To the Editor:

As a company clerk in Vietnam, I was fortunate to be out of the line of fire. Some of my friends were not so lucky, and along with more than 58,000 other Americans, they never made it back home.

Tragically, their deaths were in vain, for they had been sent to fight a war, but not win it.

Justice to their memory, and to the memory of those who lost their lives in the atrocities of Sept. 11, demands that we never again wage war by half-measures, with one hand tied behind our backs and a look of cringing apology on our faces.

In Afghanistan, we must bring the full force of our military might to bear and not resort to pinprick bombing, humanitarian aid and thoughts of cessation of hostilities during Ramadan.

We must proceed with the moral certainty that we are the good and they are the evil; that we stand for life, liberty and happiness, and they for death, slavery and privation.

And finally, we must realize that we are in the beginning stages of a struggle for the very survival of our way of life, against an enemy totally committed to our annihilation.

If our commitment doesn’t match his, much greater horrors await.

David Ragaini ’63

November 4, 2001