Den tidligere amerikanske visepresidenten Al Gore gjorde militærtjeneste i den amerikanske hæren i 1969 til 1971 etter endt studie på Harvard. Hans senatorfar var imot USAs engasjement i Vietnam. Men tjenesten som soldat i Vietnam endret den unge Al Gores syn på konflikten. Al Gore sa:
«… it was the feelings of the ordinary Vietnamese people in the South who were terrified of losing their freedom that had an effect on me,» he said recently. «Especially Catholics were terrified of a Communist victory and that sure didn’t fit into the cartoon image I had before I went over.»
http://partners.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/071100wh-gore.html
Al Gore var ikke imponert over antikrigsbevegelsens manglende forståelse for sørvietnameserne. I 1988 sa han:
«… it struck me that opponents to the war, including myself, really did not take into account the fact that there were an awful lot of South Vietnamese who desperately wanted to hang onto what they called freedom. Coming face to face with those sentiments [in the local people] was something I was naively unprepared for.» (Kilde: Inventing Al Gore, p. 87 Mar 3, 2000)
Vietnamkrigen 