
Speaker 3: Yeah, we don't know.

822
00:46:37,640 --> 00:46:42,160
Speaker 1: But Brian, get take me through more of the five.

823
00:46:42,280 --> 00:46:43,960
Speaker 1: You know, how much of this is about the war

824
00:46:44,000 --> 00:46:47,040
Speaker 1: itself and the policy debates during the war. How much

825
00:46:47,120 --> 00:46:48,960
Speaker 1: is it about the cultural impact.

826
00:46:48,600 --> 00:46:49,160
Speaker 3: Down the line?

827
00:46:49,160 --> 00:46:51,000
Speaker 1: How would you say you split your time on that?

828
00:46:51,360 --> 00:46:53,919
Speaker 2: Well, we tried to try to do both of those

829
00:46:54,040 --> 00:46:57,200
Speaker 2: things justice, you know, one of the we did focus

830
00:46:57,320 --> 00:47:00,319
Speaker 2: quite a bit on presidents and decisions of administrations and

831
00:47:00,360 --> 00:47:03,839
Speaker 2: how those ripple effects affected real people on the ground.

832
00:47:03,920 --> 00:47:05,760
Speaker 2: But you know, I think we also tried to get

833
00:47:06,960 --> 00:47:10,399
Speaker 2: just a range a range of voices in this as well.

834
00:47:10,480 --> 00:47:14,239
Speaker 2: So you know, some often the events of this war

835
00:47:14,360 --> 00:47:18,920
Speaker 2: told from the American perspective only, so you know, you know,

836
00:47:19,080 --> 00:47:20,960
Speaker 2: in Vietnam, this was a civil war as much as

837
00:47:21,000 --> 00:47:25,040
Speaker 2: anything else, and so you know, the understanding of these

838
00:47:25,040 --> 00:47:27,600
Speaker 2: events can't be separated from the fact that there are

839
00:47:27,640 --> 00:47:29,920
Speaker 2: these two different parts of the country, very different visions

840
00:47:29,920 --> 00:47:33,480
Speaker 2: for what their future might look like. So we tried

841
00:47:33,560 --> 00:47:36,600
Speaker 2: We talked to viet Cong obviously, we talked to people

842
00:47:37,000 --> 00:47:39,680
Speaker 2: from the South. We had talked from people to people

843
00:47:40,080 --> 00:47:42,960
Speaker 2: who fought for the North to try to get as

844
00:47:43,040 --> 00:47:46,560
Speaker 2: much of a kind of full range of perspectives as

845
00:47:46,600 --> 00:47:46,959
Speaker 2: we could.

846
00:47:47,480 --> 00:47:49,640
Speaker 1: So now I found that I assume you've been to

847
00:47:49,680 --> 00:47:54,200
Speaker 1: this show on Max that's about sort of Vietnam but

848
00:47:54,239 --> 00:47:57,440
Speaker 1: from the perspective of the North. Yeah, I actually have

849
00:47:57,520 --> 00:48:00,840
Speaker 1: a lot of a satire. It's it was an interesting

850
00:48:00,880 --> 00:48:01,960
Speaker 1: I can't remember the name of it.

851
00:48:02,719 --> 00:48:03,239
Speaker 3: You're talking about.

852
00:48:04,040 --> 00:48:09,480
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes, yes, boy, ambassador. I'm curious if you

853
00:48:09,960 --> 00:48:13,239
Speaker 1: if anybody's talked to you into watching this TV show

854
00:48:13,239 --> 00:48:16,120
Speaker 1: called The Sympathizer, which was a bit more from the

855
00:48:16,160 --> 00:48:18,520
Speaker 1: perspective of the North than the South.

856
00:48:20,440 --> 00:48:22,560
Speaker 3: No, I I've not seen it, but I just made

857
00:48:22,560 --> 00:48:23,040
Speaker 3: a note of it.

858
00:48:23,480 --> 00:48:27,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's sort of dark, dark satire. You know,

859
00:48:27,080 --> 00:48:30,279
Speaker 1: it's serious, but there's some satire to it. But I

860
00:48:30,400 --> 00:48:34,799
Speaker 1: found that, Brian so necessary. Right, We just don't you know,

861
00:48:34,880 --> 00:48:37,560
Speaker 1: when you you got to understand what it's just like

862
00:48:37,560 --> 00:48:39,520
Speaker 1: with World War Two, we're all trying to figure out

863
00:48:39,760 --> 00:48:42,839
Speaker 1: we're all Germans Nazis or was the you know, and

864
00:48:42,880 --> 00:48:45,279
Speaker 1: we know all Germans weren't Nazis, right, it was sort

865
00:48:45,320 --> 00:48:48,719
Speaker 1: of sometimes that happens and not all you know, and

866
00:48:48,800 --> 00:48:53,840
Speaker 1: getting that perspective. You know, obviously uh is helpful. But

867
00:48:53,880 --> 00:48:56,640
Speaker 1: as a civil war, when did Vietnam recover from this

868
00:48:56,719 --> 00:48:57,239
Speaker 1: civil war?

