THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2001 — The great irony of Kathy Nguyen’s anthrax-related death yesterday is that it marked the second time the American government let her down. This time, of course, nobody thought to test Nguyen for anthrax until it was too late. But the first time the US ignored her needs occurred in 1975. Nguyen, who owned a bar in Saigon, was one of the last Vietnamese citizens to be rescued from the roof of the American embassy at the close of the war. And her escape was far more perilous than it ever had to be.

News of Nguyen’s death is not the only echo of Vietnam to dominate today’s front pages. Today, both the New York Times and the Boston Globe front their papers with a full color photo of a B-52 airstrike-generated dust cloud rising up from a battlefield that looks like something out of Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. The image conjures up the memory of Operation Rolling Thunder, President Johnson’s flawed B-52 bombing campaign aimed at convincing North Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh to give up the war. Rolling Thunder represented the use of American air power at its worse — massive and misdirected. London’s Mirror tabloid suggested in today’s front-page headline that something very similar was happening now. A WAR LIKE NO OTHER? the headline blared, adding: CONFUSION, DITHERING, TALK OF FULL-SCALE INVASION AND NOW THE B-52S, MOVE IN… 50 DAYS ON FROM SEPT. 11. ARE WE HEADING FOR ANOTHER VIETNAM?

Are we heading for another Vietnam? The short answer is no. This time it’s different. This time we will — we must — win. The US yesterday bombed Taliban fighters. Before the B-52 bombing run, American military planners were all too eager to nibble at the edges of the battlefield. Surely, the thinking went, the Taliban leadership would defect with a few cruise missiles here and there and several well-directed smart bombs. But as it turned out, the earlier strikes only swelled the Taliban’s morale. And now we have B-52 raids, which involve " dumb, " rather than " smart, " bombs, and seem to reflect a change in attitude: if the US can’t get the Taliban to defect, it will eliminate them.

Which brings us back to Kathy Nguyen. While B-52s could not stop the Viet Cong guerilla fighters from making gains in South Vietnam, an American B-52 bombing campaign halted a North Vietnamese offensive in 1972 (without the use of US ground troops) and might have worked — but was not tried — in 1975 when Nguyen scrambled to get on the American helicopter out of her home city.

Smart bombs work fine in wars of convenience. But smart bombs and cruise missiles alone aren’t nearly enough when your country is in a knock-down, drag-out battle for its way of life — as ours is now. In some fashionable liberal circles — such as a group I recently met at a brunch off Brattle Street — it is de rigueur to express dismay that some college students, like the bulk of the American people, actually favor current military action. " How times have changed, " lamented one woman. " Yeah, " I answered. " It’s a lot different when you’re attacked. "

Kathy Nguyen’s memory might best be honored by showing that this time, America won’t forget her and the lessons it learned at her expense or her adopted home, New York.