Vietnam
In the annals
of American history, there may be no other country name that evokes such
emotion as the country of Vietnam. The history of this conflict is more than
just a military struggle. The impact
that the Vietnam
conflict had on American culture and foreign policy for many decades to come
makes it a truly watershed war in the life of a relatively young country
Vietnam was not, on the surface as clearly a
moral battleground as World War II or the Civil War had been. That in itself made it more difficult for
Americans to understand and become patriotic about as they had been in prior
wars. Yes, as in past conflicts, we
found ourselves defending our allies, the South Vietnamese against the attacks
of a communist neighbor to the north.
And in that way, it became a struggle to assist an ally, a military
objective that America
had long embraced
But the war was
not just with the North Vietnamese. To a
very large extent, the war was against the Chinese and the Russians who were
using the theater in Vietnam
to wear down the American fighting force.
It was a war that had been going on for many decades before the
Americans got involved as a regional battle
Many foreign
powers had gotten involved and left defeated so when America entered this conflict, it
was a very different kind of war than we had been used to. The armies mixed with the population. There were no uniforms and formations and
battle theaters as battle could occur anywhere at any time. Combine that with a hostile jungle setting
and the complete absence of any battle protocol and you had a formula for
failure if not a very difficult road to success.
Vietnam also is a watchword for the tremendous
resistance movement that rose up on American soil to try to stop the
conflict. This resistance movement
became deeply entangled with a huge change to the social fabric in the rise of
the youth movement, the hippies and the fast moving surge of the civil rights
and the woman’s rights movements. This
made the era of the late 1950s through the early 1970s tremendously difficult
to navigate as a nation
Vietnam did follow somewhat of a predictable
path of invasions, major battles, set backs and regrouping of our forces. But the military faced a huge challenge in
facing the many new war scenarios this difficult combat setting presented. As the casualty count grew, without a clear
cut definition of victory and with very few clear victories to demonstrate to
the American people our superiority, the ability of civilian leadership to
sustain the support for the war effort became jeopardized
Vietnam very much represents a transition in
how America
viewed conflict. We came out of the huge
successes we had seen our military bring in battle. The defeat of Hitler and the axis powers in
World War II gave America
a sense of confidence, of divine calling to prevail militarily and the concept
that we are the good guys and we will always win. But we did not win in Vietnam and that was and is a hard
lesson to learn.
America demonstrated its devout dedication to
the concept of supporting an ally in a warring situation when it committed
troops to the Vietnam
conflict. But there were many lessons to
be learned about preparation and going into a conflict with a strategy that had
a high probability of success. In wars
to come in later years such as Grenada,
the Balkans and the Liberation of Kuwait, we demonstrated that America
had learned those lessons going in with a massive force and achieving victory
before we got bogged down in a long civil conflict
So we can applaud
the bravery of our troops and the willingness of our leadership to learn from a
tough war like Vietnam. The lessons to be learned from Vietnam
are still being worked out. But in the
end, we will be a better nation and a stronger nation because we put ourselves
on the line for a friend, even if the outcome was not the desired outcome
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