to the editor: Given President Trump's penchant for continually threatening the entire Iranian population, writer Jacques Leslie's op-ed on a little-known and mostly suppressed U.S. military operation that resulted in the deaths of thousands of Vietnamese civilians couldn't be more timely (“The nearly forgotten atrocity of the Vietnam War offers lessons for the Trump era” May 27).
As Leslie states, the new Dutch film “Soldiers Bones” documents Operation Speedy Express, which likely led to the deaths of between 5,000 and 7,000 innocent civilians. According to Leslie, the US military and even the mainstream media were complicit in the cover-up of the incident for decades.
From a personal standpoint, I have always been conflicted about my own non-combat service in Vietnam. On the one hand, I am proud that, as an innocent young man of 22, I willingly responded to my country's call to duty in what I was told was the noble cause of stopping the global spread of communism. Only after my return home in 1968 did I quickly realize that American involvement in Vietnam was based on lies, half-truths, and false assumptions, and that it resulted in the unnecessary loss of more than 58,000 American lives.
Trump's oft-repeated argument for his current war is to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. However, didn't he say in the summer of 2025 that his bombings “completely destroyed” Iran's nuclear weapons program at the time? What then is the current threat?
My sincerest hope is that Trump's war in Iran does not turn into an extended and even deadlier conflict, as occurred with previous US voluntary forays into Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. And I hope that young Americans currently serving in our military will not be tormented for decades by their unnecessary participation in another reckless war.
Gary Vogt, Menifee, California.
