"They shall learn war no more." – God

"IT TOOK THREE DAYS to get Waukegan, Illinois native Mike out. 'I'm going home. The war's over for me," he said. "They might let me go home for Christmas.'

"He was one of the almost 900 wounded give or take a few. And some just get patched up and go back to their work on Hill 875. 'A lot of us were lucky,' said Phillip, 20, of Butler, PA. The wounded kept coming. Some medics took breathers, exhausted, their heads on bloody, mud-stained arms.

"A lot of men coming in talked about the bomb; the one that an American plane dropped by accident on U.S, lines. Maybe as many as 38 men died and more were wounded. 'That killed a lot of guys,' said Mike. 'It's a mess.'" – Rockford Morning Star, 11-23-67 exactly 57 years ago

Yes, that whole war, Vietnam, was a "mess." And it lasted 10 years and 50,000 "guys" too long, thanks mostly to LBJ and "the best and the brightest."

I liked Ike and Nixon, but Richard Milhaus screwed up on one thing: not mining the Haiphong harbor until it was too late. In those days, the U.S. was afraid of "upsetting" China, even while killing their proxies in Vietnam. During WWII, were we afraid of "upsetting" Hitler?

In 1963, Kennedy was thinking about ending the war. In 1965, Goldwater could have ended it in six months, but LBJ won the White House by saying Goldwater might start a war over there. Two World Wars didn't teach the world leaders anything! By the WAY:

Russia was lost during the Woodrow Wilson years. Eastern Europe was lost during the FDR years. China was lost during the Truman era. Also North Korea was lost. Then the Vietnam disaster. Russia invaded Afghanistan during the Carter years. Russia took over Crimea during the Obama years. Russia invaded Ukraine during the Biden years, and of course we lost Afghanistan and billions of dollars worth of military armaments. Anyone notice a pattern here yet?

We could have lost Granada, but Reagan sent in the Marines. He made it as tough as he could for the far Left in Nicaragua, but he was bucked every step of the way by the Democrats in the Congress that they had controlled for over 30 years.

If Donald Trump could time travel back to January 1965, on Day 1 he would have mined the Haiphong harbor. Enough said?

P.S. There are no dumb questions. My mother had a knack for asking a dumb question at just the right time. I had a thought in the middle of the night a few days ago: Will there be a World War III memorial?