Although this essay sets forth the history of the Vietnam war, it left me very cold because it did not address the absolute idiocy of the war, the craven calculation of huge profits made by Dow Chemical and defense contractors, the horrible toll it took on those whose lives ended or radically changed, and the cultural explosion caused by young people who refused to be cannon fodder for power hungry leaders.
Vietnam created the generation gap and the mercenary model of military service, now the go-to career for working class and low income people with few options in the predatory capitalist economy.
Vietnam created the generation gap and the mercenary model of military service, now the go-to career for working class and low income people with few options in the predatory capitalist economy.
14
Viet Nam was my late dad's third and final war. He came home in 1967 a changed man. He wanted to stay in the Army for thirty years. He decided to retire in 1968. The reason he gave me were his was tired of moving our family every three or so years. I always wondered if there was more. Sadly, I will never know since he passed away 5 1/2 years ago.
8
Excellent article! I hope the author follows up with the details of the "second half" of the 30 Years War.
JimF from Sewell
JimF from Sewell
6
A good short summary of a war that fewer and fewer adult American citizens know much about. Many opportunities for peace were ignored or squandered; when the shooting started, stubbornness on the American side (LBJ, Robert McNamara, Gen. Westmoreland; later Nixon/Kissinger) pushed it into a massive debacle. DJT and his boys have the same psychic profile and urge to put on a big, big reality show. Lock up your sons and daughters; they're going to let the dogs out soon!
17
Robert Strange McNamara knew the price of everything, and the value of nothing.
15
I hear a lot of military chest beating about how badly a war would fare with us against the Chines. Many point to superior tech and hardware we have versus an inexperienced young massive Chinese military (much younger than our troops I may add and Russia's yet more resilient). But before the dogs of war are unleashed whether because of Taiwan, North Korea, or those man made military based islands, stop and consider that China was involved in the Viet Nam War and wanted it free of Imperialists, even backing the Communist government. http://www.usefulhistorian.com/2014/03/06/dont-forget-chinas-role-in-the...
3
U.S forgot the lesson of understanding the enemy. You didn't understand our culture and our history. That is why you lost.
30
No one who made policy paid attention to "Fire in the Lake," by Frances FitzGerald.
No one who made policy understood Ho Chi Minh, or even tried to.
No one who made policy understood Ho Chi Minh, or even tried to.
4
You got that right. And we are still, today, unable to learn that lesson, not only from your history, but from/about human nature.
9
Phan Tran
I suggest that what you say is accurate only in part in that a failure to know, assess, and understand Vietnamese history were among a number of reasons the U.S. cause failed.
But the underlying reason was in taking a position that from the beginning was blind to Vietnamese nationalism as apart from the global struggle between socialism and capitalism, and justified in an historical context.
Chiefly, the egregious error was in determining by an automatic presumption guided by U.S. policy predating WW II that the liberation forces that defeated the French were "an enemy." Every decision associated with that war after that was founded on that assumption and had in its DNA that singular, determinative characteristic.
I suggest that what you say is accurate only in part in that a failure to know, assess, and understand Vietnamese history were among a number of reasons the U.S. cause failed.
But the underlying reason was in taking a position that from the beginning was blind to Vietnamese nationalism as apart from the global struggle between socialism and capitalism, and justified in an historical context.
Chiefly, the egregious error was in determining by an automatic presumption guided by U.S. policy predating WW II that the liberation forces that defeated the French were "an enemy." Every decision associated with that war after that was founded on that assumption and had in its DNA that singular, determinative characteristic.
2
The article rather glosses over the American decision not to comply with the requirement for national elections within two years specified by the 1954 Geneva Agreement. The reason was simple. Ho Chi Minh would have won 80% of the vote.
Three million dead, and countless injured, and all for this?
Three million dead, and countless injured, and all for this?
