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May 1, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
31:17
Vietnam War At 50: What Have We Learned?

Yesterday marked the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. Some two million Vietnamese were killed in the war along with nearly 60,000 Americans. Were there lessons learned from Vietnam and if so have they been forgotten half a century later. Also today: Waltz is out as NSC and Hegseth threatens Iran with War.

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Time Text
End of an Era 00:14:43
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today, we have Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you today.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Very good.
Good.
Good.
Some people would be celebrating today, and some people are probably pretty sad.
I'm sort of on the sad side because 50 years ago, of course, the so-called War for Liberty ended.
Vietnam War ended, and I remember it vividly watching it on TV.
Of course, I had been in the Air Force in the 60s.
The Cold War was going on, and of course, I ended up getting drafted.
But, you know, I remember several times, the Korea War ending, I don't remember it because it was just a police action.
So we don't count that as a war.
Only probably 30,000 people died, Americans.
But the World War II, I remember it vividly because I was about 10 years old.
My dad was an air raid warrant, and we had a siren on the top of our house that we blew for air raids.
But there was a lot of celebration, and we had not many cars then, but we did have one car in a family, and it was small, but we had about seven people in it.
Drove down to a place in Pittsburgh called Mount Washington, looked over at a city, a huge city of Pittsburgh.
And boy, it was ablaze with excitement.
And I remember I had the inclines, Mount Washington, it was a means of transportation.
So we rode down on that, and it was just amazing to watch that city and the excitement.
So that was very vivid.
But I would say that was quite a bit different when we packed our bags and we left Vietnam.
What a difference.
And Vietnam, it was so tragic.
And I personally, you know, anticipated subconsciously because I remember World War II in Korea.
And when I was deciding a career, and knowing by that time I was strongly anti-war, and I said, you know, I can't carry a rifle.
I'm not going to do that.
So, but I knew, I assumed, well, everybody gets drafted.
You know, I wasn't of draft age.
Well, yeah, I guess there was some draft going on, but I wasn't of age.
But sure enough, when I was in the middle of my residency, I get the draft notice and I get drafted, and that was in the 60s.
So the Cold War was hot and heavy then.
But I ended up, of course, getting my draft notice, taking my residency.
So there was a very, it was very, very emphatic for me.
So it was, but then the war, when it ended, and what I've talked about over the years is, I said, just think, we fought all those years.
The French tried it.
We tried it.
Thousands and thousands of people died over, there were like 58,000 Americans died, and hundreds of thousands, 2 million Vietnamese died.
You know, and then it's, then the leaving, you know, what I'm surprised is this recent episode of an admission of total failure politically it became an issue because, oh, it's the Democrats' fault, it's the Democrats' fault.
So it's all Biden's fault because it looked embarrassing.
You know, everybody trying to get on the last airplane.
So it was a miserable sight.
But I think that The excitement is quite a bit different.
And it meant that the war had ended, but nobody really was celebrating.
And my comments have the general I've been over the year.
Just think of all that we did not accomplish with all that death and destruction for decades with the French and the Americans.
And by this time, 10, oh, you know, it didn't take many years that we at least could travel to Vietnam.
We traded with Vietnam.
The families could get together again.
I said, just think of what was accomplished in a year of no war compared to what didn't happen of all these do-gooders.
Just tax the people because we're going to make the world safe for democracy.
We're going to, the people are threatened by communism and the whole work.
And boy, the more I saw this, the more determined I thought we should put an effort in.
Why are we participating in these wars?
But anyway, there was this episode, you know, on April 30th.
And I think in comparison, you know, the, but they never brought up at this time, they never compared it to Vietnam because the one in Vietnam was supposed to end these wars.
And, of course, there was the Vietnam syndrome, which meant the Americans weren't willing to fight to protect liberty.
Somebody had to cancel that out, and that was up to the duty.
And Bush admitted that, George H.W. He said, we've got to get rid of this defeatist attitude.
So guess what?
