Vietnam Revisited (Again)

With the very UN-authorized AFVN Jeep, Quang Tri, 1970

From an opinion column in today's NY Times

"Was America’s war in Vietnam a noble struggle against Communist aggression, a tragic intervention in a civil conflict, or an imperialist counterrevolution to crush a movement of national liberation? Those competing interpretations ignited fiery debates in the 1960s and remain unresolved today. How we name and define this most controversial of American wars is not a narrow scholarly exercise, but profoundly shapes public memory of its meaning and ongoing significance to American national identity and foreign policy."

Christian G. Appy is a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and the author of “American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity.”

I certainly did not know the cause or purpose of the war the day I arrived in early 1970, and I'm still not sure now.