869
00:48:57,320 --> 00:48:57,440
Speaker 3: Right?

870
00:48:57,520 --> 00:49:01,399
Speaker 1: Arguably it took America maybe you know, World War two

871
00:49:01,640 --> 00:49:03,799
Speaker 1: before we've you know, or the Civil Rights Act before

872
00:49:03,840 --> 00:49:06,640
Speaker 1: we fully recovered from our civil war, depending on how

873
00:49:06,680 --> 00:49:08,000
Speaker 1: you want to look at it. When when do we

874
00:49:08,000 --> 00:49:10,120
Speaker 1: feel like the Vietnamese recovered from that civil war?

875
00:49:11,000 --> 00:49:12,600
Speaker 2: Ah, wow, that's a great question.

876
00:49:12,680 --> 00:49:13,080
Speaker 4: The the.

877
00:49:15,080 --> 00:49:18,040
Speaker 2: You know, I think you know, obviously, the Vietnam War

878
00:49:18,080 --> 00:49:21,520
Speaker 2: itself opened up wounds in Campodia and other things that

879
00:49:21,600 --> 00:49:24,279
Speaker 2: took a long, very long time in order to play out,

880
00:49:25,000 --> 00:49:29,520
Speaker 2: and lots of people, you know, over the years after

881
00:49:30,120 --> 00:49:34,120
Speaker 2: the fall of Saigon still tried to escape and tried

882
00:49:34,160 --> 00:49:37,760
Speaker 2: to leave Vietnam so and tried to you know, people

883
00:49:37,800 --> 00:49:40,480
Speaker 2: that felt persecuted, people that were in re education camps.

884
00:49:40,760 --> 00:49:42,960
Speaker 2: You know, this war lasted a very long time for

885
00:49:43,040 --> 00:49:45,239
Speaker 2: those people. And of course, you know a lot of

886
00:49:45,280 --> 00:49:49,879
Speaker 2: people from from the South became refugees in the United

887
00:49:49,920 --> 00:49:53,359
Speaker 2: States and the war. I mean, if you talk to them,

888
00:49:53,360 --> 00:49:55,040
Speaker 2: a lot of them are in the series, a lot

889
00:49:55,080 --> 00:49:58,040
Speaker 2: if you talk to them, you know, it's still very

890
00:49:58,160 --> 00:50:01,839
Speaker 2: very raw for them. As well, so, you know, it's

891
00:50:01,880 --> 00:50:04,160
Speaker 2: a tough question to answer. I think, you know, the

892
00:50:05,719 --> 00:50:10,720
Speaker 2: you know Vietnam has you know, is economically done, well,

893
00:50:10,840 --> 00:50:12,960
Speaker 2: it's done, you know, it's it's come to terms with

894
00:50:13,920 --> 00:50:18,000
Speaker 2: some of its past in a lot of ways. I think,

895
00:50:18,520 --> 00:50:20,440
Speaker 2: you know, there's been some there's been some kind of

896
00:50:21,200 --> 00:50:23,680
Speaker 2: shifts recently with Trump and tariffs and all of that,

897
00:50:23,719 --> 00:50:26,680
Speaker 2: but it's been a very very close trading partner. They've

898
00:50:26,680 --> 00:50:30,399
Speaker 2: worked very closely with the United States to look for

899
00:50:31,239 --> 00:50:34,520
Speaker 2: remains of the soldiers that were missing over the years,

900
00:50:34,680 --> 00:50:41,120
Speaker 2: and so that relationship has has improved significantly. But you know,

901
00:50:41,160 --> 00:50:43,919
Speaker 2: in the in the hearts of people, especially people who

902
00:50:43,920 --> 00:50:49,720
Speaker 2: were left their homeland, and would you know that this

903
00:50:49,719 --> 00:50:52,680
Speaker 2: this war is still very much kind of raw for them.

