Had he been

Written by

Ophelia Benson

in

If only someone had thought to make Trump president in 1965.

Trump boasted that he “would have won Vietnam very quickly” had he been president during the decades-long conflict, as the U.S.-Iran peace deal hangs in the balance.

The president joined CNBC’s Squawk Box by phone Tuesday morning where he spoke for more than 30 minutes about the Iran war, his pick for Fed chair Kevin Warsh, oil prices and the White House ballroom.

The Vietnam digression came as Trump compared the Iran conflict, which began nearly two months ago, with the length of other wars that America has been embroiled in.

Well it’s not really fair to call it a digression, given the fact that he’s incapable of saying anything without digressing every few words. He doesn’t think, he blurts.

Unlike most American men of his generation, 79-year-old Trump avoided military service in Vietnam despite the U.S. having a mandatory draft at the time. The U.S. was involved militarily in Vietnam from about 1954 until 1975 and over 58,000 American service members were killed in the armed conflict.

Wait, what? Most American men of his generation served in Vietnam??? That can’t be right.

I looked it up. It’s not right; not even close. Do better, Independent.

Comments

3 responses to “Had he been”

  1. Athel Cornish-Bowden Avatar
    Athel Cornish-Bowden

    I did my postdoctoral research at Berkeley during the Vietnam war (1967–1970) (as a foreigner on a J1 visa I didn’t have to register for the draft so that was not a worry for me). I cannot remember a single person I knew who had been to Vietnam, and I don’t think there were any.

  2. iknklast Avatar
    iknklast

    Yeah, college was one way of avoiding the draft. My father retired from the Navy in 1970; from things someone let slip, I suspect he worried he would be sent to Vietnam (though, of course, the navy didn’t have as big a role as the army and marines.) He’d already served in Korea.

  3. Omar Avatar
    Omar

    “Unlike most American men of his generation, 79-year-old Trump avoided military service in Vietnam despite the U.S. having a mandatory draft at the time. The U.S. was involved militarily in Vietnam from about 1954 until 1975 and over 58,000 American service members were killed in the armed conflict.”

    OB’s comment: “Wait, what? Most American men of his generation served in Vietnam??? That can’t be right.

    “I looked it up. It’s not right; not even close. Do better, Independent.”

    Yes, it was a sloppy bit of thinking on that writer’s part.

    One politician who did go to Vietnam was Senator John McCain, who bestowed on Trump the title of ‘Captain Bonespurs,’ after the reason for Trump’s medical exemption.

    “Trump boasted that he ‘would have won Vietnam very quickly’ had he been president during the decades-long conflict, as the U.S.-Iran peace deal hangs in the balance.” What he avoided saying was that he would have won it very quickly for the Vietnamese, by encouraging all endangered American youth to follow his example and dodge the draft the best way they could. The Vietnamese eventually beat the US, at the cost of around 5 million dead, maybe 15 million with severe injuries, and defoliated forests and other environmental damage on a massive scale: all to impose a military dictatorship on the Vietnamese that no American patriot would tolerate in the US itself. That Diem dictatorship had to be rubbed out, gangland style, and with US approval, anyway.

    Ho Chi Minh was the George Washington of Vietnam. Trump is not anywhere near his class.

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