Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam

The old saying goes, "Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it." The conflict that we now find ourselves in in Iraq rings true in more ways than one. When our forces first went in there were calls from some people that they didn't wont this war to turn into another Viet Nam conflict. But as time has ground on there are more similarities than most people realize. Bill Couturie put this documentary together with the help of a group of major actors in the voiceovers, and has brought one of the most stirring and emotionally charged films about the soldiers and how they really felt during the war.
Letters written home from the soldiers in the Viet Nam war are profiled to show the heroism, the courage, the valor, and the fear that these men had to deal with on a day-to-day basis. There are no re-enactments done for the film, everything that you see is archival footage that NBC News had filmed during the conflict. The truism of the film is enhanced by the fact that what you're watching is authentic film of the instances of a war that most of us only have a vague memory of, unless of course your family was directly effected by it. The blending of actual news footage with film from the field shows how the soldiers were at times fighting for their lives and the politicians were just playing with public opinion and numbers. At times during the film you get the depressing feeling that these young men knew how futile the fighting had become, and you begin to wonder about our soldiers overseas now, have they reached that point and just want to come home.
So much of the film sounds like it came off of the nightly news that we see now of the war in Iraq, the comments made by the Generals, the President and the news services all seem repetitive with what we hear today. Watching the anguish and the pain on the soldiers faces is at times heartbreaking, especially when you're told that they never lived to come home. But the film also gives you a look into the happy side of the soldiers life, if there really is one, the friendships that are made that last a life time, and unfortunately some of those were cut to short. The correlations between the to wars is all to evident, the feelings the soldiers have, the reasons they're there, its heartbreaking that we as a nation have to go through this again, and more horrific that we have to put another generation of soldiers into harms way. So again I say, have we learned anything from history or are we doomed to repeat it, maybe this question should be put to our elected officials since history has shown that they are the ones who send our young fighting men and women off to war, their the ones that should answer the question.