904
00:50:52,719 --> 00:50:59,279
Speaker 4: Still many of them left twice m because they left

905
00:50:59,320 --> 00:51:03,680
Speaker 4: North Vietnam after the Geneva Agreements of nineteen fifty four,

906
00:51:03,800 --> 00:51:06,400
Speaker 4: there was a transfer of a million people to the South,

907
00:51:07,320 --> 00:51:09,799
Speaker 4: and then many of those same people then or their

908
00:51:09,840 --> 00:51:15,440
Speaker 4: descendants came to the United States. But I'll give John

909
00:51:15,520 --> 00:51:21,200
Speaker 4: McCain and others great credit for despite having fought the

910
00:51:21,239 --> 00:51:24,840
Speaker 4: war and despite having been actually there were a couple

911
00:51:24,840 --> 00:51:27,919
Speaker 4: of the prisoners of war. McCain and the fellow also

912
00:51:27,960 --> 00:51:32,400
Speaker 4: who was the first ambassador to Vietnam, to the unified Vietnam,

913
00:51:32,920 --> 00:51:35,960
Speaker 4: they wanted to reopen, relate. They didn't want to keep

914
00:51:36,000 --> 00:51:36,880
Speaker 4: the grudge forever.

915
00:51:37,160 --> 00:51:38,000
Speaker 3: And I think they're right.

916
00:51:38,040 --> 00:51:38,560
Speaker 1: You know, when the.

917
00:51:38,560 --> 00:51:39,600
Speaker 3: War is over, it's over.

918
00:51:39,719 --> 00:51:42,600
Speaker 4: You got to you got to try to rebuild a

919
00:51:42,680 --> 00:51:44,600
Speaker 4: relationship of some kind. And I think we've done a

920
00:51:44,640 --> 00:51:47,759
Speaker 4: pretty good job at that with today's Vietnam, even though

921
00:51:47,800 --> 00:51:50,359
Speaker 4: we don't agree with it all of their politics, right,

922
00:51:50,440 --> 00:51:54,720
Speaker 4: I mean, I think it's and I think John McCain

923
00:51:54,760 --> 00:51:59,960
Speaker 4: and others who advocated for the relationship deserve our gratitude

924
00:52:00,080 --> 00:52:01,719
Speaker 4: for having done that, because you know, we could have

925
00:52:01,880 --> 00:52:04,560
Speaker 4: kept the grudge for even longer, and that would not

926
00:52:04,640 --> 00:52:05,160
Speaker 4: have been good.

927
00:52:06,640 --> 00:52:08,319
Speaker 1: Brian, what do you make of the fact that we're

928
00:52:08,360 --> 00:52:17,279
Speaker 1: gonna we have one, two, three four. I'm sort of

929
00:52:17,320 --> 00:52:20,160
Speaker 1: on the fence about whether Obama counts as a baby

930
00:52:20,200 --> 00:52:22,759
Speaker 1: boomer president or not because he never turned he wasn't

931
00:52:22,800 --> 00:52:24,680
Speaker 1: eighteen during the Vietnam War. To me, if you were

932
00:52:24,719 --> 00:52:27,080
Speaker 1: eighteen during the Vietnam War at any point in time

933
00:52:27,239 --> 00:52:30,520
Speaker 1: in that tenure period, then then you're part of that era.

934
00:52:30,640 --> 00:52:36,120
Speaker 1: But We've had four baby Boomer presidents, but not one

935
00:52:36,160 --> 00:52:37,080
Speaker 1: as a Vietnam veteran.

936
00:52:38,760 --> 00:52:40,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know what you what you make of that,

937
00:52:40,640 --> 00:52:41,920
Speaker 2: And even some of.

938
00:52:41,880 --> 00:52:44,000
Speaker 1: That wasn't true with our World War Two veterans. Right,

939
00:52:44,080 --> 00:52:46,120
Speaker 1: We've got a lot of presidents out of World War Two,

940
00:52:46,280 --> 00:52:49,520
Speaker 1: starting with Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson. I mean, all these guys

941
00:52:49,600 --> 00:52:53,760
Speaker 1: fought World War Two, yeah, Bush, You know, only Reagan

942
00:52:54,200 --> 00:52:59,000
Speaker 1: was of that era and didn't he was sort of right,

943
00:52:59,320 --> 00:53:00,400
Speaker 1: he was doing his work.

944
00:53:03,440 --> 00:53:03,640
Speaker 3: Right.

945
00:53:03,760 --> 00:53:07,200
Speaker 1: Well, you know, some would say he was helping, that's

946
00:53:07,320 --> 00:53:08,960
Speaker 1: one way to help with the effort, but the boy

947
00:53:09,200 --> 00:53:12,520
Speaker 1: was he was actually an outlier of his generation, where

948
00:53:12,719 --> 00:53:14,799
Speaker 1: we don't even have the outlier of our of that

949
00:53:14,880 --> 00:53:16,120
Speaker 1: Vietnam generation. Brian.