He starts a new war that they're going to win.
This way, we're going to win.
And then he also prematurely declared victory, which is another embarrassment.
And so this goes on and on.
So the big question I think people ought to ask is, what do we learn from these wars?
And what should we have learned?
And what would we suggest that people ought to learn right now?
Yeah.
Well, here's the iconic photo that you're talking about, if we can put this first one up.
You know, this should be burnt indelibly into the brains of Americans when they start thinking about war.
I mean, if you think about this photo, Dr. Paul, in so many ways, it is so tragic.
And it tells, it's an incredible photo, but it tells such a story.
Look at these desperate people, all of them desperate to get onto this helicopter on the top of the U.S. Embassy.
Of course, they won't make it.
They won't be able to escape.
And what they're trying to escape is the disaster their country became after the U.S. declared, well, didn't declare war, but went to war against the country.
They ruined the country, and these are the people left behind.
And you're absolutely right.
We saw the exact same thing in Afghanistan with people desperate clinging to the wheels.
I think a few of them died clinging to the wheels.
They didn't want to be in the country.
So if you can, actually, you can just leave that up for a second.
But just to reflect on this, this is the reality of war.
And this is the thing that you never see back home.
What is left behind when we go.
Now, there's a piece, I think yesterday it was on anti-war.com.
They had a piece from The Guardian, and they interviewed a woman.
I think she was a reporter at the time.
She's now 96.
She looks great, by the way.
Interesting article.
But some reflections.
If you go to that next one, this is from that Guardian piece.
I don't have the title, but you can find it on anti-war, I think, yesterday.
But it said, on Wednesday, Vietnam will celebrate the 50th anniversary of 30 April, known officially as Liberation of the South and National Reunification Day, with huge parades in what is now Ho Chi Minh City after the revolutionary leader.
In the run-up to celebrations, streets and alleys have been lined with red flag and gold stars of the nation, and fighter jets have roared through the skies above, rehearsing formations.
The Trump administration.
Now, this is an interesting part.
Now, I don't know if you saw this, Dr. Paul.
The Trump administration has told its senior diplomats in Vietnam not to participate in anniversary events, according to a report in the New York Times, a decision that has dismayed veterans who have dedicated their lives to reconciliation.
We know a lot about that.
Relations between U.S. and Vietnam have shifted vastly since the war.
This is what you always talk about, Dr. Paul, from fur foes to economic partners, though some fear the decades of progress being put at risk.
Now, the next photo is from that Guardian article, and I put it up, Dr. Paul, because I thought you would appreciate looking at Vietnam today.
Now, they embraced market reforms in the 80s as similar to what the Chinese did, and they began developing and building their country.
And if you, I think these are young people sitting there on the side of the street enjoying some company and what have you.
But look at that amazing city that's been built from the ruins of the Vietnam War.
You know, it's very touching.
You know, and they welcome the final peace, even though it's imperfect, which it always will be.
But I think it's interesting that they're competitors with us now.
Sometimes they outsell us if we have to deal with tariffs to rein in them selling us too much stuff.
So, in a way, they became more capitalistic, and we became bankrupt.
Yeah.
So, I would say that the lessons learned were very poor.
But, you know, back to how emphatic this whole thing was to me is whether it was World War II, Korea, or Vietnam, there was always one or two or three, and sometimes members of families or schools or whatnot that were killed in these wars and involvement.
So, it was very personal for me, and I was at an age very impressionable by this going on.
And then, as I read and studied and found out that, you know, I was reading about what I thought was a heroic stand.
The one or two people who voted against the Tonkin resolution.
Yeah, yeah.
I said, boy, that guy should be the hero.
He's still known, but they didn't follow his way after a while.
Was it Mike Ravel?
Is that who it was?
Yeah, it was.
No, he came out of the office.
He came by the office when you were in.
I don't know if you remember that.
That's right.
Yeah, he was a great guy.
Really interesting guy.
Yeah.
