Vietnam War

The wrong lessons from Vietnam War It is understandable (but not excusable) that President Bush, having spent his Vietnam War-era military service stateside in the Texas Air National Guard, now thinks that the primary lesson from the Vietnam War is that U.S. soldiers have to keep killing and dying for a lost cause to prevent more killing and dying after they leave ("White House tries to reframe the war debate," Aug. 23). In fact, the key lesson from the war in Vietnam (and the war in Iraq)

I HAVE TO confess that I was somewhat anti-military during my formative years.I say "somewhat" because I've not always supported the war, but I've always backed those who fought.I speak especially of Vietnam (although Grenada also bothered me). During the Vietnam War, my childhood fascination with miniature soldiers and tanks engaged in fantasy combat dissipated as the real combat raged on my television screen.Things got worse when the Army drafted one of my brothers. His heart sank when the notice came.

David Platt Rall, 73, died Tuesday from injuries suffered in an automobile accident in Bordeaux, France.A Washingtonian, he headed the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences until his retirement in 1990. At one time, he also directed the National Toxicology Program and was assistant attorney general in the Public Health Service. In 1954, Mr. Rall joined the National Cancer Institute, where his research resulted in methods for preventing the spread of leukemia to the brain.Eva Israelsen, 104, who had 271 great-grandchildren, died Thursday, five days before her 105th birthday, in Logan, Utah.

Though graduation is months away, Naval Academy seniors learned this week whether they'll fly jets, serve on submarines or work aboard ships when they become officers in May.As happens every January, dozens of midshipmen emerged from the "service assignment" process, which ends tonight, dejected over being denied entry to the military venue of their choice.Among the dejected were 14 Mids who wanted to join the Marine Corps. Only 16.67 percent of each year's graduating class can be admitted to the corps.

Sir Ian Fraser, 98, a pioneer in using penicillin to treat battle wounds during World War II, died Tuesday at his home in Belfast, Northern Ireland, his family said. The cause of death was not announced.Eqbal Ahmad, an anti-war scholar once accused of plotting to kidnap former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, died Tuesday in Islamabad, Pakistan.A fierce opponent of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, he was among seven people accused of plotting to kidnap Mr. Kissinger and to blow up underground heating tunnels to federal offices in Washington.

This is an excerpt of an editorial that was published by the British newspaper the Daily Telegraph yesterday:THREE weeks after the onset of war against Serbia, the prime minister has at last deigned to explain the government's bellicose policy to the House of Commons. It was a perfunctory performance, one that restated the moral purpose of military action in the Balkans but failed to offer evidence that the campaign is achieving worthwhile results.Pointing fingersAs the leader of a supporting power, Prime Minister Tony Blair is in the difficult position of defending a policy that he does not control.

Katie Daniels, 13, received a hero's medal this month for poetry.The Silver Star, the third-highest military award designated solely for heroism in combat, was a gift from a Vietnam veteran grateful for Katie's tribute to his fallen comrades.The paths of John R. Jones, a retired Marine master sergeant, and the Sykesville Middle School pupil, who wrote "The Memories of the Soldiers in the Vietnam War," crossed at the Vietnam Memorial in Washington. He was so impressed when Katie read her poem that he removed the medal from his cap and gave it to her."

DONG HA, Vietnam -- Jerilyn Brusseau and a group of volunteers were taking a lunch break from building this country's first land mine education center when they heard the explosion. A volunteer who had flown a Huey helicopter during the Vietnam War recognized the sound: an M-79 grenade round.Two hundred yards away that afternoon, Le Dinh Thang, 13, was walking along a road near the remains of a U.S. military base when his little brother, Loi, picked up the bullet-shaped explosive and tossed it into the air.Loi was mildly injured, but the blast sent shrapnel slicing into Thang's belly and arm. On the way to the hospital, his mother held a plastic bowl over his intestines to keep them from falling out.Five months later, Thang still has a gauze bandage taped over his oozing wound.

Campaign finance reform has become the Vietnam of domestic public policy. Just about everyone knows the fight is not winnable, but no one has figured out a way to bring it to an honorable end.The paralysis began to settle in shortly after enactment of the campaign finance reforms of the mid-1970s. It has deepened with each election since. Small loopholes have grown into giant loopholes; campaign finance abuses have become an unhappy but unshakeable fixture of modern campaigns, like attack ads and sound bites.

Tai Sung An, a retired professor at Washington College in Chestertown who was an authority on Vietnamese politics, died of lung failure Wednesday at Johns Hopkins Hospital.Mr. An, who was 67 and lived in Chestertown, wrote books on Asian communism and the Vietnam War and his articles appeared in newspapers and world affairs journals.He retired from teaching in May because of failing health."He devoted his entire career to teaching and to advancing the reputation of Washington College through his scholarly work," said college President John S. Toll.

