MY TURN By William Wade, Milford

Another view of Vietnam and the military This is in response to “Abraham’s” comments (Courier June 27) regarding John McCain, and in general Vietnam. It is very dismaying to see that people still believe the garbage that peaceniks spewed from their hypocritical pieholes during the 1960s. For being peaceniks, it is surely ironic that they spewed forth such anger and hatred toward the government and the soldiers of the period for dropping chemical agents and burning villages. Unfortunately, what those people could never understand, is that these are the things that one does in a war. It is how wars are fought, and how wars are won. So spewing such verbal diarrhea at the soldiers for doing their jobs - as though they found it to be their personal duty to exterminate the enemy - it just unwarranted and frankly, abysmally ignorant of reality. Now as for Vietnam fighting for its freedom. Apparently, “Abraham” has no concept of reality as it applies to history. So let me set a few things strait. Geneva Conference 1954: Terms dictated that Vietnam, formerly French Indochina to be divided at the 17th parallel, pending national elections in 1956. Vietnam is divided into two nations, north and south. Elections are never held, due to the corruption of South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem. To keep this short, Ngo Dinh Diem through his anti-Communist policies and utter corruption, basically forced many of the South Vietnamese people to rebel, labeling them Vietcong. North Vietnam was involved, because it suited their Communist agenda to gain control of South while it was in a state of turmoil. The US was involved because it had been diplomatically involved since the beginning. Primarily to save face for the complete screw-up of appointing Ngo Dinh Diem as President, secondarily to prevent the spread of Communism from the North to the South, thereby continuing Eisenhower’s policies, thirdly to try to contain the wanton violence that had broken out between the South Vietnamese rebels, the South Vietnamese government, and the dissemination of weapons and supplies from the North, which had been fueling the conflict. To get to the point, although I haven’t given you all of the variables, the conflict in Vietnam was never as simple as you put it. Just as the war and subsequent police action in Iraq isn’t as simple as “Oil”. There are many reason why we are in Iraq, and oil is not the primary concern of our efforts there, although many Americans would like to think it is. It makes it simple; easy for people to understand. Blame it on the oil. It’s a good excuse, some might think. But war is never really that simple, and this war isn’t different from any other. It’s complicated, and it requires that we don’t just pull out the way we did in Vietnam. Because even if this action takes 15 years, the results are worth that sacrifice (though nobody wants to lose someone they love). And any soldier who goes over there, understands the purpose that they serve. And though many will come home scarred, changed, and with different ideas about life and what they had been through - though many not come home at all - it is disrespectful and frankly disgusting to think that any American could mitigate the sacrifices that John McCain has made, or the sacrifices that any soldier has or will make. And to think of Iraq as just a bodybag count, really just disrespects the memory of the soldiers who fought, and is hypocritical the point you were trying to make. It defeats the purpose of your letter to the Courier. It defeats the point of your argument.