950
00:53:16,600 --> 00:53:20,200
Speaker 2: I think it points directly to the complicated relationship and

951
00:53:20,320 --> 00:53:23,399
Speaker 2: nature that we have with this war and how much

952
00:53:23,440 --> 00:53:25,840
Speaker 2: it really exposed and how much we're still kind of

953
00:53:25,840 --> 00:53:28,680
Speaker 2: dealing with it. We don't. It's not an easy war

954
00:53:28,760 --> 00:53:30,799
Speaker 2: to to think about it. It's not an easy war

955
00:53:30,880 --> 00:53:33,759
Speaker 2: to try to understand the impact and the legacy that

956
00:53:33,840 --> 00:53:37,160
Speaker 2: it has had on us. But you're absolutely right, of course,

957
00:53:37,239 --> 00:53:42,279
Speaker 2: I mean World War Two gave us heroes that became presidents.

958
00:53:42,880 --> 00:53:45,680
Speaker 1: And build our United States. Congress just filled it. And

959
00:53:45,680 --> 00:53:49,239
Speaker 1: in fact, those those bipartisan groups were really important to

960
00:53:49,360 --> 00:53:52,600
Speaker 1: keeping us on the rails. I mean I've always thought that,

961
00:53:52,640 --> 00:53:55,600
Speaker 1: and in fact, the lack of Vietnam veterans now in

962
00:53:56,080 --> 00:53:59,000
Speaker 1: the US Senate is you know they that was a

963
00:53:59,000 --> 00:54:02,400
Speaker 1: bipartisan team. Your Bobkerry or Chuck Hagel, your John Kerry

964
00:54:02,520 --> 00:54:05,880
Speaker 1: or John McCain. You know, they would band together and

965
00:54:06,160 --> 00:54:11,120
Speaker 1: it would help create some bonds. And perhaps Iraq creates

966
00:54:11,160 --> 00:54:13,720
Speaker 1: that in another ten or fifteen years as that generation

967
00:54:13,840 --> 00:54:17,799
Speaker 1: matures and take some leadership. But I don't know, you know,

968
00:54:17,840 --> 00:54:20,560
Speaker 1: it might, yeah, it might. Yeah, I think you're right.

969
00:54:21,480 --> 00:54:24,520
Speaker 4: I mean when I most of my career, which ended

970
00:54:24,600 --> 00:54:27,000
Speaker 4: up being forty four years, but in the early part

971
00:54:27,120 --> 00:54:29,840
Speaker 4: of my career, I mean I always went up to

972
00:54:29,880 --> 00:54:32,640
Speaker 4: Capitol Hill a lot from the State Department. I mean,

973
00:54:32,760 --> 00:54:34,960
Speaker 4: in the beginning, you could count on these World War

974
00:54:35,000 --> 00:54:39,160
Speaker 4: Two veterans to carry forward our nationals.

975
00:54:39,200 --> 00:54:43,160
Speaker 1: Bob doing dan in away here there you go, right right,

976
00:54:43,560 --> 00:54:47,920
Speaker 1: They were in the same hospital together, you know, they bonded,

977
00:54:48,080 --> 00:54:49,480
Speaker 1: you know, and that that mattered.

978
00:54:50,000 --> 00:54:52,719
Speaker 3: Yep, yep, And that's a big loss.

979
00:54:52,960 --> 00:54:55,000
Speaker 4: I think you're right about Iraq, although I don't know

980
00:54:55,000 --> 00:54:59,040
Speaker 4: if there are enough of them in the Yeah, I'm

981
00:54:59,080 --> 00:55:02,319
Speaker 4: not sure, not yet, but they are they could be.

982
00:55:02,719 --> 00:55:06,399
Speaker 1: And it is interesting, Brian, for all the think about

983
00:55:06,440 --> 00:55:09,680
Speaker 1: what's happened to the Vietnam vets, and yet think about

984
00:55:09,680 --> 00:55:13,600
Speaker 1: the one government institution that still has bipartisan support in

985
00:55:13,680 --> 00:55:17,960
Speaker 1: the country. It's the military. And I don't think following

986
00:55:18,040 --> 00:55:23,279
Speaker 1: Vietnam culturally, one would have expected that, right.

987
00:55:23,760 --> 00:55:26,879
Speaker 4: That's why I would add one thing, And I saw

988
00:55:26,920 --> 00:55:30,200
Speaker 4: it in Iraq. I saw it myself with my own eyes,

989
00:55:32,400 --> 00:55:36,839
Speaker 4: the competence of our military. They have become so proficient

990
00:55:37,840 --> 00:55:41,560
Speaker 4: in what they do. I mean, I think of them

991
00:55:41,560 --> 00:55:44,800
Speaker 4: as a class of people amongst the best educated people

992
00:55:44,840 --> 00:55:45,600
Speaker 4: in our country.

