Al Franken Quotes

My father fought alongside Aussie and U.S. soldiers in the Vietnam War.

Vietnam was what we had instead of happy childhoods.

Vietnam in America was truly a second Civil War.

My parents are both war veterans; they met in Vietnam. They were involved in a war that they absolutely disagreed with.

I took every chance I could to meet with U.S. soldiers. I talked with them and read the books they gave me about the war. I decided I needed to return to my country and join with them - active duty soldiers and Vietnam Veterans in particular - to try and end the war.

You'd have to put yourself back in the 1960s to understand how separate from the mainstream of American life soldiers felt themselves to be, because we knew that students and others were demonstrating pretty violently against what we were doing.

Any of these Vietnam vets that have been there and know the deal, they don't feel that any Hollywood endeavor about the Vietnam era has ever gotten it right yet.

I never got away from the war. Not because I was obsessed with it in those years, but because it was the event of my generation and I started out covering it so I stayed with it.

No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now.

My father had gone to Vietnam.

I did three tours in Vietnam. I guess a total of about almost two years.

In February 1969, 25 years ago, I arrived as a young, terrified PFC on this lonely little hill in Quang Ngai Province. Back then, the place seemed huge and imposing and permanent.

When I came back from Vietnam in 1965, I just had the greatest brainwashing anybody could get…

I carry the memories of the ghosts of a place called Vietnam - the people of Vietnam, my fellow soldiers.

The reason I'm not more political is because I have music. And from a young age, I needed it. After prison, my father came to America, joined the Army, fought in Vietnam - and was exposed to Agent Orange. He died a slow, horrible death. Music was my escape.

I think the new generations in America, the America's youth, no longer care about Vietnam. They don't want to hear any more about it.

By the mid-sixties, the United States had poured more than half a million troops into South Vietnam.

I think I may try and write something about my pretty extraordinary experience with the 101st in Iraq.

Obviously all of us have thought about Vietnam, particularly in my generation in Australia that were part of conscription and fought there. Our friends came back, forever changed. So there were a lot of questions.

I do not believe that the men who served in uniform in Vietnam have been given the credit they deserve. It was a difficult war against an unorthodox enemy.

Militarily, we succeeded in Vietnam. We won every engagement we were involved in out there.

Soldiers know what war is like. That's why so many of them turn out to be peacemakers.

We we’re wrong, terribly wrong [about the Vietnam war.]

Vietnam was my nightmare for a good ten years.

You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. They rebel in the street…. They don’t go to school because they are going to be snatched off from their mothers to be shot in Vietnam.