"Sure the Vietnamese were reluctant, they didn't want to fight. They were true believers, but they were reluctant participants. The kids were all conscripts, and they were going to get their brains blown out. They weren't interested in fighting. And this is to say nothing of all the strategic errors we had made when Ho Chi Minh asked for help. I mean we advised them during World War II and they asked us to help them throw the French out and, because we were afraid of pissing off de Gaulle- who, by the way, needed a great deal of pissing off, if you want my opinion- we decided we weren't going to do anything about it. We would have solved a lot of problems if we'd just told de Gaulle to get the hell out, if we'd helped Ho Chi Minh and got rid of those guys and been done with it. But we couldn't distinguish between Ho being a Nationalist on the one hand and his being a communist on the other, any more than today we can distinguish between Osama bin Laden's beig a Muslim on the one hand, which by the way is completely trivial, and a revolutionary on the other, which is really what he is. Ho Chi Minh really was a Nationalist, a revolutionary. So they say Osama bin Laden is a fascist."
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People from New York (state)Military leaders from the United StatesMedal of Honor recipientsUnited States Army people
Original Language: English
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p. 242-243
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jack_H._Jacobs
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Jack H. Jacobs
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