34
Good post...I immediately thought the same thing. Both the French and the Americans failed to take the opportunities for peace available to them--the French for arrogantly pursuing their own colonial aims; the Americans for misreading the dynamic between Ho and Mao, and seeking a puppet government to fight a proxy, anti-communist war.
9
A 2015 Pew Global Image poll finds that 78% of Vietnamese view the U.S. favorably, compare to 13% with an unfavorable view--third highest in all Asia. Of course, their proximity to China has something to do with that. Nonetheless, just imagine what our positive ratings might be if we had not supported French recolonialization, and stepped in for them when they failed.
14
Great essay, Professor Goscha. You packed a lot of history. timelines and issues into your op-ed. I served as a medical corpsman (31 May 1967 - 31 May 1968) during the great turning point in the war when the Tet Offensive of 1968 broke the will of the people back home in the world for the war and the brass in country and the suits back in the world had to acknowledge "there was no light at the end of the tunnel." But even in the beginning of my tour of duty, the wounded grunts on the ward told me the war was already lost well before the Tet Offensive. At the base hospital where I served, we treated wounded American and South Korean (ROK Marine) grunts, wounded Vietnamese civilians and on rare occasions even wounded VC guerrillas. So I saw the human face of war and looking back now in the autumn of my years see them all as victims of that tragic war.
24
3,000,000 Vietnamese. The numbers of dead should be staggering. For many of us it is.
More than staggering. Depressing. Depressing because of the tragedy inflicted on the dead, their friends, their families, their cultures... Depressing because in this life we share numbers are meaningful primarily to those who have no control over creating more dead.
Depressing because that number grossly misrepresents, and under estimates, the dead between 1945 and 1975.
Staggering because 1967 is a convenient date for this series but seriously obfuscates the moral and ethical impact of that war, and its children wars, on SE Asian, and indeed U.S. consciousness.
Laotian dead? 115,000, "estimated"
Cambodian dead? 273,000, "estimated," not including 1.7 million, 21% of Cambodia's population, murdered by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1979.
Australians? 521
New Zealanders? 37
South Koreans? 4,687, "estimated"
I've made it a point to remember just 14 men who died in that war the 14 months that I was there, from April 1969 to June 1970. And I mourn the young men we hunted down and killed, or killed when they were trying to kill us. I'd tell you how many if I knew for certain. How about an estimate? 40.
That's the very least I can do to remember them, and to make sure their deaths affect my life, and how I comprehend the genetic insanity that can incline human beings if we don't struggle against ideology, be it of self, nationalism, religion or other, sadly, human causes.
More than staggering. Depressing. Depressing because of the tragedy inflicted on the dead, their friends, their families, their cultures... Depressing because in this life we share numbers are meaningful primarily to those who have no control over creating more dead.
Depressing because that number grossly misrepresents, and under estimates, the dead between 1945 and 1975.
Staggering because 1967 is a convenient date for this series but seriously obfuscates the moral and ethical impact of that war, and its children wars, on SE Asian, and indeed U.S. consciousness.
Laotian dead? 115,000, "estimated"
Cambodian dead? 273,000, "estimated," not including 1.7 million, 21% of Cambodia's population, murdered by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1979.
Australians? 521
New Zealanders? 37
South Koreans? 4,687, "estimated"
I've made it a point to remember just 14 men who died in that war the 14 months that I was there, from April 1969 to June 1970. And I mourn the young men we hunted down and killed, or killed when they were trying to kill us. I'd tell you how many if I knew for certain. How about an estimate? 40.
That's the very least I can do to remember them, and to make sure their deaths affect my life, and how I comprehend the genetic insanity that can incline human beings if we don't struggle against ideology, be it of self, nationalism, religion or other, sadly, human causes.
42
I remember Vietnam as a huge waste of human lives, money and opportunity.
There is really nothing more to say.
There is really nothing more to say.
17
Don't forget dioxin, Agent Orange, which still follows us. Don't forget the veterans who came back maimed; missing eyes, limbs, third degree burns and psychiatric cases scarred for life.
