We owe vets EVERYTHING. America and Australia fought together in Vietnam ... it was one of the toughest wars.

DNJ,

Yes I too remember it well and the spitting on us as we walked through the terminals on coming home.

I still see homeless vets under those Interstate Overpasses.

I served in Korea and stayed in through Vietnam and I don't regret a bit of it and would do it all again for our country.

I hear you Billy thankyou for your service!!

I was in the US Army Reserves during that time and fortunately did not see any action, but I could not believe the treatment the Nam vets got...

I never could understand the lack of respect ...Vietnam vets got..

My best buddies are examples...

Al came home with shrapnel throughout his body...disabled for life..
Terry didn't make it home..his helicopter went down..

My brother made it home...his marriage didn't survive..

Another friend Mike suffered emotionally and physically from agent orange..he passed away 2 years ago..

I have seen so many Vietnam vets that never recovered, and wonder why the people turned their backs ...Hopefully that will change before the rest pass on too..

An Australian Vietnam vet I knew slept every night with a hand gun under his pillow. One day his live in girl friend went to the store only to come home to find he had hung himself. So very sad. He just wasn't the same after he came home from Vietnam.

Fran,

One always has hope, but when I travel, I still see those guys living under the "Overpass" and that word describes what has happened in their lives and "Jane Fonda" has been embraced and even loved now by our brainless Hollywood loving public.

Sorry - I know this has been beat to death - just need to vent a bit - it helps some.

Bill G

If we want to truly honor our vets, and even more importantly, those still serving, perhaps instead of blindly following politicians while they rattle their (well, ours, really) sabers to distract us from one more attempt to cripple our manufacturing base or cut needed public programs while they line the pockets of the wealthy even further, we start to demand less involvement in places where our presence will NEVER improve things.

That we send our young overseas to hell holes that will never become model democracies (most of them are corrupt oligarchies barely any less brutal than those we deposed), and we KNOW they never will before we send them out there is the truest display of what we REALLY care about. It ain't the troops...

I respect the troops, and the hardships they endure, but perhaps we would serve them better by BRINGING THEM HOME. There is no Great War any more. There is no Axis Powers to fight. There are just self serving politicians and a big stick to wave around when they want jingoistic voting. That doesn't honor anybody...

Vietnam was the watershed, the last war we forced children to become men (and women) in the charnel house of mechanized warfare, to try to prop up a corrupt government (so corrupt, the people WANTED communism! How bad do things have to get for the populace before that seems like a good idea?!) with the bodies of our children. And we all KNEW it. And we still let it happen.

No wonder we were embarrassed when the poor boys came home. We knew in our hearts WE did this to them. Who could easily face this? So we turned our backs.

Sadly, we are doing the same thing today. Iraq and Afghanistan vets are being denied health care, or forced into a system so overloaded and underfunded (by the same politicians that sent them there), the news coverage is basically zero despite the war being still active, we are repeating history. If we care, BRING THEM ALL HOME NOW!

I am sorry for this rant, and I know perhaps there are a few here that don't like this view aired, but it is something I believe in with all my soul. We have no place over there.

Let us honor the vets by ensuring there are fewer in future.

I could nit-pick some of the details, but this heart-felt op-ed piece is excellently written and pretty much "dead-on", in my opinion.

It's easy to see that, "warts and all", our friend Diki is a caring, thoughtful soul. I' for one, am really glad he's here.

Russ