Yeah, a hero.
Well, one of the things we wanted to talk about is lessons learned.
And I just happened to look, and our old friend Ted Carpenter published an article in anti-war.com, which I don't know how I missed, but I missed it.
And he is a bit more critical.
I don't have the title.
I just took a couple of excerpts from it, Dr. Paul.
But the title was 50 years on: U.S. Elites Learned Nothing from the Vietnam Defeat.
If you could put that next clip up.
Yes, that's it.
So this is what Ted says, and basically what I was going to say.
So I'll just use what Ted was going to say, because you mentioned the Vietnam syndrome, which was a reticence on the part of Americans after Vietnam, or a reported reticence on the part of Americans to be involved in these adventures overseas.
So Ted writes, the surprisingly easy victory by now, he's talking about Gulf War I here.
The surprisingly easy victory by coalition forces largely erased the lessons of caution remaining from the Vietnam experience.
Administration officials and other members of Washington's pro-war elite gloated.
It was actually George Herbert Walker Bush who said this, that America had finally overcome the Vietnam syndrome.
When the dissolution of the Soviet Union at the end of 91 left the United States as the sole remaining global power, that development eliminated the last restraint on U.S. military adventurism.
Well, you know, things have changed, and I've always predicted that they will not use common sense and back away, whether it's stupid economic policy or whatever they're doing.
But it always ends.
You know, empires end, countries go bankrupt, and people who have reserve currencies to run the world, it all ends.
And I think the most prevailing thing going on today is nobody really explains that, but everybody knows there's something awfully wrong.
And sometimes they're advertising tougher stands.
Well, we need a tougher stand.
You know, the neocons, do you think they're backing away?
There's still people who think, I've heard it in recent years.
Oh, yeah.
The problem with Vietnam is we wouldn't fight to win.
How many more people did they want to kill?
And how long?
Just think how long they've been fighting Yemen.
But what about Afghanistan?
You know, after the Soviets proved to us, you know, you should be a little bit cautious while you expand your horizon.
And yet the Russians leave, we go in, and then we see our pictures now today of what's happening.
So the lessons learned are very slim.
But I think there's a subtle learning by some people.
I would say that I didn't have this instinct when I was 12 years old and knew about it, but it had an impression on me.
But there were nobody in my family or close friends or my church or anything arguing in the case of war for the sake of war.
I think people could still remain America and for your country, but not support.
And that's the problem today.
The neocons, the neocons want strength, but it isn't for a strength of promoting liberty.
It's strength to be the top dog and to be the boss, have your empire and have people total on.
And that's the attitude.
And I think that's alive and well, even though I believe our side is growing in strength.
Yeah, and I think we've seen that.
The numbers out there prove that there are people coming our way.
People on the conservative side is important too.
And that's responsible for Trump's victory.
That's why a lot of people are upset.
But Ted does a really good job in this piece.
If you can put that next one up of identifying.
Now, he's a little bit depressing because he says the painful lessons of the defeat in Vietnam have been largely forgotten.
And the current generation of U.S. policymakers is at least as reckless as any of its predecessors.
That's sobering.
Ted continues.
The prevailing approach to international conflicts has a dreary formulaic aspect.
You'll get this one, Dr. Paul.
Exaggerate the severity of the threat to both international peace and America's security.
Portray Washington's adversary as the epitome of evil.
And portray any beleaguered U.S. client as both an innocent victim and a proponent of freedom and democracy.
Portraying Adversaries as Evil 00:02:34
Washington's dishonest propaganda regarding the war between Russia and Ukraine, both corrupt autocracies, is almost a caricature of that strategy.
Now, he goes on, I won't read this whole next one, but he talks about how the licking of the Vietnamese indicator the next one if you can, has opened, unleashed a sort of a flood of these sorts of things.
The litany of Washington's military interventions and proxy wars since Vietnam, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Kuwait, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, again, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and most dangerous of all, Ukraine, all conveyed the extent to which U.S. policy elites and much of the U.S. public have remained impervious to the deeper meaning of the Vietnam debacle.
