DEMOCRACY, STRATEGY, AND VIETNAM
Implications for American Policymaking
Edited by George K. Osborn, Asa A. Clark IV,
Daniel J. Kaufman, and Douglas E. Lute
Lexington, Massachusetts: D.C. Heath, 1987
373 pp., $35.00 (hardcover), $16.95 (paperback)
Within a couple years after the last American units were dispatched from Vietnam in 1975, the war had ceased being a matter of passionate concern to the public. Despite the predictions of some prowar advocates during the 1960s, an American failure in Vietnam did not set off a backlash of recrimination similar to what had taken place in Germany after World War I or in France after the French retreat from North Africa and Indochina. Rather, the country was enveloped in a temporary mass amnesia in which the need to forget triumphed over any desire to learn from the Vietnamese debacle. For most Americans, "letting Saigons be bygones" seemed to be the only sensible policy for a seemingly unwinnable war, a conflict in which the United States had done all that could be expected only to witness her erstwhile South Vietnamese allies' sudden collapse in 1975.
In the "dream factory" of Hollywood, the war was viewed as a total disaster. In numerous films such as Coming Home, The Deer Hunter, and Apocalypse Now, the typical Vietnam veteran was permanently scarred, emotionally and physically, by the war. Only in the latter half of the 1980s have films such as Hamburger Hill and Gardens of Stone appeared with a more complex view of America's role in the war. The world of scholarship has also moved away from the easy moralism of the 1960s and '70s to a more sophisticated view of the war. Thus Stanley Karnow's eloquent and perceptive Vietnam: A History (1983), although critical of America's conduct of the fighting, has no illusions regarding America's enemies or what the triumph of North Vietnam has meant for the South.
With Vietnam safely relegated from the front pages of the newspapers to the pages of the history books, the war has become a serious topic for study. Academia has seen a veritable explosion of courses on the history of the Vietnam War (I teach one at Seton Hall), a phenomenon that was discussed on the front page of the Wall Street Journal a couple years ago. In fact, the study of Vietnam is one of the few remaining growth areas within history departments on American campuses. These courses have helped spurt he publication of Vietnam books, of which George Herring's balanced volume America's Longest War: 1950-1975 has been the most successful.
One factor explaining this fascination with Vietnam is that it has occurred in a country in which losing wars has not been a familiar experience. A national history of military successes--ranging from wars against the British and the Indians to modern conflicts with the Germans, Japanese, and North Koreans--has not accustomed Americans to accept military defeat with equanimity. The comment, mistakenly attributed to football coach Vince Lombardi, that "winning isn't everything, it's the only thing" best expresses the American attitude toward war, and probably toward everything else. As Gen. Douglas MacArthur said, "There is no substitute for victory." Barry Goldwater, a presidential candidate of the 1060s, even published a book with the title Why Not Victory? For Americans, losing is
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