Last week, the Wall Street Journal, which sports America's most frequently confused op-ed pages, ran a column by Mackubin Thomas Owens, a Viet Nam Vet and military scholar who declared "Viet Nam Veterans Aren't Victims." Owens than criticized the left for twisting America's view of the Vets, turning them into a symbol or twisted piece of evidence that we were right, as a political movement, to be against the war.

I wasn't born while that particular was raged, but I've always been fascinated by arguments about it. Partly, that's because the left, of which I consider myself an adamant participant, hasn't succeeded at anything in my lifetime. Labor rights, civil rights, and the peace movement were there three big successes of the century. I missed them all and was instead born just in time to watch all those old lefties sell out for Saabs and Springsteen tickets. Another reason that I've taken an interest in the Viet Nam issue is that it's a fight the conservatives keep on picking. It's as if the right wing can't believe or accept that they were on the wrong side of history back then, so they keep trying to revive and revise the issue. They were sort of successful in adjusting out national memory of Richard Nixon (he's still remembered as a crook but he got his face on a stamp), and they've also been trying to make us feel better about Viet Nam and Joe McCarthy. I'll deal with McCarthy some other week and will spend the rest of this column destroying Mr. Owen's argument simply by asking a question.

I found Owen's e-mail address on the Web and sent him the following note (which I have since edited for length). He hasn't answered and probably won't. That's because, unless he wants to say that kids who are drafted and killed overseas got what they deserved, he can't answer.

"Mr. Owens, ...Let's say I agree with everything you've written: That Viet Nam veterans are no more likely to be incarcerated, impoverished or drug abusers certainly needed to be said. By your own numbers, volunteers accounted for 77% of Viet Nam deaths. That means that 23% of the soldiers who died in Viet Nam weren't volunteers. Aren't they victims? They were in Viet Nam and forced to fight against their wills, and they got killed. 23% is a staggering figure when vowed in that light.

I could give you a bit more credit and say that just because those 23% didn't sign up for service doesn't mean they resented being called on. I might even say for the sake of argument that a staggering amount of those 23% weren't anti-Viet Nam and didn't have object to being asked to fight. But I'd have a hard time believing that all of them were so inclined. So, what if 5% of the people killed resented being sent in the first place, didn't like the military and didn't think that Viet Nam was a just conflict, but were shipped out and killed. Aren't they victims?"

We have to stop the right wing form revising history. As George Orwell tells us in 1984, power over history is power over the future. Our failure in Viet Nam has kept us from getting involved in messy ground wars for a long time. We no longer have the stomach to watch years and years of death drenched newsreels. That's a good thing. Let's not mess it up by trying to pretend that Viet Nam wasn't a terrible time in our history, one which claimed many victims...

If you get Michael Maiello riled up, he might send you an e-mail.