THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, December 22, 1995 TAG: 9512210030
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Short : 34 lines
Letters (Dec. 6) from two ex-Army officers were critical of President Clinton's Bosnia policy by dragging in his avoidance of service in Vietnam.
We intervened in the Vietnamese civil war at a cost of nearly 60,000 American and millions of Southeast Asian lives. People who thought like Clinton should be credited with saving thousands of our military and uncounted thousands of Asian lives. It was their protests and demonstrations that forced Nixon to get us out of there. Not an American life would have been lost if our leaders had listened to reason instead of an ideological fantasy.
The fantasy was of a communist monolith that we now know never existed. The Marxist nations did not let ideology diminish their long-held nationalistic enmity. President Johnson lied us into Vietnam misled by the fantasy. It was the Clintons of this nation who opposed the senseless killing in Vietnam, not the military mind.
One officer risked his life in a futile killing war, a war based on a false premise. Today he opposes risking a soldier's life for peace.
Clinton protesting Vietnam was doing exactly what the Republican leaders, most of whom avoided service in Vietnam, are doing today: They protest putting troops in Bosnia on the grounds we have no business there.
JOHN KLING
Kill Devil Hills, N.C., Dec. 7, 1995 by CNB