For the United States, the Vietnam War is a war that will never go away. This has again been made clear by the public confession of former U.S. Sen. Bob Kerrey and the continuing commentaries on the matter, some expressing outrage and anguish and others trying to explain what seems almost impossible to explain.
More than 30 years after the event, Mr. Kerrey has remorsefully admitted that in leading a U.S. Navy SEALs team, a crack unit in the counterinsurgency campaign, he participated in an action in which 13 to 20 civilians, including women and children, were killed.
It would be of little use for the Pentagon to conduct an investigation into the killings to clarify what happened, as some media commentators have recommended. Little more can be said on the matter than what Mr. Kerrey, the SEAL team leader, has already said. Nevertheless, this incident has reignited the controversy over America's most unpopular war, a war that was lost after 58,000 Americans and between 2 million and 3 million Vietnamese were killed.