Assessment of Vietnam War

I have never responded to a letter in The Times before, but Marvin J. Wolf’s letter (Jan. 6) on the Vietnam War and recent attitudes about that American debacle reminded me so much of the “don’t confuse me with the facts” attitude that I encountered continually during the war that I had to write.

First, Wolf tells us that Americans never lost a battle in the field to the Viet Cong. So what? The Russians were similarly beaten time and time again by a better equipped German army in World War II and yet the Russians kicked the German butts out of the U.S.S.R. just as we had our butts kicked out of Vietnam by a more determined fighting force--a group determined to rule its own country (the whole country not just half of it) in its own way and not be ruled by foreigners or puppets set up by a foreign government.

But who gives a damn who won the battles when you consider the number of American boys killed in a war fought by a cynical government to keep the markets of the Eastern Rim open to them alone?

Wolf says the only war the Viet Cong won was the propaganda war “ . . . waged on college campuses and big city streets and in the American news media.” What Wolf seems to take for granted is that propaganda is always a batch of lies. Was the bombing, napalming and Agent-Oranging of civilians a lie? Was My Lai and the hundreds of unreported incidents like it a lie? Was the continual murdering and maiming of children caught in the cross fire a lie?

DAVID KEE

Northridge