With regard to Umar Mukhtar's heartfelt plea for world peace, I would like to raise a few points o­n his deliberation that the Vietnam war was o­ne based o­n a flawed 'Domino Theory'
argument.

Firstly, American intervention at the o­nset of the war between the North and South was not o­ne of conquest but of containment. American forces battled alongside Korean, Australian and South Vietnamese forces as the rest of Southeast Asia, Malaysia and Thailand included prepared for the possibility of the fallout from war in the Indochinese states causing the flow of refugees and communist idealists into their borders.

It is easy today, to sit in our armchairs and pooh-pooh the reasons for war 30 plus years ago, but back then, the reach and threat of communism was very real indeed. There was no oil to fight for, nor an election to win.

No o­ne can ever say if the Domino Theory would or would not have happened, but saying that we in this region are all friends now, and thus, the Domino Theory was wrong is akin to saying that the Berlin Wall should never have been defended, since Germany is now a unified nation and that Commonwealth troops should not have stopped Indonesian commandos when they landed in Labis, since we are now friends in Asean and all.

Umar Mukhtar might have been in the States and yes, those were bad times for veterans and the US military as they were villified, and returning GIs were branded baby killers.

Flash forward in time, and you will notice that today, many Americans regard those very same 'baby killers' as heroes, fighters who fought to contain the spread of communism.

Umar Mukhtar goes o­n to claim that the Americans should have marched o­n to Baghdad in the last Gulf War. The fact that they did not do so is the precise reason why they have the moral high ground in today's worldview. If Powell & co had indeed marched o­n to Baghdad, they would have contravened the UN resolution for ending the occupation of Kuwait. Tempting as it was, they refrained, respecting that now impotent organisation called the United Nations.

Umar Mukhtar's potrayal of French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin as an advocate of reason and fair judgment is laughable at best. Since when have the French been models of international justice? They themselves were kicked out of Vietnam by force, and have always been, before they were put down by the British, aggressive colonialists in America in the early centuries, India, and Indochina. It was up till 10 years ago that the French were still conducting nuclear testing o­n their pacific atolls (read colonial lands)...justice indeed. Stinks more of their need to be belligrent, getting back at De Gaulle's slap in the face by Churchill and Roosevelt.

Umar Mukhtar ends with an attack o­n the two malaysiakini contributors, James Wong Wing o­n and Oon Yeoh, for their lack of capacity to fathom the 'real' truth. Strangely, he ends with the plea that he speaks from his heart and runs the risk of sounding naive.

Real truth as seen from whose perspective? The heart of Umar Mukhtar?