993
00:55:45,840 --> 00:55:47,560
Speaker 1: What do you think volunteer army is better than a

994
00:55:47,600 --> 00:55:49,640
Speaker 1: drafted army? And do you think that's the reason.

995
00:55:50,960 --> 00:55:52,719
Speaker 3: I'm not so sure that. Yeah.

996
00:55:54,040 --> 00:55:56,239
Speaker 1: I do think shared sacrifice is something we're missing as

997
00:55:56,239 --> 00:55:57,759
Speaker 1: a country. But Brian, I want you to tackle that

998
00:55:57,840 --> 00:55:58,640
Speaker 1: question too, please.

999
00:55:58,880 --> 00:56:01,719
Speaker 2: Well, I for for a half feat when you were

1000
00:56:01,719 --> 00:56:03,399
Speaker 2: asking that question, I thought you were going to talk

1001
00:56:03,400 --> 00:56:06,920
Speaker 2: about the VA. The VA is uh you know, has

1002
00:56:07,000 --> 00:56:10,160
Speaker 2: been has been a source of controversy and uh, but

1003
00:56:10,200 --> 00:56:10,719
Speaker 2: it was created.

1004
00:56:10,760 --> 00:56:13,160
Speaker 1: The VA was created in some ways as a response

1005
00:56:13,280 --> 00:56:16,600
Speaker 1: to distrust by by soldiers of the Pentagon, right, yes,

1006
00:56:16,640 --> 00:56:17,360
Speaker 1: that's why we have it.

1007
00:56:17,480 --> 00:56:17,680
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1008
00:56:17,840 --> 00:56:20,319
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's looking like it's getting good here. I don't

1009
00:56:20,360 --> 00:56:23,480
Speaker 2: know the stats, but I just not Yeah.

1010
00:56:23,600 --> 00:56:25,800
Speaker 1: I will promise you this. If it is getting gutted,

1011
00:56:25,800 --> 00:56:28,640
Speaker 1: that's bad politics, and that will get restored pretty quickly.

1012
00:56:28,719 --> 00:56:31,839
Speaker 1: Like that is the one thing you can I think

1013
00:56:31,880 --> 00:56:34,400
Speaker 1: that they're touching a few things that are third rails

1014
00:56:34,719 --> 00:56:36,520
Speaker 1: and that they're going to find out or are going

1015
00:56:36,560 --> 00:56:39,480
Speaker 1: to electrocute them politically. Yeah, I mean, there's she'll see.

1016
00:56:40,239 --> 00:56:40,799
Speaker 3: There are these.

1017
00:56:40,719 --> 00:56:43,000
Speaker 2: Rumors that you know, as eight eighty thousand people might

1018
00:56:43,040 --> 00:56:45,719
Speaker 2: be getting fired from the VA, that this is This

1019
00:56:45,800 --> 00:56:49,000
Speaker 2: is devastating, and honestly, it's it's a it's disrespectful to

1020
00:56:49,040 --> 00:56:51,000
Speaker 2: the people who really deserve.

1021
00:56:51,320 --> 00:56:55,040
Speaker 1: Well, especially when you have such a It's always been

1022
00:56:55,080 --> 00:56:58,160
Speaker 1: tenuous the trust between in the VA, more so than

1023
00:56:58,200 --> 00:57:02,279
Speaker 1: most because right who is getting the line's share of

1024
00:57:02,320 --> 00:57:05,720
Speaker 1: healthcare right now, it's the Vietnam veteran generation, and who

1025
00:57:05,840 --> 00:57:08,400
Speaker 1: began with the most distrust of the military. The Vietnam

1026
00:57:08,480 --> 00:57:11,440
Speaker 1: Veteran generation right like it is. It is not an accident.

1027
00:57:11,520 --> 00:57:14,560
Speaker 1: So it's like, guys, you're messing this. Of all generations

1028
00:57:14,600 --> 00:57:17,720
Speaker 1: to start short circuiting things, that's the last one you

1029
00:57:17,720 --> 00:57:18,280
Speaker 1: should be doing.

1030
00:57:18,720 --> 00:57:22,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's important. I like the idea of

1031
00:57:22,440 --> 00:57:25,680
Speaker 2: you know, your point about Carrie and McCain being in

1032
00:57:25,720 --> 00:57:28,200
Speaker 2: the in the Senate and you know, having people that

1033
00:57:28,320 --> 00:57:32,560
Speaker 2: understand wars that have been through this that that aren't glorifying,

1034
00:57:32,800 --> 00:57:35,000
Speaker 2: you know, the military.

