Vietnam

AS A Vietnam veteran, I used to feel that we did not accomplish anything in Vietnam. To all veterans, I feel that we did accomplish something, from what I can see now. At least in Vietnam today it is a peaceful nation and people are not killing each other, unlike Iraq and Afghanistan. We accomplished nothing in Iraq, and we are going to accomplish nothing in Afghanistan. We lost a lot of lives for nothing. We are not wanted in Afghanistan. President Obama, please bring our troops home.

That they should not be forgotten. Wallace Terry, a Time magazine reporter in Vietnam for two years, spent 17 years trying to publish a book about black Vietnam veterans to keep the memory and the lesson of their sacrifices alive - for people of all colors. "I am one who is convinced that the black experience is first and foremost a human experience. Then it's an American experience. Then it's a black experience. In that order of importance," said Terry, 49, who wrote the 1984 best seller, Bloods.

Most of today's college students were babies when the nation's campuses were torn apart by Vietnam war protests. But at Glassboro State College last week, students for whom Vietnam is only history had a chance to come face to face with the past. As part of a two-day colloquium sponsored by the college with the help of a $14,000 grant from the state Department of Education, high school and college students, teachers and Vietnam veterans gathered to hear some experts discuss the causes and the aftermath of American involvement in Southeast Asia.

Lawrence H. Geller (letter July 27) writes that he has become sick of some "veterans and others" bemoaning the MIA issue and criticizing the president's efforts to "reconnect" with Vietnam. He feels that those so concerned with these issues ignore the MIAs of other wars and exploit the emotions of the MIA families because they are mad that the U.S. lost in Vietnam. Geller should be reminded that those rights he exercises - such as protesting, supporting presidential policy and writing stupid letters to newspapers - were purchased very dearly by America's war veterans.

Let the games go on, Vietnam veteran Jim Foster says. Foster, in his 13th season as the women's basketball coach at St. Joseph's University, remembers how much sports meant to him and his fellow troops in Vietnam. He believes the American troops in the Persian Gulf feel the same way about Sunday's AFC and NFC finals, the Super Bowl on Jan. 27 and other games. "I have a vivid recollection of lying on top of a bunker we were building at a gunship base at Pleiku," Foster said last night.

Well, Sen. John Kerry certainly did his best to offer an October surprise for Republicans. On Monday, Kerry was in California, stumping for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides. At an event at Pasadena City College intended to highlight Democratic education policies, Kerry told students, "You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. " He added, "If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq.

Master Sgt. Donald Mac Neil stared straight ahead, a slight indentation between his eyes deepening into a furrow. "I don't usually talk about it," he said, sitting in his office and reminiscing recently about 20-year-old photos of a boyish Mac Neil with a crew cut and big ears. The year was 1966. Vietnam. "The whole time in Vietnam. . . . It was not like it was real. It was surreal," he said. "It seemed almost dreamlike. " For the last 20 years, Mac Neil has pushed any memories of his tour into the far recesses of his mind.

The question the young sentry posed was graphic but not unrealistic. Suppose, the soldier said, that after a night of terrible fighting to defend his position, dawn revealed an enemy soldier hung up in the razor-sharp concertina wire, but still alive and still armed. "Can I shoot him?" the soldier asked Maj. Joe O'Connell of Boston, an Army expert on the law of war. "No," the lawyer replied. "You'd be committing a war crime. " As the biggest U.S. military machine to be assembled since Vietnam stood at the brink of war, never before had U.S. commanders and soldiers been drilled so thoroughly in something that seems so paradoxical: the law of war. "We are talking about conducting an uncivilized action in a civilized manner," said Lt. Col. Dick Goddard of Marietta, Ga., head of the Army's Operational Law Section in Saudi Arabia.

Warning against another Vietnam, senators from both parties yesterday voiced concern that President Bush might involve the United States in a full- scale war with Iraq - without congressional approval - after Congress adjourns. Secretary of State James A. Baker 3d promised members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the administration would continue to consult with Congress, but refused to rule out any U.S. military action prior to a formal congressional declaration of war. "If there is one clear lesson that we learned from the Vietnam experience, it is that the support of the American people, as expressed through their 535 representatives in Congress, is essential," warned the committee chairman, Sen. Claiborne Pell (D., R.I.)

The person who is metaphorically shortchanged in Michael Dorn Moody's The Shortchanged Review is a Marine who fought in Vietnam, but "shortchanged" is also a pretty good description of how a theatergoer might feel after sitting through this 1970s relic in the inept production by Theatre Double. Only if you judge value by the time spent in a theater seat could you have reason to feel that this excruciating, almost-three-hour play has anything to offer. Ex-Marine Darrel, just returned from the war zone in 1973, feels cheated by both the Corps and his own father.