Vietnam, 30 years on.

Modern wisdom has it that Vietnam was an utter failure, and that a disproportionate amount of our war dead were Black and Latino soldiers. I was treated to this alternative perspective.

Here is an interesting perspective on whether the U.S. actually lost the war. Okay, we certainly lost the war, but this article argues that our goal was to stabalize ALL of Southeast asia, not just Vietnam, and that we may have actully accomplished that goal.

There were several countries with communist insurgencies at the time: The Phillipines, Singapore, India, Korea, etc. Each of those countries stabalized after our intervention in Korea and Vietnam. Many are now FAR ahead in terms of living standards. This perspective gives no cause as to why communism stabalized in the other countries, and I'm no expert in that field, so I'll leave it to others, but the article is interesting nonetheless. Please read.

Though light on treatment of our 58,000 dead soldiers, this perspective puts a stake in the heart of the lie that Black soldiers were shuttled to the front lines, while the White soldiers were safely behind our lines. Black soldiers (please take no offense... just easier than typing African-American 50 times. No disrespect meant) in fact died in a smaller percentage to their representation in the armed forces, and were represented in the armed forces to a smaller percentage of the serving age population.

It's important that we revisit significant moments in history with fresh eyes. It's all too easy to believe popular "wisdom" and draw the wrong lessons...