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The American Communists had thrived as champions of domestic reform.

Vietnam was really an idealistic thing to stop the spread of communism, which, incidentally, it did. It was a pretty costly way to do it, but it achieved its goal.

Vietnam should have taught us that mindless anti-Communism is not a cause worth killing or dying for in a world in which Communism is hardly a monolithic force.

Working-class, blue-collar guys who volunteered for Vietnam were ascribed certain political beliefs. It's time that this was redressed. It had nothing to do with politics. Once these men got to Vietnam, it was a matter of survival.

I think that communism was a major force for violence for more than 100 years, because it was built into its ideology - that progress comes through class struggle, often violent.

There was a very serious communist strain among American intellectuals before the war. America was a more tolerant place in those days, and Communists were not treated as pariahs. That ended with the McCarthy era.

What is astonishing about the social history of the Vietnam war is not how many people avoided it, but how many could not and did not.

From its inception, South Vietnam was only considered to be an outpost in the war against communism.

Communism didn't work because people weren't ready for it, it was corrupt, and because it squelched individualism.

Vietnam was what we had instead of happy childhoods.