Why?

There are three things people say about our war in Vietnam that are not true. Sometimes the people saying them are just confused. Sometimes they want us to believe things about themselves or about ourselves which are not true. And sometimes they want us to think and do things which will help them, and usually hurt us.

One thing people will tell us about Vietnam is that we could have won the war. People who say this don't really understand the war we were fighting. Sure, there are lots of wars in Vietnam we could have won. We could have nuked Hanoi, killed everything that moved, paved the boondocks with asphalt, called it a parking lot, declared victory, and gone home. We could have won that war. But that's not the war we were fighting.

We went to war to fight for the "hearts and minds" of the Vietnamese people. Specifically, we went to Vietnam to persuade the Vietnamese to support the brutal and corrupt puppet regime we had installed in Saigon. In the end, the only way we could persuade the Vietnamese people was to kill them. Way more than half the people we killed in Vietnam were non-combatants -- men, women and children.

The problem with murder as a technique of persuasion is that victims have survivors. Every Vietnamese we killed had family, friends, neighbors -- all of them curious to know why their son, daughter, mother, father, sister, brother, cousin, friend, neighbor had to die. Every time we killed a Vietnamese, we made two, three, many communist sympathizers. Every advance in our occupation, every increment in our body count, made our position worse. The better we fought, the more we lost.

That was not a war we could win. Anyone who tells us we could have won that war doesn't understand the war we were fighting.

A second thing people tell us about our war is that it was just some kind of mistake, an aberration in American history, an experience from which we can draw political and military lessons which will help us win the next war: keep the dying away from the television cameras, keep the casualties light (and long delayed), keep the country united in support of the troops.

Sure there were mistakes, and lots of them. There were mistakes of ignorance. The U.S. government didn't understand the role of nationalism in the Vietnamese communist movement. The Pentagon didn't understand guerrilla tactics in a people's war. Americans didn't understand Vietnamese history and culture. There were mistakes of greed and ambition. Defense contractors profiteered on cut-rate munitions -- Agent Orange and the early versions of the M-16 are just some notorious examples. Officers went to war to get promoted. There were mistakes of rage -- My Lai comes too quickly to mind. There were mistakes of cowardice. Presidents and politicians refused to risk their careers by admitting error.

But the U.S. war in Vietnam was not itself some kind of mistake. It was pretty much the same kind of war the United States has always fought. In almost every war in our history, we have gone to some other place to fight with the people who live there over who gets to run that place.

The oldest war in our history began even before we were a nation: we fought a long series of wars with the native Americans over the land, and we won, confined the survivors to reservations, and took the land. We fought a war with Mexicans over part of Mexico, and now we call it Texas. We fought a war first with the Spanish and then with the Filipinos over the Philippines, and the Philippines became an American colony for more than four decades. We fought wars all over the Caribbean and Latin America over who ran those countries.

So our war in Vietnam was no mistake: it was the kind of war we usually fight, for the same reason we usually fight wars. Sometimes we call this manifest destiny, sometimes benevolent intervention, sometimes crusading for democracy. The real name is empire: we fought an imperial war in Vietnam, and it was an all-American kind of war.

A third thing people tell us about our war in Vietnam is that it's over (so forget about it, already). Let's put it behind us, get on with our lives, get back to business. But our war's not over just about anywhere we care to look.

The actual shooting itself is still going on -- the last of the Khmer Rouge still fight in Cambodia. The dying over there is still going on. The ordnance we left behind -- mines, shells, bombs, dioxin -- still maims and kills people, sometimes people who were not even born when we left.

But the main and most important way our war's not over is this: our country is still the kind of country that enlists its young people to go to other countries and fight the people who live there over what kind of government they can have and who gets to run it. Since our war in Vietnam, the U.S. has sent arms or troops to Afghanistan, Grenada, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Kuwait, Somalia, Haiti, and now Bosnia. The empire lives, and under siege. And still devours our children.

So, why do people say these things about our war that aren't true? There are different reasons for different folks.

Some veterans can't believe they risked and suffered so much for something so wrong. The families of some of the casualties of our war can't believe their sacrifices were so meaningless. These delusions are not exactly harmless, but they are not malicious either.

But some of the people who lie to us about our war are not so innocent.

Some of them always supported the war, always made sure our government could not recognize its folly and disengage. Some of them actually fought in the war, but most were chickenhawks -- too busy or too important to share the killing and dying they sent us to do for them. As long as we believe their lies about our war, we cannot recognize their crimes -- against us, against our country, and against the Vietnamese people. Of course, one by one they die off -- unindicted, unconvicted, unpunished. For the most part (and just barely), at least we will outlive them.

But some of them are our own age, some even younger, a new generation. Their lies are the worst of all. No only do they deny us our experience, they want us and our children to believe some other things which are not true. What's best for them is good for the rest of us. We live in the best of times and places in human history so far -- discrimination is dead, poverty self-inflicted, incarceration better than education, and the environment will heal itself. Our government represents us.