ORANGE COUNTY AND THE GULF WAR : Vietnam-Era Book Author Sees Parallels : Teacher’s work focuses on lone Administration voice that opposed U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia, George Ball, presidential adviser.

It is easy for San Clemente High School history teacher David L. DiLeo to draw comparisons between the ongoing Persian Gulf War and the Vietnam War.

DiLeo, 38, who also teaches part time at Saddleback College, is the author of a recently published Vietnam-era book focusing on George Ball, a former presidential adviser to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson who was the lone Administration voice in opposition to U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia.

And now, as the Gulf War intensifies, DiLeo said he is receiving correspondence from former colleagues of Ball “wondering who the ‘George Ball’ is in the Bush Administration.”

Ball, a former undersecretary of state who is now 81, publicly supported the Vietnam War but privately argued passionately against it behind the closed doors of the White House.

If there is a “George Ball” in the Bush Administration, DiLeo said, “clearly, he can’t expose himself yet.”

“I am certain there is, although I am certain we will not know for a while who it is,” DiLeo said.

DiLeo, whose book, “George Ball, Vietnam, and the Rethinking of Containment,” has made him a celebrity on the high school campus, also has received a letter from one of Ball’s political foes, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who has requested a copy of the book.

The analogies between both wars cannot be drawn from a military standpoint, DiLeo said during a recent interview in his high school classroom, but they are striking on the political and diplomatic fronts.

“I wish I had a dollar for every time (President Bush) mentioned this would not be another Vietnam,” DiLeo said. “George Bush mentioned Vietnam in his inaugural address, and he mentioned it in virtually every speech on the Persian Gulf War to date.”

The new war, he added, has become a “fixation” for Americans who are looking to replace the failure of Vietnam with a new victory.

“A lot of people are hoping this exorcises a ghost from Vietnam,” he said. “And that is that we can maintain public support, be victorious in a short period of time and reassert our credibility as a world power.”

Through his study of Ball--the book began as the teacher’s doctoral dissertation at UC Irvine--DiLeo said he learned that “decisions are made at the highest level of government sometimes very much like we make decisions around here; in moods of despair, in moods of frustration, sometimes fighting exhaustion, sometimes knowing that the results are not going to be what we hope or expect.”

DiLeo said that he was drawn to his subject after wondering why no one had foreseen the failure that would result from the Vietnam War policies of the 1960s.

Although he would have liked the United States to explore other alternatives before engaging in the current Middle Eastern military conflict, DiLeo said, “my own view is that the war now initiated requires our support.”

After he began teaching his college course “The Vietnam War” in 1988, DiLeo hoped to bring a high school version to San Clemente. But it was turned down by school district officials who felt the course might be too controversial, he said.

So he said he is careful not to turn his advanced American history high school classes into a Vietnam course--a subject that gets, at most, two days of attention in high school.

Because 150 San Clemente High School students at the school are members of military families--the city is located next to Camp Pendleton--teachers have been asked not to dwell too much on the Persian Gulf War.

But it is a natural topic of discussion, DiLeo said, because students know of his book and his interest in foreign policy.

“Today, we were talking about the Spanish-American War. It was a short war in 1898, in which the U.S. managed to prevail against an enemy in a short amount of time,” the teacher said. “We are trying to find useful analogies every day in our discussions of this war.”