To the editor:
It is unfortunate that some Vietnam Veterans resent John Kerry speaking out against the war after he returned from honorable service in 1971. My husband also served in Vietnam, and joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War when he returned.
War is hell, but a guerilla war (called an insurgency today in Iraq) is horribly dangerous for the civilian population. In Vietnam, since it was hard to know who were Viet Cong and who were the people we were there to save, "free fire" zones were routinely ordered, villages were burned, and areas were defoliated. We have photographic evidence of children running while burning napalm melted their flesh.
Veterans may rightly feel that their service was honorable but that doesn’t change the fact that atrocities were routinely committed against civilians. Today we are again bogged down in a war to change Iraq into a democracy by bombing civilians. When will America learn that attacking another country will never succeed in forcing them to adopt our democratic system?
John Kerry is doubly a hero he served in Vietnam, and came home to try and stop the war. He tried to save the lives of those still serving in Vietnam by working with Vietnam Veterans Agaisnt the War. He testified eloquently to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee concerning the Winter Soldier hearings, where devastated young men talked about what they had seen and done in Vietnam.
People may forget, but 58,000 young Americans died in Vietnam. The Vietnamese were no threat to America, and had never attacked us. The same words were said then as now: "we are fighting them over there, so we won’t have to fight them here."
George Bush is in the contorted position of avoiding service in Vietnam by going into the National Guard during the Vietnam war and using the National Guard as a foreign invasion force in Iraq. Since President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney didn’t experience the Vietnam war, we are being forced to repeat history.
Pat Thompson
Monroe
