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-Nav Sadra
Discuss the proposition that every American generation needs to re-learn the ‘lessons’ of the Vietnam War.
The proposition is false. To state that every American generation needs to re-learn the lessons of the Vietnam War and apply it to contemporary conflicts is wrong, as it denies the context that both the Vietnam War and the conflict it is being compared to have developed in. A common critique nowadays is to compare the blunders in the second Iraq War to the lessons not remembered in Vietnam. To show that the lessons learned in the Vietnam War cannot apply to conflicts like those in Iraq, this essay will focus on displaying three key differences that separate the two conflicts. Thus, through this, it will be shown that lessons from the Vietnam War cannot apply to another conflict like Iraq as they are not in any way similar.
The first difference separating the two conflicts also sets the Iraq invasion in 2003 apart from all other large-scale military actions taken by the U.S. This was that there was no policy process leading to the decision to launch the invasion into Iraq. There was never a meeting of policymakers or an agenda or even an options paper on the subject. The national security bureaucracy had no opportunity to add their two-cents on the decision, apart from being called upon to help convince the public. If there was any relevant source of expertise both inside and outside the government, it was specifically shunned. This is in complete contrast to the decision-making process that led to the Vietnam War. Even though the Vietnam War decision-making ultimately became increasingly closed with a focus on president Lyndon B Johnson and his Tuesday lunch group, the initial choices taken in 1964 and 1965 to start U.S air and ground wars in Vietnam were the product of a wide-ranging policy process. The bureaucracy of the time was engaged, and the policy alternatives, proposed by ‘doves’ in the governing party like Democrat Mike Mansfield, were discussed and fully examined. Thus, however mistaken the decisions may have been, they cannot be attributed to any shortcuts in the decision-making processes as LBJ was known for having run a Cabinet government where the Cabinet were collectively seen as responsible for governance. This allowed President Johnson to give both sides a fair hearing in order to create a sense of cohesion.
The second difference that sets apart the Iraq War from the Vietnam War was that it was a war of aggression by the U.S. It had been the Americans first major offensive they had started in over a century. Prior to this Iraq invasion, the U.S military ventures of the 20th century were either a minor venture such as the one in Grenada in 1983 or, in the case of major wars, a reply to the use of force by someone else. The U.S involvement in South East Asia is an example of the latter. It was a response to the insurgency by North Vietnam to seize South Vietnam. Even Operation desert storm in 1991 was a direct response to the aggression by Iraq invading its neighbour Kuwait. When that aggression was reversed by expelling the Iraqis from Kuwait, the U.S had achieved its aim. Thus, when Fulbright scholars like Heather Marie Stur compare the two conflicts involving Iraq in their articles for newspapers like The National Interest, they are wrong. These conflicts cannot be regarded as similar since the U.S aggression is a key distinguishing factor that establishes the context for each conflict.
The third difference is related to the first. The Iraq War of 2003 was the plan of a small gang of war-seekers – what Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson has called a ‘cabal’ who could get an inexperienced president in foreign policy to go along with their scheme, selling it to the president as achieving his political objectives. These neo-conservatives used the post 9-11 political situation to conjure up supposed alliances with the Axis of Evil and terrorists in the ‘war on terror’ speech. This mustered up enough jingoism to launch a war. But the base for starting the neo-conservative plan was always narrow. The Vietnam War, in contrast, was a U.S intervention based on a widely held conventional wisdom concerning the rising tide of a monolithic communist movement. The conventions of Containment, The Domino Theory, and the need to uphold American credibility gathered a large base of support for an interventionist foreign policy which sucked the U.S into the quagmire which was the Vietnam War. At the time of the intervention, there was barely any opposition, if there was any it was narrow. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which allowed the use of military force in Vietnam passed with only two votes against it from senators Way Morse and Ernest Gruening. There was no opposition in the house of representatives. Even prominent journalists like Neil Sheehan would only later identify the fallacies and faults with the intervention in Vietnam. Thus, the conventional wisdom pervaded most of the public and the media.
Highlighting the differences between the two conflicts has implications for avoiding future foreign policy blunders. The Cold War is gone, and the Vietnam-era wisdom involving international communism is gone as well. We, still, however, see similar thought processes being applied to contemporary notions of upholding credibility and treating radical Islam as if it were a monolithic force. Avoiding a future blunder means being wary of these thought processes as these comparisons, including the lessons involved, are not applicable to the contemporary world as we inhabit a different set of circumstances to that of the Cold War. We should not lump together conflicts like Vietnam and Iraq as even though they represent two of the costliest blunders for the U.S, there are significant differences as shown in this essay which show that they cannot be compared. Any lessons learned from either conflict cannot apply to the other as the context and the environment which encases each conflict is key.
The author Karl Marlantes says that the Vietnam War changed the United States as a country, that it ‘made us cynical and distrustful of our institutions, especially of government’. Using relevant evidence, assess the accuracy of this statement.
