The wrong lessons from Vietnam War

Baltimore Sun Letter to the Editor August 28, 2007.

It is understandable (but not excusable) that President Bush, having spent his Vietnam War-era military service stateside in the Texas Air National Guard, now thinks that the primary lesson from the Vietnam War is that U.S. soldiers have to keep killing and dying for a lost cause to prevent more killing and dying after they leave (“White House tries to reframe the war debate,” Aug. 23).

In fact, the key lesson from the war in Vietnam (and the war in Iraq) is that U.S. presidents should never start wars based on lies, especially against countries that aren’t threatening us.

Until the next American president acknowledges this truth, and the perpetrators of the Iraqi fiasco are tried and imprisoned, it is unrealistic to expect that any ally will help any U.S. administration extricate our country from this costly debacle or enthusiastically cooperate in our efforts to reduce the threat of terrorism against Americans.

Furthermore, until Americans stop voting for candidates and parties that believe war is a legitimate instrument of foreign policy, it is reasonable to expect that we will continue to be a favorite target of terrorists and that our middle-class standard of living (and levels of health, education and welfare) will continue to slip further behind the standards set by the post-imperial Western societies.

Dave Goldsmith
Woodstock
The writer is Baltimore County Green Party coordinator