'THE VIETNAM WAR" DOCUMENTARY -- MY TAKEAWAY

For me the greatest takeaway from Burns' and Novik's The Vietnam War is that, tragically, the United States learned nothing from it.

The U.S. continues to intervene militarily in civil wars in remote, inhospitable locations where advantages in technology and weaponry quickly dissipate and our soldiers are pitted against the enemy in mano-a-mano combat.

Full-scale invasions are launched under false pretenses.

The enemy, terrain and situation offer the prospect of tactical victory and strategic defeat, given that the adversary has nowhere to go and the U.S. must eventually withdraw.

The government’s refusal to publicly admit its mistake and the futility continuing to prosecute the war results in absurdly long, costly, pointless, immoral conflict. 

The U.S. still enters such conflicts where:

• Vital national security interests are not threatened

•  There exists no clear attainable objective

• The risks and costs are not fully and frankly analyzed 

• All other non-violent policy means have not been fully exhausted

• There is no plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement

• The consequences of U.S. action have not been fully considered

• The action is not fully supported by the American people

• The action does not have genuine international support

That Americans fail to recognize that the sole objective of our Long Wars is the care and feeding of the military-industrial complex is evidence of the establishment’s cunning messaging the public’s gullibility.