The Vietnam War made the American people cynical and distrustful of institutions. This cynicism was in response to a decline in trust, which had occurred under a growing resentment to the lies that became evident in events like the Tet offensive. With the public being spoon-fed a narrative of victory being around the corner, events like Tet showed that the government was far from transparent with its foreign policy assessments. To show how this cynical nature developed and affected Americans post-Vietnam, the Vietnam syndrome, the POW/MIA issue, and the aftermath of Agent Orange will be explored. These points will show a widespread feeling of distrust across society towards key American institutions like the government.
The Vietnam Syndrome, as Stewart M. Powell states in San Antonio Light, was “the paralysis stemming from America’s failure in Vietnam that restrained U.S. presidents from sending troops into combat for fear of backlash at home.” This paralysis was caused by the public scepticism towards an interventionist foreign policy; in the minds of the public the primary aim for foreign policy was to avoid another Vietnam. This was primarily on display during the foreign policy of president Reagan who had to operate in an atmosphere created by the Vietnam syndrome. In this atmosphere his actions were limited by public and congressional scepticism. For instance, when Reagan expanded military involvement in El Salvador, Congress legislated in return a cap that limited the number of military advisers to 55. In the film industry, this lack of faith in Reagan’s policy was shown in the award-winning documentary El Salvador: Another Vietnam. The fact that this documentary managed to win an Oscar shows that the cynicism towards the government’s foreign policy was widespread in society. Congress also became a place of scepticism for an interventionist foreign policy. Prior to the Vietnam War defeat for the U.S, the executive was trusted with a lot more freedom. The Tonkin Gulf Resolution, for instance, had given President Johnson carte blanche on coming to use military actions. However, post-Vietnam, scepticism towards the executive branches role in foreign policy engagement was met with restrictions put in place by the War Powers act and the Bowland Amendments. The Bowland Amendment, in particular, shows how cynicism was rife in Congress. This was put in place to stop U.S support for the Contras (a rebel group in Nicaragua) developing into a situation similar to that of what occurred in Vietnam.
The second point which shows American scepticism and cynicism towards the state is the POW/MIA issue. This was a belief that Americans were still being held captive in Southeast Asia. This issue was unique to Vietnam in that these issues were not brought up in either the Korean War or World War two. Because the Americans lost the war, the U.S. had no access to areas where missing soldiers were last seen alive, and MIA families also felt that the country, in its wish to rapidly forget the defeat, was also forgetting their relatives. In the mid-1970s Congress took up this issue. The Select Committee in charge of these affairs concluded in December 1976 that “no Americans are still being held alive as prisoners in Indochina, or elsewhere, as a result of the war in Indochina.” Having accepted these findings President Carter appointed the Woodcock Commission to secure the return of any MIA corpses from Vietnam. This commission also agreed that there were no American POWs being held in Vietnam. However, even with these findings being confirmed again, the attempt by Carter only further alienated the families involved. Instead of achieving resolution on this issue, The National League of Families rejected the Woodcock Commission’s verdict and accused President Carter of “disposing of the POWs and MIAs” in order to foster better relations with Vietnam. This scepticism toward government institutions all stems from the lack of trust and the specific context of defeat in Vietnam, which led to the POW/MIA issue remaining as a topic for debate even when it was supposedly resolved by the Woodcock Commission.
The final issue that shows a lack of trust in American institutions is seen in the aftermath of using Agent Orange in the Vietnam War. The key constituent of Agent Orange is dioxin, a chemical that makes total war not on just vegetation but also on the people who are in any way connected to it. Around 12 million gallons of lethal toxin, like Agent Orange, was sprayed in Vietnam, affecting both the Vietnamese and the Americans exposed to it. The use of this toxin affected people like Admiral Elmo Zumwalt’s son who served in Vietnam and died because of his exposure to Agent Orange. Despite the campaigns for compensation for the Americans affected by Agent orange, it was only in 1984 when the first effective legal proceeding was brought forth. In this class action lawsuit, the case was settled out of court and was so broadly defined, that almost nobody got more than $5,000 out of it, in addition to this there was a cut-off point beyond which no one could make a claim. This further frustrated claimants and fuelled cynicism towards public institutions as the implication of the ruling showed a deliberate attempt to underestimate the number of victims. It was not until 2003, long after the death of people like Admiral Zumwalt, when the Supreme Court ruled that the issue had not been put to rest by the 1984 settlement. This was a vindication for those who campaigned for compensation as their cynicism towards the public institutions handling these issues were justified.
In conclusion, it is shown that the Vietnam War did change the United States as a country, in that it made the American people more cynical and distrustful of institutions, and especially of the government. This has been shown in public scepticism concerning the America’s foreign policy, the POW/MIA issue, and the aftermath of Agent Orange, all of which stemmed from the lack of trust that had developed and continued to develop after the Vietnam War.
