Jack Carr

And, yeah, that was quite the endeavor.

I didn't expect at the outset.

Yeah, you know, it's something that I explore in the book.

And the benefit of hindsight, it's certainly more, it's more, not relevant, but you can draw that out for sure, the benefit of hindsight.

And I'm trying to write this thing in 1968 from these guys.

So they're having these conversations with only that information.

So they don't yet know who's making a ton of money.

They're not yet knowing about Bell Helicopters and all the rest of this stuff.

They don't really know yet about Gulf of Tonkin.

They just know that 1968 is the bloodiest year thus far of the war, and it's going to be the bloodiest year of the war so far, which is why I said it in that year.

Well, 58, over 58,000 in total.

And I forget exactly how many for that particular year, but we lost more people that year and had more people wounded than any other year of the war.

But over 58,000 people died in Vietnam on our side to say nothing of the Vietnamese and NVA, Viet Cong civilians, you know, all put together, but certainly a lot more than 58,000.

And over what?

Yeah, looking back.

So I'm trying to look at it through the lens of the day.

And when you look at that, the domino effect, we look back and say, of course, the rest of the world wouldn't have fallen to communism.

But at the time, I tried to put myself into the shoes of the people making these decisions.

And at least for Southeast Asia, there was the threat of other countries falling.

Even if they did, would that have meant anything long-term for the rest of us today?