The War in the Field

In Kenneth Turan’s review of “Rules of Engagement,” he states that “situations in the real world are complex while those in the movies are simple” (“ ‘Engagement’ Fails to Step Up in the Face of Tough Questions,” April 7). He then says that seeing Samuel L. Jackson and Tommy Lee Jones as Marine officers in the film’s Vietnam prologue “makes us wonder how the hell we ever lost the war.”

I served in combat in Vietnam with the 1st Marine Division. Marine and Army troops did not lose the war in the field. What the United States “lost” was the political will to finish the job that young American working-class men were sent to do.

Whether we should have been sent to fight that war is another question entirely. But statements such as Turan’s show that the simplistic is not only reserved for the movies.

MIKE ROBINSON

Fullerton