Now, Ted writes this from a position of experience because he spent, as you know, Dr. Paul, decades inside the Beltway, battling away inside the Cato Institute, really one of the strongest voices there for peace for decades until, by the way, he was drummed out of Cato because of his position on the Russia war.
So he knows what it was like in the Beltway trying to fight the elites.
You know, the one list that he put in there that is so true.
He lists the things of strategy.
Nothing but lying.
Professional lying would set the stage.
So it's so blunt.
I've always argued it existed, but it's usually not quite that blunt, but they were able to even identify people.
I've heard it on TV already that there's arguing intellectually the case.
Well, you have to prepare the people.
They deserve our intelligence to make sure they know what's going on.
But this to me is just part of this nihilistic spirit.
You have to lie, and lying doesn't matter.
If you can lie good enough, people will think it's the right thing to do.
You know, lying is right.
So it's something that should bring to light the issue that I dwell on, and that is there's two major forces in the history of the world.
There's a nihilistic force that will lie, cheat, steal, and kill for whatever they want, and they're authoritarians that'll do it.
And versus the others that imperfectly seek truth and peace, because I don't think we're going to find the perfect answer, and all of a sudden wake up tomorrow and we'll have our way and there'll be peace and prosperity.
Lies And Authoritarians 00:03:05
But there should be every motion that the politicians do and what people talk about and say and what they're advocating fall in that category.
But they believe in a modest interventionism.
You can go either way.
You can become, you know, you can lie at times, but not at other times.
That becomes mush and mush becomes chaos and chaos sets the saves for the authoritarians.
Exactly.
Well, speaking of authoritarians, there's breaking news.
We almost led with this, but I think it's important that we talked about the lessons of Vietnam.
But if you put up that next clip just before we started, word came out that Mike Waltz has been fired.
President Trump's national security advisor and his deputy, Alex Wong, are out of a job in the White House.
Now, there have been speculation for weeks, Dr. Paul, since that signal chat where Mike Waltz apparently let in this reporter from Atlantic, Goldberg, Jeffrey Goldberg, a big-time neocon, used to be in the IDF.
He let him into a signal chat where they were discussing bombing Yemen.
Now, he made up some cocky-mame story about how Goldberg's info just sort of sucked into his phone, and everyone laughed at that.
And he said a couple of other goofy things.
And he's been teetering at the edge, and now he has been shown the door.
It's a big deal because it's only 100 days into the administration.
Not quite as bad as Michael Flynn, but very quick.
Now, go to the next one.
This is from that article.
According to multiple sources familiar with their departure following the signal snafu, Waltz admitted behind closed doors to the authenticity of Goldberg's reporting.
However, he never offered to resign, and President Trump did not ask him to step down.
Well, up until today when he was announced, he was fired.
And it looks like it caught him by surprise, Dr. Paul, because if you go to the next one, Michael Tracy points out Mike Waltz was on Fox and Friends just a few hours ago before being fired.
In the appearance, Waltz echoes Hegseth's threat to Iran, posted last night, and seems to suggest Iran has walked away from the negotiating table.
Michael says, curious.
So Michael may be wondering if this saber-rattling on the part of Waltz is what led him to be fired by Trump.
We could hope so, because he was one of the major, major hawks in the administration.
Big disappointment.
I think he was a bigger disappointment than Rubio, to me, at least, in the administration.
When we were talking about this earlier and what Hegseth has said about the threat toward Iran, and I was thinking, diplomacy, diplomacy, aren't we supposed to work a little bit if we're working for a peaceful solution?
And so I suggest you and I, you know, grade him.
And I volunteered my grade.
Well, he didn't get an A, B, or C.
Seeking Truth Not Tyranny 00:10:44
I guess I don't want to give him an F.
So I was thinking about a D minus.
D minus.
Yeah, he certainly did not come across as the smartest.
