On a trip to Southeast Asia, my wife and I hired a Vietnamese historian near Da Nang to take us on a tour of important sites from the American War. He changed my perspective on the war, as I explained in this short clip, less than 2 minutes.
I reflected on what seemed to be the capitalist vibe of Saigon, or Ho Chi Minh City, South Vietnam, in this short clip.
These clips are part of a presentation I made to the Ethical Humanist Society of the NC Triangle, a retrospective on the Vietnam War. Nearly everyone in the audience was old enough to remember the war, and were very engaged in conversation about it. My presentation begins at the 21-minute mark.
The full meeting, recorded by Chris Kaman and posted on YouTube, is embedded above.
The Ethical Humanists have had lots of other interesting speakers whose sessions are also available on YouTube. They meet on Sunday afternoons in Chapel Hill and are a friendly group of intellectually curious people.
My lecture was based on several of my Substack posts:
Could American War in Vietnam Have Turned Out Differently?
The Vietnam War ended 50 years ago. Several videos and books still claim that the war was a failure of American strategy rather than an inevitable victory for the North Vietnamese. The Alternate History Hub on YouTube tackled the subject in 2014. That video has attracted more than 7,000 comments.
Rediscovering Vietnam & The World
Growing up in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I was too young to be drafted into the Vietnam War, but I was very much against it. I felt sad and angry for older men who were forced to serve in what I perceived as a nightmare. Over the years, my perspective has changed. I surprise myself when I say I missed something by not serving.
Vietnam, 50 Years Later After Americans Left in Disgrace, Is Now A US Ally
In 1975, Saigon, South Vietnam fell to the communists and was renamed Ho Chi Minh City. Shockingly, the reunified country has for nearly two decades been a solid U.S. ally, in no small part because of the American veterans who developed friendly ties after the war.
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