The Little Brown Reader

The Vietnam War on HistoryChannel.com

HistoryChannel.com: VIETNAM WAR

Here's what I found to be the most compelling portion, considering current events (and current events yet to come):

The U.S. response to Vietnamese communism was essentially to apply a military solution to an internal political problem. America's infliction of enormous destruction on Vietnam served only to discredit politically the Vietnamese that the United States sought to assist. Furthermore, U.S. leaders underestimated the tenacity of the enemy. For the Vietnamese communists, the struggle was a total war for their own and their cause's survival. For the United States, it was a limited war. Despite U.S. concern about global credibility, Vietnam was a peripheral theater of the cold war. For many Americans, the ultimate issue in Vietnam was not a question of winning or losing. Rather, they came to believe that the rising level of expenditure of lives and dollars was unacceptable in pursuit of a marginal national objective.

The domestic consequences of the war were equally profound. From Truman through Nixon, the war demonstrated the increasing dominance of the presidency within the federal government. Congress essentially defaulted to the "imperial presidency" in the conduct of foreign affairs. Vietnam also destroyed credibility within the American political process. The public came to distrust its leaders, and many officials distrusted the public. In May 1970, Ohio National Guardsmen killed four Kent State University students during a protest over U.S. troops invading Cambodia. Many Americans were outraged while others defended the Ohio authorities. As this tragic example reveals, the war rent the fabric of trust that traditionally clothed the American polity. Vietnam figured prominently in inflation, unfulfilled Great Society programs, and the generation gap. The Vietnam War brought an end to the domestic consensus that had sustained U.S. cold war policies since World War II and that had formed the basis for the federal government's authority since the sweeping expansion of that authority under Franklin D. Roosevelt.

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Read It Rating: 10
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 40%