I came to Australia as a Vietnamese refugee when I was 6 years old. My father died in action (navy) before I was born so growing up here "the war" was always on the back of my mind.

Feed by American Vietnam films and video games that portrayed enemy Vietnamese as a bunch of evil, merciless, unfeeling drones fully deserving to be napalmed and by mother's (like many soutern Viet refugees) own anti-communist bent I grew up hating the north Vietnamese. I grew up hating my northern countrymen.

I'm 30 years old now and my views have changed quite drastically. Whenever Vietnam "the war" rears it head there is a burning anger inside me like nothing else. This war was a colossal waste of life. An unnecessary war that was forced upon Vietnam because foreigners didn't want to let go.

What makes me angry is many fellow Vietnamese can't let go of the war and their anti-communist blabla. They want to hold on to the triple red-stripe yellow flag as if the the state it represents still exists. American films and video games that keep giving themselves the illusion of never being defeated. The Americans and their allies from the top down, despite their defeat, are remorseless for what their misadvanture had done to people who just wanted to be free of foreign domination.

Vietnam is no longer a war but a thriving country making real progress. Visit Vietnam now and you'll see the war was all for nothing.

I agee spacemoomoo.I almost went Vietnam to fight.In the early 80's I taught children of 85 different nationalities and mostly the children from your country were the most polite and eager to learn.
The US administration have yet to learn their lesson,but we still need a balance of power equation to temper the ambitions of China ,Japan,India or even Germany since their compassion will not equal that of the US, post WW2.Reguardless of how you view the US today,they still have the potential of good will and morality to let other countries have their own identity and self determination.
It is just a shame that fools like Bush are allowed so much power.

I watched Kubrick's 'Full Metal Jacket' with my 14 y.o. son the other day, and we were both struck by the depictions of the Americans and the Vietnamese, respectively. The Americans, having been brutalised by their military indoctrination, are bewildered at the lack of gratitude shown by the 'gooks' and 'zipperheads'. The Vietnamese, having been brutalised by the Americans and their allies (including us) and the French before them, are depicted as victims, fanatics or prostitutes. My son was astonished to learn that the Americans and their allies went to war 30 years ago on a false premise (the domino theory) and lost. "What was the point, Dad?" he asked, and I struggled to find an answer.

Our conversation then turned to the latest postcolonial war adventure created by America and its allies (including us) in Iraq, also based on a false premise (WMDs). "Are we going to lose again, Dad?" my son asked, and I again struggled to find an answer.

I finally replied to the effect that I don't think anybody wins or loses wars any more - or rather, inevitably everybody loses.

And in reply to Keith Suter: no, I don't think it was worth the shedding of one drop of blood. It was an utter, stupid waste of people and resources, without even the redeeming feature of having taught the losers a lesson.

The real question is why are we letting it happen again?

Very good question, Kenny. Collective amnesia perhaps? Blind gullibility mixed with good old Aussie racism? Neocolonial deputy-sheriff-ism? Leakage of merino alleles into the national gene pool?

Stuffed if I know, actually. Like hundreds of thousands of other Australians, I marched against the current Oil War, as I did against the Vietnam War.

Where is the love?

The context of Vietnam need be looked at not as an isolated issue but in the context of the world in the 1950s and 1960s.

Following on from Korea and Hungary the expansion and dictatorial pursuits of communism and the consequences of the “domino principal” being applied to SE Asia, it made good sense to draw and hold a line. The War, that Vietnam was a battle of, was a War “won” when the Berlin Wall was torn down and communism collapsed under the weight of its own corruption.