Do you remember this?
Government officials insisted that the conflict in Vietnam was a police action. That way we did not have to declare war. I heard that phrase again yesterday, Police Action.
To go deeper I went to Britanica. Call me old fashioned, but I trust this source over AI.
By nearly every metric, the Vietnam War was, in the common sense of the word, a war. The United States committed some 550,000 troops to the Vietnam front at the height of the conflict, suffered more than 58,000 casualties, and engaged in battle after battle with communist forces in the region until its withdrawal in 1973. However, from a constitutional perspective, this conflict did not technically count as a war. The U.S. Constitution grants Congress sole authority to issue declarations of war. Since 1941 Congress has declared war only six times, all during World War II. Congress authorized troop deployment in Vietnam, but, because it did not issue a declaration of war on North Vietnam or the Viet Cong, the Vietnam War is, technically speaking, not considered a war in the United States.
Lessons are soon forgotten when greed and lust for power take over, cloaked in the need for national security.
