The war, death, and fear that Crosby was talking about was the ever-growing American involvement in Vietnam. When John F. Kennedy became president in 1960, he began to send "advisers" to South Vietnam to train their small, disorganized army in their fight against the Communist North Vietnamese. According to Farber: "Kennedy came into office with the belief that America could and should shape the destiny of the world's developing countries."

By 1962, the number of Americans in Vietnam had grown to 12,000 and the government was spending half a billion dollars a year to support the South Vietnamese army in their fight against the Vietcong, also known as the National Liberation Front or NLF. The United States began to send American pilots to accompany South Vietnamese pilots on bombing missions.

These pilots also used a weapon called napalm to burn jungles, villages, and...