Hindsight

 At the time, I thought that the only thing required to achieve victory in Vietnam was to overthrow the North Vietnamese government.  In hindsight, that wouldn't have worked because the South Vietnamese government was unpopular and ineffective.  I seem to remember that there was some kind of coup, probably engineered by the CIA, where the Catholic government was replaced with a Buddhist government, but the new government turned out to be not much better than the old one.  Not surprising, since the only way the Buddhists knew how to protest was to soak themselves with gasoline and set themselves on fire.  What was probably needed was a total overhaul of the Vietnamese culture as well as their government, like what was done with Japan after World War II.

I agree with Uncle Ken that our guys should have quit while they were ahead in Afghanistan.  It looked like the Taliban had been overthrown, but of course they had just gone into hiding, knowing that they could wear our guys down in 20 years or so.  They must have read a book or two about Vietnam, too bad our guys didn't.  Be that as it may, our guys still could have declared victory and gone home at that point. 

One thing I thought of at the time, was that our guys should have insisted that the Afghans put a "freedom of religion" clause in their new constitution.  All those Islamic theocracies would be better off with something like that, but then they would no longer be Islamic theocracies, which is precisely why they would be better off.

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What was Fred's father doing out of prison when he had been convicted of murder?  That should have gotten him at least a life sentence.