My LTTE to The Day: Kerry Right To Condemn The War In Vietnam

[Larkspur]

The Day is an Eastern CT newspaper
http://www.theday.com/eng/web/news/re.aspx?re=60BC19C3-BF2B-4083-A500-72F92BFB1BA8

“John Kerry ... claimed Vietnam was an immoral racist war in which American soldiers committed atrocities,” stated Earle K. Downes in a letter to the editor. (“Kerry should not be commander-in-chief,” Sept 15.)

Remember My Lai? (For information, log onto: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_massacre

Remember the Phoenix Project and the CIA assassination squads? Remember the United States spraying Agent Orange and napalm where Vietnamese civilians lived and farmed?

U.S. brutality against Vietnamese civilians fueled anti-Americanism among them and increased the Vietnamese insurgency against US forces. We're seeing a repeat of that same brutality by the U.S. military today in Iraq.

What Americans who support the Vietnam War forget is that the Vietnamese had, previous to U.S. involvement, successfully defeated French colonial rule. When the U.S. stepped into Vietnam, the Vietnamese saw us as the next wave of foreign imperialism.

Our Cold War ideology, which we used as an excuse to invade Vietnam, blinded our political and military leaders to the truth about Vietnamese nationalism and, unfortunately, 58,000 of our military service members died for the hubris and mistakes of the ideologues of that era.

Thank goodness John Kerry eventually saw the Vietnam War as morally wrong, and thank goodness for patriots like Daniel Ellsberg and the anti-war protesters, who opposed that misbegotten war. They saved my two older brothers' lives.

To escape being sent to Vietnam or to prison for evading the draft, my eldest brother enlisted in the Air Force.

Fortunately for my eldest brother, that plan worked.

My second eldest brother was fortunate that the draft had ended before his 18th birthday.

“Of all the enemies of true liberty, war is ... the most to be dreaded,” said James Madison.

I sent it on Sep 15 and didn't expect it to be published becaue they didn't call me to confirm that I had sent it, although, I had a LTTE published every month since July, so I guess they recognized my name and address.

[demnan]

1. I'd like him to use the same eloquence

to condemn the war in Iraq, but as we grow older we grow cautious and there's so much at stake in this election.

[Wind Dancer]

2. Excellent letter, Larkspur!

I'm glad your brothers survived that terrible time in history.