Of Baltimore, born April 22, 1947 in LaFollette, TN, passed away August 27, 2009. Preceded in death by his loving mother, Marie, and brother Ronald. He leaves behind his sister Gloria, daughters; Frances Hipsley and Tamara Hoyle, Son-in-law Rich Hipsley, and three granddaughters; Marie, Bekah and Amy. Wayne was a United States Marine veteran who proudly served in the Vietnam War. He was loved by many and respected by all. Memorial service will be held on Tuesday, September 1st at MacNabb Funeral Home in Catonsville, from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. , followed by a Celebration of Life in Lansdowne.

It's Miller time in Vietnam, by way of the streets of Baltimore. When SABMiller, a large London-based brewing company, decided to launch the Miller High Life brand into the Southeast Asian nation this year, it turned to a Baltimore company to design the advertising. Trahan, Burden & Charles created a commercial with fast-paced scenes of young, chic people having a good time, interspersed with nighttime clips of Baltimore's Fells Point and some iconic images of New York City. SABMiller "wanted to do something very American," said Allan Charles, chairman and creative director for TBC. The commercial is "all very American.

Walter Cronkite, once the most trusted man in America and a leading figure in broadcast journalism's Mount Rushmore, believed the nation's war on drugs was unwinnable, and he said so on television. A decade after his years with CBS News, Mr. Cronkite succeeded in raising public awareness of the war's futility - an impressive accomplishment. Of course, Mr. Cronkite is famous for having reached the same correct conclusion about the Vietnam War in 1968. All of his obituaries have recalled Mr. Cronkite's special report from Vietnam, his characterization of the war as stalemate and his call for a negotiated peace.

I get press releases about new books all the time. This one arrived the other day: "A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers ... a fly-on-the-wall, insider look at the mad house that Lehman became. It will reveal never-before-told stories about the dark characters who ruled Lehman, refusing to heed warnings that the company was headed for an iceberg." The author is Lawrence G. McDonald, until its collapse "one of Lehman's most consistently profitable traders" and an "eyewitness" to the brewing mess inside the investment bank.

HEYWARD ISHAM, 82 Key Cold War diplomat Heyward Isham, 82, a career Foreign Service officer and a Russian scholar who held key posts during the Cold War and the conflict in Vietnam, died Thursday at a hospital near his Long Island home. He had complications from an infection and pulmonary fibrosis. During the Vietnam War, Isham served in the early 1970s as a leader of the U.S. delegation to the Paris peace talks and was directly involved in negotiations with the Vietnamese. The talks led to the accords that ended direct U.S. military involvement in Vietnam.

HUGH VAN ES, 67 Photojournalist Hugh Van Es, a Dutch photojournalist who covered the Vietnam War and recorded the most famous image of the fall of Saigon in 1975 - a group of people scaling a ladder to a CIA helicopter on a rooftop - died Friday morning in Hong Kong. Mr. Van Es suffered a brain hemorrhage last week and never regained consciousness. His photo of a wounded soldier with a tiny cross gleaming against his dark silhouette, taken 40 years ago this month, became the best-known picture from the May 1969 battle of Hamburger Hill.

FREDERICK GULDEN, 86 'Last American in Vietnam' Frederick Gulden, an architect who was dubbed "the last American in Vietnam" when he was stranded in the country for 15 months after the U.S. military withdrew at the close of the Vietnam War, died of complications from esophageal cancer April 4. Mr. Gulden had established a Saigon office for the architectural firm DeLeuw Cather International in 1972. In 1975, when he got word that the South Vietnamese government's collapse was imminent, he tried to evacuate the firm's Vietnamese employees.

ANN BRYAN MARIANO, 76 Vietnam war correspondent Ann Bryan Mariano, who covered the Vietnam war for Overseas Weekly and successfully fought Pentagon efforts to bar the pro-GI, anti-establishment paper to American troops in the war zone, has died. Ms. Mariano died Wednesday in Belmont, Mass., of Alzheimer's disease, according to her second husband, Robert McKay. A Texas native who received a journalism degree in 1953 at Texas Tech University, she signed on in Germany in 1959 with the Overseas Family, a paper for American service members in Europe.

Capt. Arthur N. Rogers III, a highly decorated disabled Vietnam War veteran and a former member of the Maryland State Board of Examiners of Nursing Home Administrators who earlier had been chairman of the Baltimore County Board of Recreation and Parks, died in his sleep Friday at his Towson home. He was 67. Captain Rogers was born and raised in Baltimore. After graduating from City College in 1959, he earned a bachelor's degree in 1964 from what is now Morgan State University. In 1973, he earned a master's degree in secondary education from what is now Towson University, and six years later earned a master's degree in geography and environmental planning, also from Towson.

Col. James Curtis Burris, a highly decorated career Army officer who fought in the Vietnam War, died Nov. 13 at his Havre de Grace home of cancers related to exposure to Agent Orange. He was 78. Colonel Burris, who was born and raised in Tulsa, Okla., graduated from Tulsa Central High School in 1948. Born into a military family, Colonel Burris was the grandson of two Civil War veterans and the son of a World War I veteran. He enlisted in the Army in 1948 and was selected to attend the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., from which he graduated with a bachelor's degree in engineering in 1954.