LETTER: Torn Apart

George Allen, Jr., refers to the Vietnam War as a moral battle of good against evil. He labels Bill Clinton as "against freedom" and a draft dodger. Unfortunately, Vietnam and the strife which it brought to the nation is a little more complex than that. In Bill Clinton's letter to the director of ROTC at his college, he wrote, " . . . no government rooted in limited, parliamentary democracy should have the power to make its citizens fight and kill and die in a war they may oppose, a war which even possibly may be wrong . . . To many of us, it is no longer clear what is service and what is disservice . . . " This poignant letter shows the extent to which Clinton's belief and values were torn apart by the Vietnam War. Vietnam forced us to reexamine everything which our nation stood for and believed in for the previous twenty years. If it was simply a matter, as Allen states, of good versus evil, or "freedom against slavery," of courage versus cowardice, the war would not have torn through the social fabric of our nation the way it did. It frightens me that a senior who has studied history and political science is leaving this institution with such a sadly simplistic view of one of the most traumatic events of the 20th century. As for Bill Clinton, if all politicians today brought with them the moral fortitude and strength of character which he does, this nation might be better off. FRANK BARBERA College '94