You know, you had Henry Kissinger, who was probably a pretty evil guy, but he was no dummy.
Kissinger was brilliant and smart, a little bit evil, but Waltz did not come across with that level of gravitas.
I do have one clip that you might want to listen to.
This will give you an example of the insane level of war hawkiness of Mike Waltz.
Now, he's talking before the Republican Jewish Coalition where he's literally threatening Iran.
If you can put this clip up, I know it's hard to get over there.
Here you go.
30 seconds of Waltz, the now former National Security Advisor.
Get out there, roll up your sleeves, donate your time, donate your treasure, and let's take America back and let's stand shoulder to shoulder with the greatest ally we've ever known, the state of Israel, as we fight evil all over the world.
I thank you.
I salute you.
Let's fight and win.
Let's fight and win.
Fight, fight, win.
Yeah, fight, fight, fight.
Yeah, that's what he was all about.
You know, there's two segments all the time.
The neocons are always vying for positions, and they have a lot of position.
But lately, there have been more that have given us hope because our message is getting out.
And it means that there's competition there.
But the politician, instead of saying, which side is right, which is wrong, which is true, and aim and go in that direction and be consistent, what they say is, well, we've got to give this group, or there'll be a kiss, and we've got to get this one.
And what happens?
They offend both.
And then they lose support.
I remember some people who were always very pro-life.
And then when they run for a statewide office or something, they become pro-abortion.
And all of a sudden, to satisfy both sides, they don't realize that people want consistent.
They'd respect people more if they just stuck to their position and where they're coming from.
But in politics, it's by nature that they don't, they're by nature interventionists.
And that is, you have to give in and give a slot to everybody, even if you have to sacrifice half of your philosophy.
So then we end up with mush.
With mush is right.
Well, if I may make a suggestion of President Trump, now I know he likes to have his team consisting of people on opposing sides of an issue and let them duke it out, and then he'll sort of Solomon-like make the decision.
That's fine.
That's how he likes to do things.
That's fine.
But I think the balance, and you probably would agree, Dr. Paul, the balance was tilted toward neocons thus far with Waltz, with Rubio, with Hegseth and a few others.
Hegseth's more complicated case.
My suggestion would be to sort of rejigger that balance.
I think he needs to give Colonel Doug McGregor a call and ask him if he would like to come in.
Yeah, but I think I agree with you about the balance, what happens, but I'm not sure people get in office by advocating that balance.
I mean, it seems like the neocons and the progressives have been astute in how they sneak in the back door.
They don't blast it.
In this score around, there was, you know, it was sort of, you know, a contest with COVID, but the people woke up and changed.
But I think that the balance effort is always the one that catches them cold-footed.
Yeah, and I guess Trump likes that.
But the last thing we want to cover just briefly is someone else who I think may be in trouble, and that is Pete Hegseth.
We've talked about it earlier.
We've supported him when it came out that he may have been the one voice of caution when Trump was about to attack Iran.
And then, of course, he threw his aides who gave him that advice under the bus, showed him to be a man of probably less principle than we had hoped he might be.
Well, he was, he went, he flipped out last night, and he went on X and he posted something that I think Secretary of Defense should never, ever post this kind of thing.
The Secretary of Defense should take orders from the president, and if it's to be war, obviously it should be something that Congress is involved in.
But I don't know what hit him.
Maybe someone cut him off in traffic.
But he went on X and he said, message to Iran.
We see your lethal support to the Houthis.
We know exactly what you're doing.
You know very well what the U.S. military is capable of.
And you were warned, you will pay the consequence at a time and place of our choosing.
Now, he's not part of that process of choosing.
As you know well, Dr. Paul, he is someone who carries out orders.
This is highly inappropriate.
And in fact, our good friend Larry Johnson, who's spoken at at least two, I think, of our conferences, a former CIA officer and very astute observer, he posted this on his sonar 21 website.
And I think he's got his.