1035
00:57:34,800 --> 00:57:37,040
Speaker 1: And that matters to my uncle, who's still a lot

1036
00:57:37,040 --> 00:57:40,000
Speaker 1: of Vietnam VET. He's like, he doesn't he didn't like

1037
00:57:40,040 --> 00:57:42,880
Speaker 1: the chicken hawks. He gets really angry at chicken hawks,

1038
00:57:42,920 --> 00:57:45,160
Speaker 1: as he calls it. He says, I want people who

1039
00:57:45,160 --> 00:57:49,280
Speaker 1: have had to deal with war deciding whether something's worth

1040
00:57:49,320 --> 00:57:53,120
Speaker 1: sending troops over for. He'll support it, but he wants

1041
00:57:53,160 --> 00:57:54,720
Speaker 1: to know that somebody in there has had to pull

1042
00:57:54,720 --> 00:57:57,680
Speaker 1: a trigger. He's actually had to do the worst part.

1043
00:57:57,880 --> 00:58:00,440
Speaker 1: He goes, because if you can stare that, if you

1044
00:58:00,480 --> 00:58:03,160
Speaker 1: can stare into that abyss and you still believe this

1045
00:58:03,280 --> 00:58:06,919
Speaker 1: is righteous, okay, but but you've got to you've got

1046
00:58:06,920 --> 00:58:10,320
Speaker 1: to be able to have stared into that, it's not.

1047
00:58:10,560 --> 00:58:11,560
Speaker 1: It's an interesting.

1048
00:58:11,360 --> 00:58:13,920
Speaker 4: Gentlemen, when when I was in Vietnam, we used to

1049
00:58:13,960 --> 00:58:16,840
Speaker 4: talk all night about the war.

1050
00:58:16,880 --> 00:58:19,080
Speaker 3: But are we gonna talk? How much longer are we

1051
00:58:19,200 --> 00:58:19,800
Speaker 3: gonna talk?

1052
00:58:20,560 --> 00:58:23,560
Speaker 1: We're about done here? Well, let me let me wrap

1053
00:58:23,600 --> 00:58:26,360
Speaker 1: you all right, I'm gonna rap you this. This is great,

1054
00:58:26,400 --> 00:58:28,920
Speaker 1: and let me wrap up right, But athbassador, I will

1055
00:58:29,000 --> 00:58:30,400
Speaker 1: let you go. But let me let you go with

1056
00:58:30,480 --> 00:58:38,480
Speaker 1: this question, which is the fall of Saigon, the leaving

1057
00:58:38,520 --> 00:58:41,400
Speaker 1: Saigon and leaving Afghanistan? How similar? How different?

1058
00:58:44,280 --> 00:58:47,480
Speaker 4: I would say they're very similar in the sense that

1059
00:58:47,840 --> 00:58:50,840
Speaker 4: we kind of just got tired of each of these

1060
00:58:50,880 --> 00:58:57,840
Speaker 4: conflicts and couldn't figure out a sustainable way, uh to

1061
00:58:58,360 --> 00:58:59,560
Speaker 4: leave those two countries.

1062
00:58:59,600 --> 00:59:02,080
Speaker 3: And I think there was a sustainable way.

1063
00:59:02,800 --> 00:59:07,400
Speaker 4: That would have not involved great cost for the United States,

1064
00:59:07,800 --> 00:59:10,280
Speaker 4: but might have prevented a lot of misery.

1065
00:59:11,040 --> 00:59:14,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I am happy to let you go if

1066
00:59:14,280 --> 00:59:16,200
Speaker 1: you need to run, and I will ran. Let me

1067
00:59:16,240 --> 00:59:21,600
Speaker 1: wrap up with you this way, which is, how do

1068
00:59:21,640 --> 00:59:25,560
Speaker 1: you think that the seventy fifth anniversary of the fall US?

1069
00:59:25,600 --> 00:59:30,200
Speaker 1: I got what does that retrospective look like?

1070
00:59:30,600 --> 00:59:30,760
Speaker 3: Right?

1071
00:59:30,880 --> 00:59:33,360
Speaker 1: With most of it, with all of the folks that

1072
00:59:33,360 --> 00:59:36,920
Speaker 1: were involved with Vietnam no longer around. Really, it will

1073
00:59:36,960 --> 00:59:39,520
Speaker 1: be people like you and I who are who are

1074
00:59:39,520 --> 00:59:44,800
Speaker 1: in our seventies or eighties telling stories about our fathers.

