We may be having a semantical misunderstanding.

What I am saying is that -- as someone who followed the details of the war very closely for the previous 8 years and had traveled extensively around the country -- by the end of 1972 it was clear that the Viet Cong had been so badly decimated that it was no longer a "player" in the war. Hanoi had tried and failed to conquer the country in a major Easter Offensive, and when Nixon finally removed many of the constraints on bombing Hanoi's will was broken and its two essential supply sources had been co-opted by Kissinger's brilliant diplomacy. Major fighting had ended, casualties on all sides were low, and Hanoi knew that if it breached the (soon to be signed) Paris Accord we could (and would) hit them very hard. My perception was widely shared by others who had even more experience than I did in Vietnam, including Bill Colby, Douglas Pike, Don Rochlen, and many others.

But then Congress made a decision to make it unlawful for U.S. forces to remain in the game. (I watched parts of this up close, as I was hired to advise a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that year.) And then Moscow and Bejing stepped up and aid Hanoi conquered its neighbors.

In general, some of the more recent histories seem to recognize both that the war was necessary and that it was (as the Village Voice said a few years ago) to my shock, "a good war."

I don't pretend to know what historians in future generations will write, if they mention Vietnam at all. If they say U.S. military forces were defeated on the battlefields of Vietnam, that will be false. We did not lose a single major battle, and North Vietnamese officers have conceded that. Their strategy (which I wrote about more than 30 years ago) was never to defeat us on the battlefield, but rather to tie us down and rely on the "progressive forces" of the world to pressure Congress into cutting off funds. In my 1975 book Vietnamese Communism I document how they used a similar strategy to defeat the French in 1954 and told their troops that victory would likely come via the political struggle rather than the armed struggle.

I don't deny that like a lot of veterans I have strong emotions about aspects of the war. And when I hear people who honestly believe that most of us were "war criminals" and drug abusers it offends me, because that was not what I observed. Sure, there were real war crimes -- we punished several. My Lai was worse than most Americans were ever told. But they were not official policy or a common practice.

What Kerry did or did not do in Vietnam is not very important (to me). The charge that he shot an unarmed wounded man in the back was not mine, but that of his M-60 gunner (who wounded the VC). The charge that he lied about a "fire fight" to get a Purple Heart was not mine, but his commanding officer's and the doctor's who treated him. Given the facts as we know them (based in part upon the Brinkley autobiography), I find the allegations very credible in the Purple Heart case and somewhat credible in the Silver Star case. But I don't believe that my presentation(s) in Boston will address each issue, as that is not my assignment and I would assume that in other settings the officers who served with him will address those issues. (The Boston program is not a "let's get Kerry" program, and in his most recent e-mail Mr. Sherman (who I have never met) said he did not expect to hear Kerry's name mentioned often. We have been asked to talk about "myths" of the war, and having written a series of articles with that general title in the mid-1960s I know something about that issue. I suspect that my formal remarks will focus on things like alleged U.S. support for French colonialism, alleged violations of the Geneva Accords, the 1956 elections issue, the myth that Ho was a potential "Tito," the origins of the NLF and the war in South Vietnam, human rights behavior in both countries, alleged "political prisoners" and "tiger cages," and the like.

I have not been asked to say anything about Kerry, but were I asked I would focus instead upon the efforts of the VVAW, the lies told in the Detroit "Winter Soldiers Investigation," and Kerry's Senate testimony.

I am trying to finish a book this week and won't start planning for Boston until I suspect Saturday. I think Sherman wants me to talk about what might have happened had we simply walked away from Vietnam in 1964 or '65. In that talk I would talk about Lin Biao, Ché Guavara, Ho, Vo Nguyen Giap, Le Duan, and possibly Sun Tzu -- but I doubt seriously John Kerry would figure in.

I've tried to explain why I have doubts about some of Kerry's medals and whether he deserves the label "war hero" or not. It is okay that you disagree. I've also tried to be very candid that I do not have full information and am trying to piece together what we do think we know based upon what he has said and what others have been reported to have said in reputable newspapers (e.g., the Boston Globe) and books (primarily Tour of Duty). But, again, his behavior in Vietnam is in my view largely irrelevant to my opposition to him as a presidential candidate.

He came home, associated himself with a bunch of Communists, Black Panthers, wanna-bes and misfits, and helped spread falsehoods about the war and about the men who had and were fighting there. Many of those lies were embraced by legislators, who in my view betrayed the promise that President Kennedy had made to people seeking freedom around the world.

Had John Kerry been in charge of U.S. foreign policy during that critical period of our history, I think we might well have lost the Cold War.

But it's okay that you disagree. Thanks in no small part to soldiers who have gone off to war over the years, our system is premised upon the right of citizens to disagree, to enter their ideas into the intellectual marketplace, and to vote for the president of their choice (at least among the candidates who qualify for the ballot). As Churchill said, it's the worst of all possible system except for all of the others.