10 Years After Vietnam War

Former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger (Opinion, April 28), speaking on Vietnam, repeated the often spoken premise, “You cannot fight a war for a stalemate; you can only fight a war for victory”.

Gen. Alexander M. Haig Jr. and Secretary of State George P. Shultz have publicly concurred with this idea and all three likened the situation in Nicaragua to that of Vietnam. In this they perpetuate a lie about the Vietnam War and misunderstand the nature of the problems in Nicaragua.

The problem in Vietnam was not that we didn’t want to win the war. The problem was that we could not define what winning the war would be and how we would achieve it. What is this victory Kissinger says existed in Vietnam? How would we achieve it? Presumably, victory would have meant that the North Vietnamese would have surrendered to South Vietnam. But South Vietnam could only have succeeded if in fact the war became entirely the United States against North Vietnam.

I mean instead of a half a million soldiers we could have sent 5 million or 10 million in. We could have dropped an atomic bomb on Hanoi. We could have occupied Vietnam from the Chinese border to the southern tip. Is this what our present and former secretaries of state would have had us do? Of course China would have let us do all of that, as would Russia.

And what would we do if we had an occupied Vietnam? Who would want it? I want to know how they would define winning and what would we have won. Our leaders couldn’t do that 10 years ago and still can’t today.

Now what of Nicaragua and the parallel to Vietnam? At least the President in a recent news conference stated our aim more candidly (callously?) when he said he wanted the Sandinistas to say “uncle.” We might interpret that as meaning we get the present government down there to surrender and swear allegiance to the United States. Well that’s at least being honest.

But when we get to the now we again have the same problem we had in Vietnam. By all accounts the contras are not in any way capable of winning the war themselves. They are outnumbered and underequipped. The only way would be for us to militarily step in. Should we conquer Nicaragua? Here we have a civil war in another country and are we to simply militarily solve the situation? And what would be the consequences in the hemisphere if we did? If anything, that would create a worldwide anti-American sentiment.

Maybe it is time for our diplomats to practice diplomacy. It seems the only thing our secretaries of state ever discuss are military options. What about a diplomacy that is based on shipping food, medical teams and supplies to these regions with each box carrying the American flag? And we should not ask a hungry person receiving the food if he is a Marxist-Leninist, whatever that really is, before giving the aid. This is better than seeking a military answer. It couldn’t work in Vietnam. It couldn’t work in Lebanon. It will not work in Nicaragua.

PHILIP WAGNER

Solana Beach