War for war’s sake

According to Charlie Brents (10/14, Letters), the lesson to be learned from Vietnam is we did not drop enough bombs or kill enough Vietnamese. To the contrary, Charlie, the lesson to be learned was we never should have been there in the first place. The justification for our 58,000 dead soldiers was the Domino Theory, which said if we did not fight in Vietnam, all of Southeast Asia would fall to communism.

Well, we lost in Vietnam, and I have yet to see hordes of black pajama-clad commies taking over Australia and New Zealand. Rather, the largest communist country on Earth — China — has become our No. 1 trading partner, and the last racquetball racquet I bought was made in Vietnam.

The lesson to be learned from Vietnam is we should only commit our troops to combat when there is a clearly defined mission and an exit strategy. And we have neither of those in place for Iraq or Afghanistan. We have war for the sake of war.

Robert Lewis
Independence