I’m almost done with the Ken Burns-Lynn Novick PBS series on Vietnam and I find it to be the most comprehensive survey of one of the most controversial wars the U.S. has ever fought.

I lived through the era of Vietnam, fearing being drafted and sent battle the communist menace a half a world away. However, I hid behind my student deferment and though I reported for a pre-induction physical in 1970, I lucked out with a high number in the draft lottery (260). So I didn’t spend one day in combat, the same amount of time served over there by such revered chickenhawks as George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Trump, Rush Limbaugh, John Engler, Lee Greenwood and Ted Nugent.

I admit I first opposed the war for selfish reasons. I didn’t want to fight and risk my life. I later learned that most of the people who marched with me were doing so for similar reasons. The anti-war sentiment was a mile wide and an inch deep.

But my opposition went deeper when I learned the history of why we somehow became involved. I learned the French in neo-colonial times owned the joint as French Indo-China and then after World War II ended, Ho Chi Minh led an independence movement, thereby creating a war from 1946 to 1954. I learned that Ho, later identified as a communist, reached out to the U.S., hoping we would respond because our roots were in an independence movement. We rejected his overtures and he turned to the communists in the Soviet Union and China for aid.

When the French finally gave it up in 1954 and withdrew, U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles would have no part of having an entire country fall to the communists, and operating under the “domino theory,” he set up a system to divide Vietnam into two parts, north and south, with a U.S.-backed regime installed in Saigon and Ho leading the way in Hanoi. Dulles also called for elections to united the Vietnams two years afterward. They never happened.

Slowly, but surely, America got more and more involved in defending the south regime against the north and the rebellion of the Viet Cong, a group living in the south and swearing allegiance to Ho.

We took the big military step in 1964 with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in Congress and by 1969 we had more than a half million troops in the country.

Those who supported the war naturally used patriotism in their arguments. They also talked a lot about the domino theory, insisting that if Vietnam fell to the communists, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos surely would follow and the spread of communism would continue.

I finally came to the conclusion that the war was unwinnable and even immoral simply because we didn’t live there. The Vietnamese people didn’t care if Ho was a communist. They saw us as invaders. And many said in the film that Americans would win nearly all of the battles, but lose the war because they don’t live here. It was the same principle as Britain finally giving up on the American colonies, as so many European countries giving independence to Mexico and Latin and South American countries, as so many others finally leaving African countries alone, as Russia in Afghanistan and the French in Indo-China.

The politically incorrect Firesign Theatre war movie sketch from 1970 summarized it well:

LT. GEORGE TIREBITER: What about the Gooks?

PICO: Bad news, lieutenant, there’s Gooks all around.

ALVARADO: They live here, lieutenant. They got women and guns and pigs and everything.

LT. TIREBITER: That’s swell corporal, but we’ve got orders to surround these little Gooks.

PICO: That’ll be easy, lieutenant. There’s millions of ’em on all three side of us.

George Santayana’s famous warning, “Those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it,” is critically important here as we observe the 16th anniversary of a futile war in Afghanistan and approach the 15th anniversary of yet another one in Iraq.

My personal thanks to Ken Burns and his entourage for providing us with a comprehensive historical account. I hope someday we can learn from it.