Don't forget Kent State. Four students were killed, and Dean Kahler was paralyzed.
We're still paying for Vietnam.
Don't forget Kent State. Four students were killed, and Dean Kahler was paralyzed.
We're still paying for Vietnam.
13
Thank you for this fine article, which I immediately called to the attention of my students in a first year university course on 'World History 1945-Present', not least for its timely, opening reminder of how the significance -- indeed, the basic "facts" -- of history appear radically different, depending on one's interpretive vantage point. Appropriately, Professor Goscha seems to track along with some of Robert McNamara's related, poignant (if, as some of Mr. McNamara's critics assert, self-serving) observations in Errol Morris's now-classic documentary, 'The Fog of War'. In this connection, it is noteworthy that, whereas Professor Goscha implies the United States' complicity in Diem's overthrow and death, Mr. McNamara gave the sense of assiduously eliding that key point in the movie. Of course, for present-day purposes, all that this article recounts stands as vital wisdom, when it comes to the unforeseen consequences of ill-advised interventions and manipulations -- whether undertaken with respect to, say, the affairs of other countries; the construction of public opinion; or the "truth", itself.
7
Today, Le Duan Street, very wide, runs down central HCMC from the Independence Palace to the SaiGon Zoo....Plus, you'll see the U.S.A. Consulate where numerous locals que daily to interview or be granted immigration/student/business/tourist VISAs to come to the U.S.A..
7
An interesting speculation might be whether Kennedy would have reacted as LBJ did.
In his book Advisor to the President, Clark Clifford (who advised both) said that Kennedy was analytical and cool about American involvement in Vietnam, but LBJ took our reverses personally and said he didn't want to preside over the US being defeated by a 3rd world country. He made some decisions to escalate over objections from advisors (including, of course, Clifford himself).
In his book Advisor to the President, Clark Clifford (who advised both) said that Kennedy was analytical and cool about American involvement in Vietnam, but LBJ took our reverses personally and said he didn't want to preside over the US being defeated by a 3rd world country. He made some decisions to escalate over objections from advisors (including, of course, Clifford himself).
12
This train wreck was unfolding since the very day Kennedy took office if not before. The specter of Joe McCarthy as well as bureaucratic backbiting and military brass careerism ruled our intervention from that day and sooner or later the lies and the coverup made it impossible to reverse course. Fighting Communism only served as a daily homily. It's all in Haberstam's The Best and the Brightest, a must read for anyone interested in the minutiae of sausage making then, now and tomorrow and in the case of Vietnam both literally and figuratively. The sad sad story is that there were many flags waived along that track from the very beginning. But somehow the train never stopped.
8
Ah, yes - "The Best and the Brightest." A book being read by Steve Bannon. I would recommend he read also "Dereliction of Duty," by H. R. McMaster.
3
Too bad Steve Bannon won't really learn anything from 'the Best and the Brightest'. A closed (and demented) mind.
Bannon won't be happy until we get into yet another endless, stupid war (in the Middle East).
Bannon won't be happy until we get into yet another endless, stupid war (in the Middle East).
3
It is ugly, though truthful, to think of the "Leaders" and power-brokers who create "a War" - not for Freedom, not for Equal Rights or Religious Rights, not even for Democracy - just in the bold faced name of GREED, to justify the stealing an entire Country. But, don't worry. They'll get a Spin Doctor in there to tell you how wonderful and justified it is.
While History has shown us that this is not the newest Act in Town - it IS appalling to think that Human Nature has learned nothing after too many Wars, all fought for the wrong reasons.
The hundreds of thousands of dead soldiers and civilians. The wasted Billions of dollars. The weapons, thrown in the dirt as they run, by "soldiers" we hired and paid and trained - only to have those same weapons used against us by the enemy. And, more times than not, the Wars that America has covertly funded, and/or sent troops into, has always made a bad situation worse.
We can do better than this. We truly can.