The legacy of Vietnam

Legacy of Vietnam

George Herring was the professor of history and the chairperson of the Department of History at the University of Kentucky with several publications at his record. He is considered to be one of the nation's leading experts on the Vietnam War. In 1979, his famous book "America's longest war: the United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975" was published which contain the material about U.S.' participation in Vietnam war that started from the period of President Truman when Vietnam was fighting for its independence from French rule. Then the entire series of dynasties is discussed along with the mistakes and flaws in government policies that led U.S. towards a big failure in Vietnam. The book is quite a good mixture of biases and balances and deals honestly with a controversial topic like that of Vietnam War. Herring did his best in describing all those controversies that are associated with the war and explained the confusion of U.S. authorities over the issue. He provided an in-depth insight into those political, diplomatic and military actions by U.S. which ultimately led to failure. The concluding chapter of the book "The Legacy of Vietnam" is discussed in this essay.

According to Herring, what U.S. did in Vietnam is shameful and this war was the longest and the most complex one for U.S.. One after the other, U.S. presidents got involved in this war and brought shame for the country and people. Apart from this emotional expression, there have been several political, social and economic aspects too. This longest war in the history of U.S. used a high amount of budget for defense purposes, due to which a high rise in inflation occurred which cannot be controlled by any of U.S. presidents of that time. On the other hand, the war has been used by different politicians in order to persuade or dissuade people about the consequences of the war and about different actions taken by President Johnson or President Nixon. Although the war cost 58,000 lives and 350,000 casualties for the U.S., yet it is quite less than what Vietnam suffered from the war. About 2 million Vietnamese were killed during the war. Only in the four-year period from 1969 to 1973, the official number of deaths in South Vietnam is 107,504 while it is more than a half million in North Vietnam and Vietcong. There had been an enormous devastation due to bombings which caused permanent damage to the farmland of the countryside, thus many of the locals became homeless and foodless.

The war was actually between the anti-Communist South and Communist North Vietnam, but it was exaggerated by U.S. President Johnson who sent around 5 million troops on the ground along with the airstrikes on the northern side of the country. His successor, President Nixon exceeded the bombings and evoked a movement of "peace of honor" in 1973 in which it was agreed that U.S. will no longer directly participate in the war. In order to support South Vietnam to get independent from the northern side, Nixon withdrew the ground troops but ordered airstrikes on the supply for the communists. This act of him was highly disregarded amongst the entire nation and as a result a series of anti-war protests was provoked. This eventually led Mr. Nixon to resign pre-maturely in 1974. Overseeing the consequences and the failure of the war, the U.S. congress decided not to supply with any aid or assistance to the southern side, and as expected, the south Vietnam, with no U.S. support, fall to the North Vietnam in 1975. The sudden fall was not expected by U.S. intelligence machinery and once again it failed to prove its authentication of sources and reliability. The major issue is not that what happened to South Vietnam in the post-war circumstances as it was a poor country before the war and it remained the same. The major consequence was the condition of U.S., which according to Herring was "frustrated and bewildered" and "the nation experienced a self-conscious, collective amnesia."