Brian VanDeMark

Thank you, Don.

I enjoyed being on your program.

This is a period when American involvement in the Vietnam War has been going on for several years.

American casualties as well as far larger Chinese casualties have skyrocketed.

And the American military effort in Vietnam is clearly bogged down.

Progress is not being made.

The American people's frustration with the effort and the cost both in blood and treasure that result from that is intensifying dramatically.

It has a deeply polarizing effect on the American public and public opinion toward the war.

Mm hmm.

Well, I want to make a general point and then a more specific one.

The Vietnam War was fought in an era of the draft.

And that is a qualitatively profound difference between today and yesterday, so to speak.

The draft essentially granted deferments and or exemptions to college Americans up until 1969.

When the manifest injustice of that system, which effectively prejudiced working class Americans whose families couldn't afford to send them to college, they were exposed to draft whereas college students were not.

That deferment slash exemption was lifted in 1969, which now exposed College of Americans to the draft.

Another specific point is that Richard Nixon had been elected president in 1968, in part on a, quote, secret plan, unquote, to end the Vietnam War.

And the center of gravity politically in the United States, particularly beginning in 1968 and 69, was to move away from continued support to the American military commitment because of the rising costs and the failure to achieve qualitative progress.

And in the spring of 1970, Nix made a decision to send American military forces into Cambodia to attempt to interdict communist sanctuaries

He had been urged to do this by the commanding American general in Vietnam, Creighton Abrams, because in order to speed up the withdrawal of American forces, which he had begun to do, Abrams said you need to protect such withdrawal by removing these sanctuaries.

The problem with that was that it directly contradicted the impression he created when he sought and won the presidency in 1968 to withdraw America from the war.