THIS GUY KNOWS

Letter to the Washington Post 4/22/04:

"Charles Krauthammer's April 16 op-ed column, "This Is Hardly Vietnam," protested too much. Officials of this administration, most of whom avoided service in Vietnam, do not want to be reminded of that fact or that war. They reject comparisons between the war they ducked and the war they started. The differences between the two are important, but so are at least three critical similarities.

"First, we entered both wars on lies. The Gulf of Tonkin attack never occurred. And Saddam Hussein posed no threat to us from weapons of mass destruction or from ties to al Qaeda.

"Second, the dominant ideology of the times (anti-communism for Vietnam and the war on terrorism for Iraq) masked our ignorance of our enemy's history, culture and dynamics.

"Third, as a result of our ignorance and arrogance, our military strategy was based on our capabilities -- mass firepower and high technology -- and not on the requirements of a successful counterinsurgency strategy.

"We are now doing in Iraq what we did in Vietnam. We are creating more enemies than we are killing. Our military never lost a major battle in Vietnam, and we will not lose one in Iraq. But we lost the Vietnam War, and without a radical change of course soon, we will lose the war in Iraq too."

DICK KLASS

Arlington

The writer, a retired Air Force colonel, is a consultant to veterans groups and a founder of a veterans political action committee.

UPDATE 4/29: I talked to Col. Klass this morning. He is founder of The Veterans Alliance for Security and Democracy Political Action Committee (VETSPAC). Their web site, about six weeks old, can be found here.at Col. Klass was head of Vets for Dean and has consulted with the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation (VVF). He can be reached at dickklass@kininc.com. He is located in Arlington, Virginia.