1075
00:59:45,800 --> 00:59:50,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the great human drama as it marches on, right,

1076
00:59:50,320 --> 00:59:54,840
Speaker 2: I think that Vietnam is important to the lessons of

1077
00:59:54,920 --> 00:59:56,400
Speaker 2: Vietnam are important to keep alive.

1078
00:59:57,200 --> 00:59:57,440
Speaker 3: You know.

1079
00:59:57,480 --> 01:00:00,160
Speaker 2: We tell these stories about what we've been through, and

1080
01:00:00,160 --> 01:00:03,680
Speaker 2: hopefully history plays the role of helping us be better

1081
01:00:03,800 --> 01:00:06,640
Speaker 2: educated about the decisions that we'll be facing in twenty

1082
01:00:06,680 --> 01:00:09,680
Speaker 2: five years. And there are lots of decisions, and there

1083
01:00:09,680 --> 01:00:13,040
Speaker 2: are lots of lessons to be learned from Vietnam. I mean, really,

1084
01:00:13,320 --> 01:00:18,160
Speaker 2: these military lessons are profound, and Vietnam War forced this

1085
01:00:18,280 --> 01:00:21,800
Speaker 2: incredible reckoning with our role in the world. Who are

1086
01:00:21,840 --> 01:00:26,680
Speaker 2: we what sorts of interventions should we should we use

1087
01:00:26,720 --> 01:00:31,880
Speaker 2: our military to intervene in? Where is it important to

1088
01:00:32,080 --> 01:00:34,600
Speaker 2: take a stand and where is it and what are

1089
01:00:34,640 --> 01:00:39,440
Speaker 2: all the corrupting factors that might play into those decisions.

1090
01:00:39,480 --> 01:00:42,120
Speaker 2: I mean, this is something that we really need to understand.

1091
01:00:42,440 --> 01:00:45,440
Speaker 2: We learned lessons from Vietnam, but as I think what

1092
01:00:45,480 --> 01:00:48,280
Speaker 2: we've been saying here, you know, some of those lessons

1093
01:00:48,280 --> 01:00:52,600
Speaker 2: were largely ignored, leading to similar repeat disasters in Afghanistan.

1094
01:00:52,720 --> 01:00:56,840
Speaker 2: In Iraq. So the storytelling and the history history is important, right,

1095
01:00:57,040 --> 01:00:58,360
Speaker 2: nothing is really the past.

1096
01:00:59,680 --> 01:01:00,240
Speaker 3: This is well.

1097
01:01:00,280 --> 01:01:04,400
Speaker 1: I found it interesting listen to what John said about

1098
01:01:04,840 --> 01:01:07,000
Speaker 1: why were we we didn't want to pull another Munich?

1099
01:01:07,560 --> 01:01:07,720
Speaker 3: Right?

1100
01:01:08,200 --> 01:01:09,920
Speaker 1: What got us into Vietnam? We weren't going to do

1101
01:01:09,960 --> 01:01:12,360
Speaker 1: another Munich? Right? Why are so many of us and

1102
01:01:12,480 --> 01:01:15,439
Speaker 1: I consider myself somebody who's very supportive of doing everything

1103
01:01:15,480 --> 01:01:17,760
Speaker 1: we can for Ukraine? Why are we doing that because

1104
01:01:17,760 --> 01:01:20,360
Speaker 1: of the lesson of Munich and of those European lessons, right,

1105
01:01:20,440 --> 01:01:26,960
Speaker 1: So you know you're right that in some ways there

1106
01:01:26,960 --> 01:01:29,040
Speaker 1: are still lessons to be learned from World War two

1107
01:01:29,440 --> 01:01:31,920
Speaker 1: and before World War two. Frankly, we haven't dealt with

1108
01:01:31,960 --> 01:01:34,120
Speaker 1: the fall of the Ottoman Empire very well. But that's

1109
01:01:34,160 --> 01:01:37,320
Speaker 1: a whole other that drives me crazy. I always joke

1110
01:01:37,680 --> 01:01:40,560
Speaker 1: we resolved World War two. We never resolved World War One.

1111
01:01:40,600 --> 01:01:42,800
Speaker 1: We're still dealing with the fallout of World War One

1112
01:01:43,120 --> 01:01:47,240
Speaker 1: every day in the Middle East. But that's for another podcast, which.

1113
01:01:47,120 --> 01:01:51,440
Speaker 4: A little bit like the famous joke of Kissinger asking

1114
01:01:51,600 --> 01:01:54,080
Speaker 4: Joe and Lai, the Prime Minister of China, what he

1115
01:01:54,160 --> 01:01:58,480
Speaker 4: thought of the French Revolution, and Joe and la responded

1116
01:01:58,520 --> 01:01:59,960
Speaker 4: it's too soon to tell.

