DISRESPECTED FOR DUTY NATION'S APOLOGY OVERDUE TO VIETNAM VETERANS.

Byline: STEVE VLASICH Local View

APRIL marked the 25th anniversary of our rout from South Vietnam that permitted the North Vietnamese to forcibly take over a country we swore to protect.

On Monday we observe another Memorial Day, when our people will pause to honor those in the armed forces who gave up their lives to give Americans the right to choose their own destiny and live as free men.

On this special day it's time to rectify the shabby treatment and lack of respect accorded to those who fought in Vietnam. This maligned and outcast band of brothers stand alone among all veterans of past wars in the public rebuke and repudiation heaped upon them not by our nation's enemies, but rather by many of our fellow Americans.

As a World War II veteran, I look back at America on the eve of that war and remember a country that exhibited a growing sense of isolationism.

Many leading politicians of the day were advocates of the America First movement and held firm that the gathering storm in Europe should not involve us. They argued that the 3,000-mile distance from Europe was the only shield we needed to protect us and keep us from becoming entangled in ``Europe's war.''

Despite a gnawing unease over Hitler's treatment of Germany's Jews, the easy rationalization was that Hitler couldn't be that bad. All of that changed when most of our Pacific fleet was scuttled at Pearl Harbor.

To their credit, our major political parties closed ranks to present a united America that pursued the war not with enthusiasm but with a quiet resolve to beat the dictators as quickly as possible. We assembled a vast citizen army and supplied it with the best weapons of war.

More importantly, Americans supported our troops as they went through Europe and the Pacific to teach the crack German and Japanese fighting forces that the ``soft and decadent'' young Americans could beat them at their own game.

The women of America left home and hearth to work in the nation's defense plants, and people everywhere united to bring the war to a victorious end.

America won, and returning GIs were welcomed home in style by a grateful nation. We secured the right to be free. We did our duty. Our country thanked us, and we felt fulfilled.

Contrast that treatment to what awaited the Vietnam veterans upon their return to the United States. The uniforms they wore made them visible targets of all those who vigorously opposed this unpopular war. The returning veterans met only scorn, including being spat upon, and unbridled hostility, fired up by anti-war activists who convinced many Americans that we had no business helping the South Vietnamese fight communist encroachment.

Our sons and brothers were painted as barbarians who torched Vietnam with napalm and Agent Orange. Some anti-war zealots implied that our fighting men were responsible for the war itself.

This twisted rhetoric defies the logic that old men in authority declare wars, while young men fight them.

Anyone who spent more than 10 minutes in the military service learns that the armed forces demand immediate and complete compliance with any order given by someone of superior rank. To think the troops had control over where they were sent, why they were sent and what they did is not to know the military mind set.

In World War II almost everyone who was eligible to serve did. It was the patriotic thing to do. Slackers were few and far between.

Contrast that with the Vietnam War era when those eligible to serve were reduced in numbers by those who secured academic deferments for college education. Many who faced call-up fled to Canada because they refused to serve.

All others were dispatched to the battlefields in ever-increasing numbers as the war dragged on and became the longest war America ever fought.

As a result, America in the 1960s and 1970s was a land of strange contrasts, a place where the nightly TV news showed embattled GIs killing and being killed while many of their stateside peers scorned the war and those who were fighting it.

It is no small wonder that the Vietnam veteran feels cheated and let down by America, considering the lack of support so necessary to maintain high morale. They took both the bullets and the blame for events beyond their control.

Vietnam veterans were aware of the controversy surrounding their mission and suffered the lack of support and abandonment in cruel ways. Social workers dealing with them felt the low morale led to substance abuse, post-traumatic stress syndrome, inability to work and sleep and a disproportionate suicide rate.

For most there was the hope that if they could just hang on and survive, things would be better upon their return to the United States. Sadly, this was an illusion because the anti-war demonstrators refused to give up and continued to harass everyone in uniform.

Years after the war ended, there was one more crowning insult heaped upon them: the 1995 publication of ``In Retrospect - The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam,'' written by Robert McNamara, who served as secretary of defense during part of the war. In his book he acknowledges that America's involvement was a mistake.

Consider how the Vietnam survivor reacted to this news. Sixty thousand of his comrades were killed. Many more thousands were wounded in mind and body. Thousands more returned suffering the ravages of Agent Orange, the lethal defoliant that stripped the jungles of foliage and a GIs insides. All the suffering and misery. All the fear and loneliness. Everything suffered in the name of duty - now reduced to nothing more than a mistake.

Adding further insult to injury was the sorry record of the Veterans Administration, denying medical benefits to those suffering from Agent Orange exposure. Only after years of persistent agitation by these scorned veterans did VA medical personnel rule that Agent Orange was indeed the cause of their ailments.

For all they bore, for all they suffered, is there a remedy to the shabby treatment given American troops who put their lives on the line in Vietnam under orders of several U.S. presidents?

On this 25th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam war, President Clinton should issue a public apology to those who served there for the lack of support our government and our people gave these brave but disillusioned men and women.

As a lame duck president, Clinton would have nothing to lose. In fact, it would be a refreshing and honest thing for him to do and one that could help heal the breach between Clinton and the veterans who still view him with suspicion.

Today it is both fashionable and therapeutic to apologize for past wrongs. There have been many from world leaders, including the recent apology by Pope John Paul II made to the world's Jews for the Catholic Church's failure to do more for German Jews during the Holocaust. There is closure and redemption as a result of confession and apology.

Apology would mean a lot to the Vietnam veteran, and it would send a strong message that, while we may not approve of any particular war, we who sit at home have no right to denigrate the men and women who fight to preserve our freedom.

On this 132nd Memorial Day let us all agree that those who fought and died in Vietnam earned their right to be honored by all of us. They paid their dues long ago.

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Photo: (color) A member of the 3rd U.S. Infantry places flags on gravesites at Arlington National Cemetery.

Hillery Smith Garrison/Associated Press