This written assignment deals with the lessons to be learned by the American experience of the Vietnam War. This assignment deals with lessons learned in different arenas: diplomatic negotiations, presidential leadership, and cultural/social contexts. With your historian's hat on, briefly write the single most significant lesson you have learned for each of the three areas given above, with reference to what you have learned in the textbook for the whole course to date. For a summary at the conclusion, write a short paragraph about what you have learned in our course as a practical historian, a "lesson learned" for yourself. What you have learned about yourself in the role of being an observor of Vietnam and 20th century events, and what do you value in studying the events of the world's past?
Vietnam War provides the opportunity to learn from history. Analysis of the Vietnam War experience, from the American point-of-view anyway, sheds light on current diplomatic negotiations, presidential leadership, and cultural/social contexts of war. Unfortunately, it would seem that the opportunities to learn from Vietnam had been squandered by the time the War on Terror began in earnest after September 11, 2001. The Vietnam conflict, for example, began as a diplomatic farce. As Young (2014) puts it, "Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara created the illusion that attacks on North Vietnam were alternatives to war rather than war itself," (p. 1). Bombs were used as a darkly ironic form of diplomacy. Therefore, one of the most important lessons learned from Vietnam is that the United States must be more honest and straightforward in its use of force. Use of force cannot be disguised as a form of diplomatic negotiations. "There is a grave danger associated with calling the bombing of another country anything but war," (Young, 2014, p. 1). During the Second Gulf War and the war in Iraq, Bush's strategy was similar in that war was never officially declared. This approach is deceptive not only for the foreign power, but also for the American people. The American people are led to believe that the political conflicts will be resolved diplomatically, when in reality a full-blown war has escalated. A war by any other name is still a war.
In addition to the lesson of botched and deceptive diplomacy, Vietnam presents the opportunity to learn from presidential leadership. Presidential leadership was lacking during the Vietnam War, which is why the diplomatic strategies used by Johnson can be rightfully called deceptive. Johnson told the American public that war in Vietnam was essential to curb the great evil of communism. The fear about communism was deeply ingrained already in the American psyche, and was why Kennedy initially started to look to Southeast Asia prior to his assassination and also led to the Bay of Pigs and other debacles. Fear of communism was simply a propaganda campaign used to dupe the American public into accepting whatever military interventions the government wanted. "Far from an inevitable result of the imperative to contain communism, the war was only made possible through lies and deceptions aimed at the American public," (Young, 2014, p. 1). The process by which Johnson persisted in allocating troops to Vietnam and engaging in war was a sign of poor leadership. Instead of being honest about the intentions of the American government, the president sneakily put American lives in danger over the course of twelve years and pretended that no war was going on. When it was obvious how entrenched American troops had become, the president had lost connection with the American public. This seriously undermined the democratic process and the legitimacy of the presidency in the United States.
The strategy used by the United States in Vietnam has been called "graduated pressure," because the goal was to gradually escalate violent interventions until the communist government responded. The Americans seriously underestimated the communist government in Vietnam by doing this. Moreover, the Americans operated with arrogance and cultural superiority. The American intervention was not necessarily welcomed. There was little domestic support in Vietnam. As Donovan (2012) puts it, "If Vietnam taught us anything, it is that we can help an ally do that, but we cannot do the job by ourselves. The host government has to be interested and active in winning that basic loyalty," (p. 1). It was a self-serving effort that interfered with a sovereign nation, and Americans wreaked havoc on Vietnamese society. It is harder to understand the Vietnamese perspective on the war, given that we are learning history from an American perspective. We may never fully understand the impact of the American War in Vietnam, and how it impacted the future of the country, and influenced the lives of millions of civilians there.
The social and cultural contexts of the war from the American perspective are also important to understand, too. The War in Vietnam gave rise to a massive antiwar movement in America. The peace movement continues to define much of American society, as many Americans have learned lessons from the Vietnam and other wars in history. Unfortunately, there are also a great many Americans who have yet to learn anything from the War in Vietnam. President Johnson did go on to sign the Civil Rights Act, but his legacy is also tainted by the War in Vietnam. Americans at home reacted differently than Vietnamese because the war was on foreign soil, but when the death toll of soldiers rose to over ten thousand, Americans started to pay greater attention to the debacle.
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