The information in the journals does not contradict the lecture.  Instead the two appear to be sides of

the same coin.  On one side we see a panoply of arrogant statesmen with befuddled policies, and on the

other, a group of young, confused soldiers whom the concept of foreign policy does not exist.  The

statesmen live thousands of miles away from Vietnam, while the recruits dodge bullets and syphilis in the

midst of southeast Asia's swelter zone.

 

    The basis for US government involvement in Vietnam included the policy of containment, the domino

theory, and egomaniacal ethnocentrism.  Involvement of the soldiers in the military machine was spawned

by a draft which ensnared the underprivileged n the machinations of the wealthy and powerful.  in short

the academic view of the war id like all academic views of war, impersonal, and hindsightful.  The

experience of the soldiers in Vietnam is like the experience of millions of soldiers in thousands of locations

around the world in the past hundred years.  They do not exclude each other, but coexist on different

planes. 

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