Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for August 24, 2021

You could have had the same victory in 1948 if you would have supported Vietnam’s claim to independence. Would have save 58,000 American lives and almost 2 million Vietnamese lives.

That’s not how the military industrial complex works. Their way, they make Trillions of $ and all get shiny promotions and medals. Other’s kids die.

My older brother made several trips to Saigon in the Nineties. He said that because of the traffic, it was still a very dangerous place.

Sort of like WW II when we smashed Japan into the economic super power it is now. Life is weird.

It’s possible that after 20 years in Afghanistan, what we leave behind might be also be quite endearing, even with a totalitarian government like the Taliban. Only time will tell.

Pepsi won.Atlanta,Georgia in mourning.Gee,do you think anybody will spot B.D. as an American?

No, American corporations ‘won’. The American soldiers and Vietnamese civilians lost. As it’s been said; “War is good for business, invest your son today….”.

BD’s joy at seeing the old hell place reminds me of Principal Skinner on the Simpsons, who one day describes his Vietnam experience: “I spent the next three years in a POW camp, forced to subsist on a thin stew made of fish, vegetables, prawns, coconut milk, and four kinds of rice. I came close to madness trying to find it here in the States, but they just can’t get the spices right!”

Parenthetically, I take ironic pleasure in the fact that it was the Vietnamese (for whatever reason—I don’t care) that got rid of Pol Pot the Cambodian would-be Hitler.

No, Pepsi and big tobacco won.

Vietnam 1968: “No Pepsi, Coke.”

My brother was in Vietnam in 1969 and still has PTSD till this day! I’m still glad he was one of the ones that made it home!!!!

As a side note, since McDonald’s began selling in Vietnam, the Vietnamese Diabetes rate has Skyrocketed.

By a funny Coinky-Dinky, most of the Vietnamese people getting Diabetes are also regular McDonald’s customers.

Tu Do street