Nixon and Vietnam

Taylor’s letter states that “in 1970, American and South Vietnamese forces were suffering terrible and unnecessary losses at the hands of the communist troops . . . .” In view of the fact that the Vietnamese were defending their fight for independence against devastating attacks by the Americans, who had flown over 10,000 miles to wipe them out, I have to agree that the suffering and losses on both sides were tragically unnecessary. What were we doing killing people in their own tiny country who had done absolutely nothing to us?

We were doing the same thing the Ayotollah vows to do to Salman Rushdie. He claims that if you write something blasphemous about the prophet you must die. The American government says if you propose to create a socialist/communist form of government you must die--and we’ve carried out this Cold War agenda all over the world (most recently Nicaragua, Angola, Afghanistan, Grenada, etc.). We have tried--and failed--to wipe out the Russian, Chinese, Cuban and Vietnamese revolutions, and now we are working on Nicaragua and El Salvador.

It is a tragedy that few high school and college students learn that when the French finally admitted defeat in the Vietnam struggle for independence, we secretly took over, starting with covert CIA operations and continuing to escalate the war as the Vietnamese refused to cry “uncle,” until at last 58,000 Americans died and untold numbers of Vietnamese and their families--and for what? Because socialism/communism was the system the Vietnamese were struggling for, rather than capitalism. When will we learn that there is more than one social/economic/political system in the world and that we can’t insist that it be our way or no way?

ROBERTA DIAMOND

Los Angeles