i just think it s fascinating that we re now in a position where we need to be transitioning from being a military that is making all of its decisions about dwell time and how much time you got between deployments and who is going to deploy where and when to instead thinking about a mill they re is not at war, that needs to decide what its strength is going to be, its training requirements, its weapons systems are going to be. and the last time we did this really is after vietnam and we ve got all these vietnam guys. you re absolutely right. if you talk to a guy like marty dempsey, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and you get him against the corner and we re inside the cone of silence and he ll tell you honestly what he believes, he will tell you that one of the major tasks of the military establishment today is figure out how it fits in this national security environment. when you have very few people, precision guided instruments you have people around the world, it s a rea
going to continue to rely on and, you know, anything that sounds like an obama doctrine in the second term is a hagel, kerry, biden doctrine. michael, continuing the mafia movie theme we have going in this block, i think of godfather 3, just when i thought i was out i get pulled back in. we re pulled in vietnam. that was the boogieman for decades. they didn t have the vietnam sort of memories hanging over its shoulder and invading the psyche and challenging the thought process and now when we have kerry and hagel, two guys who vietnam is part of the fabric, it seems that vietnam reintroduced back in to is psyche of the democrats. now how does this change the decision making process and just the psyche having the two vietnam guys at the top there? well, it s a fascinating insight, actually, because when i did a piece sometime ago on obama s fondness for covert war and stepped up drone warfare
veterans and the wars. let s just dip into this for a moment. vietnam guys, we decided to welcome each other home. whenever a vietnam guy sees another vietnam guy, we say welcome home because no one said that to us. my name is ed marr. i joined the united states air force in 1956. i volunteered to go to vietnam. i didn t truly understand what it meant to go to a war zone. it changes you fairly dramatically. what you have to do is make sure it changes you for the bet sxr not for the worse. i was really worried that the troops coming back from iraq and afghanistan were going to get ignored and myself and several of my friends, being vietnam guys, we decided we were going to step up. so for the last eight and a half years, i have been making sure that when these folks come home, not only are they welcomed, but that they re taken care of.
of people have that misconception that the government will take care of a disabled veteran, but with the vietnam guys, for example, the way they were treated, a lot of them had rejected the veterans affairs or veterans administration for their health care. they don t want anything to do with it, and they ve taken care of themselves. a lot of them have done well. some of them are struggling, and some of them are at the very bottom of that spectrum. so it s really something that communities really need to do, take ownership of what s there in their neighborhood, some of the projects we ve done, the people next door didn t even know the individual was a veteran. so that really, when they came over and said, wow, i never knew you were in vietnam, welcome home, i ve been told welcome home 100,000 times. i met a vietnam vet about a year ago who had never been told welcome home once. so they re hiding their service. they re hiding all that and keeping it inside. it keeps them living in the
but your message today and every day is that there are veterans from the vietnam war that need help from their communities. right. and like many of our guests, you say that government can t do everything. well, you know, i think a lot of people have that misconception that the government will take care of a disabled veteran, but with the vietnam guys, for example, the way they were treated, a lot of them had rejected the veterans affairs or veterans administration for their health care. they don t want anything to do with it, and they ve taken care of themselves. a lot of them have done well. some of them are struggling, and some of them are at the very bottom of that spectrum. so it s really something that communities really need to do, take ownership of what s there in their neighborhood, some of the projects we ve done, the people next door didn t even know the individual was a veteran. so that really when they came over and said, wow, i never knew you were in vietnam, w