GETTING LESSONS OF VIETNAM RIGHT IS ABSOLUTELY CRUCIAL

It's good to see that a major support-the-troops parade is scheduled for Saturday morning at 10:00 a.m. in Jackson. Sponsored by the VFW and American Legion posts there, the parade will gather at the frozen food locker on South High Street and proceed north.

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Funny thing, don't you think? We're constantly reminded of the fragility of the grand, 28-nation coalition assembled by President Bush against the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Predictions of its imminent breakup are the only forecasts more common than the dreary forecasts of imminent recession during each of the last nine years of the longest peacetime economic expansion in American history.

But our 28-nation coalition has proved far more durable than was forecast by those who never thought it could be assembled in the first place.

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In a column published on this page last Monday, Tom Eagleton denounced what he said was one of the enduring myths of the Vietnam War. Eagleton did his best to refute the notion, invoked recently by President Bush, that "the Vietnam conflict was fought with one hand tied behind our backs."

In support of his notion that we didn't fight that war with one hand tied, Eagleton adduced impressive evidence of the vast tonnage of bombs dropped during the course of that nine-year war, America's longest. But does this really prove Eagleton's point? Suppose I had access to unlimited bomb tonnage, and dropped 100 times the bombs dropped during the entire Vietnam War on trivial, irrelevant, or non-strategic targets, while omitting vital military targets.

Would you say I had done anything worth mentioning? Would it prove that I had conducted an effective war effort? Would it "disprove" an alleged "myth" that we had fought "with one hand tied behind our backs"?

Neither former Sen. Eagleton nor I served in Vietnam, so let's consult a historian of the period, as well as some who did military service there, for their opinions of this matter.

Peter Braestrup, a former Saigon bureau chief for the Washington Post, is the author of "Big Story", a book that analyzes media coverage of the Tet Offensive of 1968. Braestrup succinctly reminds us of Washington's uncertain conduct of the Vietnam War from the White House itself:

"While pledged to stave off Communism in Southeast Asia, President Johnson shied away from mobilizing the country, from seeking a congressional declaration of war or from deciding on a coherent military strategy. He refused to call up the reserves. He tried to placate domestic `doves' with bombing halts and peace feelers. He hoped to soothe the hawks with more troop deployments. He wanted both guns and butter a limited war against Hanoi and a high-profile War on Poverty at home."

As St. Paul says, "And who shall respond if the trumpet sound an uncertain call?"

Even more devastating are facts contained in a recent column by nationally syndicated writer Don Feder, facts Tom Eagleton completely ignored. Feder had this to say about the tragically limited war effort in Vietnam:

"In our bombing runs over the North, almost everything of military value was off limits. We ignored the Ho Chi Minh Trail and refused to bomb within 30 miles of the Chinese border. Territory inside a 10-mile radius of Hanoi and Haiphong became a safe haven for the foe.

"The North Vietnamese Ministry of Defense was never targeted. (We took out the Iraqi Defense Ministry on the first day of the war.) Transport assembly areas, power plants, dikes all off limits until very late in the war.

"Our planes (during the Vietnam conflict) were reduced to flying bombing runs against barges, jeep repair stations, and what former Captain John Pieno, who flew Intruders in 1967 and 1972, calls `underground dirt storage areas.' Pieno told me: `We were risking $3 million aircraft, not to mention the crews, for a $3,000 Chinese truck. It was sickening; all those good people lost for nothing.'"

Feder continues: "`This time,' says Bob Cooley, who flew the F-105 and was shot down over North Vietnam, `the war is being fought in textbook fashion by the professionals. Unlike our war.' Within the first 36 hours of engagement, we were flying an average of 2,000 sorties a day against Baghdad. No military asset was off limits. Everything missile sites, mobile launchers, airfields, chemical plants, military and communication complexes took a shellacking."

Feder, the columnist, and Braestrup, the historian, are absolutely correct. And Tom Eagleton, God love him, couldn't be more wrong. The tragic and ghastly lessons of Vietnam will always be important. They should not be misinterpreted.

News item, Monday, February 4, 1991:

"WASHINGTON (AP) President Bush today sent Congress his proposed Fiscal Year 1992 budget, which proposes to spend $1.44 trillion this coming year ..." (Emphasis mine).

President Carter's last budget, in 1980, proposed spending approximately $660 billion.

Now, what was that we've heard for a decade now about those heartless budget cuts of the Reagan-Bush years?

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