Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon News

Shame on Janet Reno
It was Fidel Castro, not the Miami González family, who kept Elián from his father.
By David Horowitz
[04/25/00]

The Elián photo conspiracy
Once again, Republicans let their hatred of Clinton cloud their political judgment.
By Joan Walsh
[04/25/00]

The Elián metaphor
If we really cared about Cuban children, we'd end the embargo.
By Joe Conason
[04/25/00]

Looking back on Vietnam
Salon presents a week-long retrospective on the war and its consequences, at home and abroad.
By Fiona Morgan
[04/24/00]

What did we learn from Vietnam?
Bobbie Ann Mason, Michael Lind, Philip Caputo, Jonathan Schell and others talk about how the war changed the U.S., and the world.
By Fiona Morgan and Daryl Lindsey
[04/24/00]

Complete archives for News

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Fiona Morgan

April 25, 2000 |  Todd Gitlin, author of "The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage"

The war accomplished the deaths of about 3 million Vietnamese. It accomplished nothing for the political future of Vietnam -- Vietnam became communist, as it would have without our involvement. I can't think of anything constructive that it accomplished, except perhaps to remind subsequent political leaders that they should not arrogantly assume that they can work their political will wherever and whenever they want. It convinced them moreover that they should think twice before committing American military forces without major alliances -- it damaged the prospect for unilateral action, which is a good thing. Overall, it was an absolutely horrible moment in American history.

I think now of revisionist arguments what I thought then, that they reflect a tremendous ignorance of the discrepancy between what the Vietnamese communists felt about the war and what we did. Vietnam wasn't really very important to us, as the end of the war showed. It was everything to the Vietnamese communists, and they would have fought for a hundred years. I suppose we could have killed them all -- I don't think that's what the revisionists had in mind. But short of pulverizing the country, I don't see how a war could have been won.

Also Visit our Vietnam: 25 Years Later site for more articles like this one.

It's made American leadership reluctant to commit American force for any purpose other than a weekend war, or a war where we have overwhelming strength and strong international support. Iraq and Kosovo fit the second bill, and Granada and Panama fit the first. This cuts across political lines. The military, if anything, is the most reluctant to repeat the lessons of Vietnam. It doesn't want to take the chance of a prolonged war that incurs significant casualties and it doesn't want to get hung out to dry.

Some people on the left and on the right have concluded from the Vietnam War, on the isolationist side, that the U.S. should not commit military force anywhere for any purpose. I think that's mistaken. Because the U.S. was criminally wrongheaded in the case of Vietnam, it does not follow that there can be no legitimate use of force. I think a use of force toward humanitarian ends is legitimate. It should be done in alliance -- it should not be done unilaterally. It would have been absolutely right to do it in Rwanda, it was right to do it in Bosnia, and it would have been right to do it in Kosovo, where it should have been done earlier.

But the war traumatized American elites and led them to stall where they could have actually done some good with military force. The Weinberger principle is the recourse of elites whose political grip was loosened, or even shattered, by a horrendous mistake in Vietnam, and I'm glad they learned something. It's certainly the case that political support is an absolute requirement in a democratic society for an extended military intervention, and it should be very rare. I would not accept the interpretation that would bar the use of military force in low investment, relatively rapid commitments of military force in cases like Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo. I'm speaking in favor of the possibility, not the inevitability, of military intervention in alliance with substantial other forces whose responsibility should not be usurped by us.

Because the war was so catastrophic, it loosened the ideal of a single American identity. A great deal of American political identity came from the Cold War, and Vietnam seemed to be the logical consequence of the Cold War. Because so much was claimed for the Vietnam War, as a core of American commitment in the world, the catastrophe of the war undermined the country's ability to formulate a common identity. In addition, the centrifugal movements in American society since then have deepened that difficulty.

The war did a lot to undermine the authority of institutions. It wasn't the war by itself, but in the setting of general revolt. But all in all, the war is an important part in this turn against authority, suspicion of power, suspicion of the government in particular, and that has constructive as well as destructive consequences. Obviously because the war was so unpopular, the draft was ditched, and in that sense America returned to a previous sort of minimizing of citizen commitment. Even today, it would take some immense upheaval to reinstate the draft. Probably, ironically, the war helped accelerate the attempt to technologize war, to make the armed forces dependent on weaponry that would not put American armed forces in harm's way. We've gotten a more professional and a more technologically dependent military in part as a consequence of the aversion to the Vietnam War.

One other element which is elusive is that the war put a hole in the American heart, and it undermined some wishful and partly confirmed mystique of American destiny. It taught many of us that evil wasn't something that grew on trees elsewhere but that grew on our own, as well. Tom Engelhardt has written a book called "The End of Victory Culture" and that concept is right. Much of America's conception of itself was built on a sense of our inevitable rendezvous with destiny and our inevitable triumph. We were the winners. That's what God had given us, the capacity to win. That was broken, and I don't think it has been repaired. It's not easily repaired. That is probably a good thing, on balance, although there's a loss in it also.

Next page | "Strange as it may sound, Americans believe more in ghosts now because of the Vietnam War"