Mark Moyar

you know decided you know after you have the civil rights act i think there's not progress as rapidly as some people might want so then you start to see i mean it's a little bit like what we saw too with the um george floyd movement more recently where people say well the colorblind society isn't doing enough for us so we need to take a more radical approach and one that is um you know more confrontational towards whites

Yes.

And that also is more prevalent in the rear areas because, again, people kind of know that this could get you killed.

Now, the combat troops, they may use drugs.

They probably won't be doing it when they're out in the field.

Probably because, you know, their other soldiers would get killed.

really angry at them for doing that because you're putting everyone's lives in jeopardy.

But, yeah, the drug problem is also getting worse about the same time.

And it's very easy to get marijuana and heroin then also becomes a problem that, of course, is a much more serious matter.

And and so there are real problems.

You know, it's not the case, I would say, that the U.S.

forces are becoming.

less effective.

I mean, there is one thing that's happening in this period that probably does more than either race or drugs to undermine performance, and that is when the Americans start withdrawing under Nixon, you start to have people saying, you know, I don't want to be the last guy to die in Vietnam.

And here, Nixon does not probably do a good enough job.

Although you also will see this in World War II or in Korea, you also have this, you know, near the end of the war, nobody wants to be like the last guy to die.

you do have morale problems as a result of that in the latter stages.

Well, the one big war crime was the My Lai Massacre, which took place in 1968.

And you had a part of a company of American forces went into a village and killed.

And or raped over 400 people.