Vietnam Trade Embargo Lifted

In 1975, the United States lost the military and political wars in Vietnam. On Feb. 3 she lost the moral war when President Clinton lifted the U.S. trade embargo against the Communist regime of Vietnam. In the end, it is fitting that a draft-dodging American President should make this ignominious loss complete and close a shameful chapter of American history.

DONG T. DUONG MD, Newport Beach. Duong was a battalion surgeon with the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam.

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The lifting of the Vietnamese trade embargo was wrong; it was done more for corporate gain than for any humanitarian reason. Why should the Vietnamese government cooperate with the U.S. in resolving the POW/MIA issue now? Ever since the Paris peace talks the Vietnamese government has gained every major concession while yielding very little. As a Vietnam veteran, I find it offensive that lining the pockets of the greedy takes precedence over resolving the POW/MIA issue.

EDDIE MORIN, Pasadena

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It is quite understandable that families of MIA/POWs still grieve and wonder what happened to their loved ones more than 20 years ago in Indochina. Has that not been the fate of innumerable families through the ages who lost sons to equally innumerable wars, and who can only grieve at the tomb of the unknown soldier? Grief is grief and must be respected.

To turn the issue into a political football is another matter. It smacks of hypocrisy and opportunism on the part of politicians and all those who have been making a handsome living by creating what by now must be an industry that exploits the sorrow and hopes of those families.

I don’t believe we asked for a “full accounting” from the Germans, Japanese or Koreans at the close of hostilities in those wars. I wonder what the American government’s response would be if the grieving relatives of the dead Iraqi soldiers that were bulldozed under the desert sands by American forces at the end of the Gulf War demanded a “full accounting” as to the whereabouts of their MIAs?

MANUEL MORENO, La Jolla

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Re “Lifting Vietnam Embargo Is a Tragic Mistake,” by Richard T. Childress and Carl W. Ford Jr., Commentary, Feb. 4: I disagree with the position taken by these two crybabies. War is war and has no Walt Disney ending even for winners--and we did not win that one. Get on with commercial relations, I say, so we can at least make some money tomorrow, not cry forever over split milk.

WILLARD OLNEY, Hesperia