Letters to the editor

Readers reflect on the legacy of Vietnam Plus: Can Ritalin be lethal? Darva Conger should keep her clothes on.

May 2, 2000 | Looking back on Vietnam
BY FIONA MORGAN
(04/24/00)

As usual, none of the "diverse" opinions solicited include the notion that it was fundamentally, morally wrong for us to invade another country and slaughter its population to install an unpopular puppet regime. This seems obvious enough in the case of Iraq and Kuwait, but nobody can put two and two together when the U.S. is involved. Instead, we read a lot about the lingering psychological effects of the war (on us, not the irrelevant Vietnamese). Perhaps Salon's next roundtable should be about the terrible burden the rape of Nanking put on the Japanese people.

-- Paul Chillman

The two schools of thought about the Vietnam War -- "It was a rotten war and we lost" and "It was a good war and we lost" -- are both wrong. The fact is that the U.S. achieved most of its foreign policy goals in Southeast Asia.

The chief goal was to prevent the establishment of a successful communist state in Southeast Asia that would serve as a model to insurgent "liberation" forces in other states. By leaving Vietnam a smoking ruin in 1975 and setting the stage for a subsequent holocaust in Cambodia, the U.S. did just that. Even though the U.S. was unable to establish a successful client regime in Saigon or win hearts and minds, by leaving Vietnam and Cambodia prostrate it made sure the model was something no sane people would want to emulate. In this pragmatic sense, the U.S. won the war.

The real "loss" in the war was in home-front support. The enduring cynicism over American motives in overseas adventures -- "Vietnam syndrome" -- is, in the final analysis, the price U.S. policymakers paid to win in Vietnam.

-- David Sturm

If there is one mistake that should be pointed to, it seems to me that it occurred decades before the existence of North and South Vietnam themselves, when Ho Chi Minh was no more than a nascent revolutionary in search of a patron to assist against the French. What seems to have been forgotten is that Ho Chi Minh in fact appealed to the U.S. before turning to the Soviets.

A unified and independent Vietnamese nation with a government modeled on its American sponsor would not only have spared the Vietnamese people the atrocities that occurred under an oppressive communist regime, it would have stabilized the region against the "domino effect" far more effectively than direct military intervention.

The mistake, then, was interpreting what was to the Vietnamese an essentially nationalistic struggle as just another chapter in the Cold War. If anything, recent events in the Balkans and East Timor demonstrate that we continue to underestimate the forces of nationalism, to grievous cost.

-- Philip Kim

I served in Vietnam in the Air Force and though I was never directly involved in the hand-to-hand daily combat it was impossible not to feel it 24 hours a day. We unloaded plane load after plane load of wounded, dead and slaughtered civilians and soldiers. You learned to eat and sleep death and the possibility of dying. Every day we tried to believe that what we were sent there to do was justified. When we needed the support of our countrymen all we saw in the news and in the papers were riots and name-calling and degradation of us and our families.

After my tour of duty was up and I returned home, upon arrival at Chicago O'Hare Airport I was surrounded by a group of people that spit on me and called me every vile name they had in their vocabulary. Before I was able to escape their insults I was pelted with a cup of urine. The person throwing the liquid made the remark that it matched my uniform. That day made me realize that I would never again go to war for the United States people. I did remain in the service until retirement but never again was I proud to wear the uniform of my country out in public. I still feel the American people do not deserve the respect or dedication of their military citizens. I love my flag and my country but the people of the Vietnam era deserve nothing but hate from me.

-- Les Batson

Thank you for supporting combat zone veterans by getting behind this documentary, "Regret to Inform." I'm writing on behalf of The Bamboo Bridge. We are a nonprofit organization that is unfunded. For seven years we've been healing wounds 25 to 45 years old. We now need your help to let more vets know this valuable resource program is available to them, at no cost. Donations are gladly accepted, and truly needed. To America's veterans we say: "WELCOME HOME."

-- Christan Kramer

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