A pastor friend adds offers his thoughts on my Steinbeck post:
Steinbeck's account of Viet Cong terrorism is accurate. I was stationed in the Mekong Delta in the southernmost part of Vietnam. I was fortunate to be assigned to the military assistance Command (MACV). There were sixteen of us and we were attached to the South Vietnamese army.
We were eye witnesses to the brutality of the communists. I remember responding to an attack in Can Tho. On arriving there we discovered that a hospital was targeted and many civilians were killed and wounded.
On another occasion a friend and I were walking down a street when we heard an explosion. When got to the scene we discovered a jeep in which a terrorists (VC) had thrown a satchel charge. The young father had been blown clear, his young wife was and child were incinerated. The baby was still breathing but was burnt inside and out and without hope. These were the kind of people we were fighting then and these are the kind of people we are fighting today in Iraq.
In Vietnam the people were wonderful and so too are the people of Iraq and the Muslim world. It is the terrorists we fight and not the people. President Johnson micro-managed the war in Vietnam and made decisions based on politics. President Bush allows the military to manage war on terrorism in the field.
I was able to see much of the III and IV Corps in Vietnam (just north of Saigon to the southern tip.) And in all my travels to many different basses I only saw one individual who used marijuana or any other drugs. He was not allowed to go into the field or handle any duties of responsibility.
# posted by GuyTak @ 9:53 PM
