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Michael A. Smith

Date published: 11/28/2006

I want to respond to an outrageous statement made by Martin Crutsinger in an article regarding the House defeating a measure to reopen trade with Vietnam ["House kills Vietnam trade bill," Nov. 14].

Mr. Crutsinger wrote that Vietnam is "the only country to ever defeat the United States in a major war."

I can only surmise that this writer must have either been an anti-war protester or had not been born at the time we were engaged in Vietnam.

How did the writer conclude that we were defeated in Vietnam? Did he do his research at the war museum in Hanoi? Did he interview Walter Cronkite?

Was he given this information by the information minister of the Peoples Republic of Vietnam? Or did he learn this in one of our liberal institutions of higher learning?

If you check the facts, you'll find that in the last months of the war, when the North Vietnamese were stalling at the peace talks, the U.S. bombed the North into submission and agreed to a peace treaty.

Check with some of the Marine and Air Force pilots in this area. The once-vaunted anti-aircraft defensive network around Hanoi was utterly destroyed.

The Vietnamese knew the only thing short of their surrender was to agree to sign the peace treaty and end the carnage. Those are the facts.

Did we win the war? No. We were not allowed to win it. We never lost a military engagement. We killed an estimated 1.5 million of the Viet Cong and Northern Vietnamese Army, by their own admission.

So where is the defeat? Ask Gen. Giap whether he defeated us at Khe Sanh.

Mr. Crutsinger should get his facts straight and not insult the millions of Vietnam veterans who served their country with pride and came back to an ungrateful nation.

That is a slap in the face, and I won't tolerate it.

Spotsylvania

Date published: 11/28/2006