1117
01:02:00,720 --> 01:02:04,240
Speaker 1: It's a great one, Ambassador. This was a treat. It

1118
01:02:04,280 --> 01:02:05,720
Speaker 1: was great to get your perspective.

1119
01:02:05,840 --> 01:02:09,480
Speaker 3: I enjoyed talking, listening and talking to both well. I

1120
01:02:09,720 --> 01:02:10,720
Speaker 3: always loved to talk to you.

1121
01:02:10,920 --> 01:02:13,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, and it was it was I actually think

1122
01:02:13,680 --> 01:02:17,680
Speaker 1: we captured Brian right, this sort of debate right the

1123
01:02:17,720 --> 01:02:21,080
Speaker 1: good and this is exactly I think what makes your

1124
01:02:21,080 --> 01:02:24,080
Speaker 1: documentary brilliant is you do this. This is you bring

1125
01:02:24,120 --> 01:02:27,720
Speaker 1: in voices that disagree, that sort of explain. When you

1126
01:02:27,760 --> 01:02:29,960
Speaker 1: put it all together, you see how it all unfolded.

1127
01:02:30,160 --> 01:02:32,600
Speaker 1: So thank you both. This was terrific than you.

1128
01:02:33,200 --> 01:02:35,080
Speaker 3: Really appreciate both of you.

1129
01:02:42,160 --> 01:02:44,919
Speaker 1: So I told you it was pretty lively, but back

1130
01:02:44,920 --> 01:02:47,960
Speaker 1: and forth there and and I think John Negroponte, I

1131
01:02:48,000 --> 01:02:50,200
Speaker 1: think it was a you know, there's there's sort of

1132
01:02:50,200 --> 01:02:53,800
Speaker 1: a conventional wisdom about the war and the aftermath and

1133
01:02:53,840 --> 01:02:56,040
Speaker 1: the politics of it, and he tried to challenge that

1134
01:02:56,040 --> 01:02:58,960
Speaker 1: conventional wisdom, which I think made for a healthier conversation.

1135
01:02:59,040 --> 01:03:01,880
Speaker 1: So I hope you appreciated that special edition. Uh, Like

1136
01:03:01,960 --> 01:03:03,919
Speaker 1: I said, you know, we're gonna we're going to drop

1137
01:03:03,960 --> 01:03:06,640
Speaker 1: these every now and then, especially when we think it's

1138
01:03:06,760 --> 01:03:10,200
Speaker 1: it's you know, these these momentous occasions that we do

1139
01:03:10,280 --> 01:03:15,120
Speaker 1: need to sometimes stop. Uh take you know, take our

1140
01:03:15,160 --> 01:03:17,680
Speaker 1: temperature of where where things are, and look there's you

1141
01:03:17,720 --> 01:03:21,320
Speaker 1: know we don't we don't. We don't teach enough history

1142
01:03:21,360 --> 01:03:24,920
Speaker 1: these days, even though we've never had more documentaries available

1143
01:03:24,920 --> 01:03:27,440
Speaker 1: to us. But in many ways, particularly in the in

1144
01:03:27,480 --> 01:03:30,040
Speaker 1: the sort of fast pace of the of the news

1145
01:03:30,080 --> 01:03:33,480
Speaker 1: cycle these days, sometimes we don't sit back and and

1146
01:03:33,920 --> 01:03:37,760
Speaker 1: sort of uh sort of simmer if you will, in

1147
01:03:37,840 --> 01:03:43,680
Speaker 1: a topic as as much as we should. Uh So,

1148
01:03:44,040 --> 01:03:46,919
Speaker 1: I thought it was important to have this standalone. Hope

1149
01:03:46,920 --> 01:03:49,840
Speaker 1: you appreciate it. Uh it uh So We're going to

1150
01:03:49,920 --> 01:03:53,880
Speaker 1: skip any uh viewer questions for this episode, but of course,

1151
01:03:53,960 --> 01:03:56,400
Speaker 1: if you've got some questions or comments about this episode

1152
01:03:56,480 --> 01:03:58,600
Speaker 1: or anything else, you can drop them in the YouTube

1153
01:03:58,640 --> 01:04:01,320
Speaker 1: comments section and drop them on our Instagram feeds anywhere

1154
01:04:01,600 --> 01:04:04,080
Speaker 1: where we post on socials, or you can just simply

1155
01:04:04,120 --> 01:04:07,800
Speaker 1: send an email to Aschuck at Thechuckcodcast dot com. So

1156
01:04:07,880 --> 01:04:11,080
Speaker 1: with that, I'll see you Monday when we upload again.