He says, I almost don't know what to say about Pete Hegseth's social media post.
It is juvenile, counterproductive, and dangerous.
During my time living in Central America, I learned a very important piece of wisdom, i.e., the fish dies by its mouth.
We need a comparable expression for social media posts like this one.
Hegseth, like some angry teenager, is upset that Trump's version of Operation Prosperity Guardian is a bust.
Now, that's the Yemen, that's the Yemen operation.
He's mad because the U.S. is not doing well in Yemen, so he's trying to take it out on Iran.
I think Johnson has a good quote here about how inappropriate this is.
Yes, and the whole policy has to be reassessed because I think that if you accept the principle of intervention and these duties and they couch them in patriotic terms, making the world safe for democracy, it started with Woodrow Wilson, safe for democracy.
And we have a moral obligation to do this, but they never, I think they're lying to themselves or they're really not too smart, but they preach this stuff that's just wrong.
And I think it contradicts basic morality.
I think it concentrates, you know, contradicts what the Constitution implies and what the founders said, you know, about not getting involved in this.
But they continue to do it, and it becomes a, it's a religion.
I see it as religious.
You know, the one statement there had a religious tone to it about, you know, participating with the very best allies.
I don't even said, I don't think he even needed to say who that country was.
And it's just on again.
But I think we should treat all the people who are willing to talk to people.
This whole idea that, you know, the truth is, is I don't know what the bottom line is for China.
But that doesn't, but I've seen doors opened.
You know, the world is better off.
See, I remember China when they were killing Americans in North Korea.
And so we were taught that China was pretty bad.
But now we do the amount of trade we do between the two countries.
And then, oh, we want to go.
The neocons swear they want to go to war with them.
And that's what Yemen is all about.
And the whole Middle East has to do with that.
Yeah.
Let them do it.
We'll stay home.
Yeah.
Get our kids out of it.
Exactly.
I'm going to close with Thomas Massey, as usual, who hits the nail on the head.
Go to the very last clip.
Thomas Massey, in response to Hegset's teenage outburst, he said, I support this administration, but the Secretary of Defense doesn't have the constitutional authority to declare war on a sovereign country.
A planned military attack on Iran is an act of war and requires a vote of Congress according to the U.S. Constitution.
Thank you, Mr. Massey, for reminding people like Pete Hegseth, who seems to have a temper problem of how things are supposed to work and how much better off we would be, Dr. Paul, if they did indeed work this way.
So I'll sign out and send it over to you to close.
Very good.
You know, in our conversation today, it was very clear that the opposition to what we're talking about, they don't even believe that truth should be what you seek.
They're blunt about it because it's practical, it's beneficial, and we can move America on.
It's good for trade and all this stuff.
So I think that people have to stop and think, you know, there is a difference between seeking truth and seeking tyranny and seeking to expand the empire.
And, you know, what's going on in Ukraine right now?
I see so many, this economic cooperation now and paying for the bombs that we dropped on, it is so much nonsense.
You know, in a way, morally, our country, you know, deserves some of this bankruptcy stuff because not so much that there aren't some that deserve more blame, because some are aggressive and they love it.
Others are, you know, just blase and they don't pay attention and they don't realize how far astray we have gone and how much of a daydream they're in if they think this can continue with spending trillions and trillions of dollars.
So it always ends and most of the time it ends badly.
But there's no reason why we can't work and try to present the alternative case of working for peace and prosperity by the emphasis on personal liberty because it's achievable, it can be improved.
We talked about the significant improvement in economic conditions in Vietnam after 20 some years of outsiders trying to tell them how to live.
So I'm for letting people in their own countries set the standards.
The home team, the HOMBA team, the people fighting for the homeland, they are much more capable.
And that's why the people in a country like Afghanistan don't get defeated.
They've been doing this for hundreds of years and they're never defeated, but nobody, the outsiders never learn.
So I think understanding this in a philosophic way, that peace and prosperity can come by the emphasis on personal liberty.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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