Vietnamese War: Impact on American society
There are only a few episodes of modern history that have impacted the US American society severely. Other than Pearl Harbor and 9/11, it was the Vietnam War. The war lasted till 1975. Post WW-II the American society gradually has gathered an opinion that their nation was the most powerful, invincible, and morally supreme and it had to take the responsibility for the world. They felt that America had to ensure the world would not go the evil way. In addition to the Leaders, most US laity thought Communism to be an evil. If the US Americans of that period thought highly of themselves, perhaps they were not blameworthy for it. It was the USA that first built the Nuclear-bomb. It was the USA that first landed a man on Moon and safely returned him to the Earth; and a self-appraisal of being numero uno in moral uprightness was what every nation on the earth was guilty about. The competitor for USA was the Communist bloc for world domination. The initial American involvement was sending military advisers and giving financial aid to South Vietnam. It increased to sending troops to Vietnam for direct action and the demand for men in military service increased. US government employed several methods to draft the young in to military service solely for the purpose of warfare in Vietnam. But many young men were not enthusiastic to get drafted for fighting somebody the USA had basically nothing to do with and many escaped drafting by whatever means they could use. In spite of pressurizing the public, to support fighting the Ho Chi Minh’s men as a means to stop the purported domino effect of Communist menace in south Asia, America lost the Vietnam War. The reason for that was twofold. The tenacity of Ho Chi Minh’s men and the psychological impact the war brought upon the American public.
The US society was split over the war during its entire period. While some were in the same state of mind as it was before the start of the Vietnam War, some changed their opinion. Some among the youth were against it from the beginning. Some who were in favor of it and participated in the war changed their opinion to diametrically opposite view after their war experiences and because of the knowledge gained about the situation in Vietnam.
Many Americans had initially believed in the arguments of successive US governments of the period on the need to intervene in Vietnam’s affairs, in the Domino theory and in seeming certainty of a win. But as the war dragged on for years, people weighed the costs of the war against the reasons for America to go to the far away Vietnam. Except for US involving itself in the war on its own volition, America had no reasons for enmity against the Vietcong or the North Vietnam. As the details of the war like the My Lai massacre came to be known, many in USA realized that America was on the wrong side of the moral question, that the war was not tenable. Some youth outright debunked the Domino theory.
For the first time many in the American society felt that the duty-to-the-state principle can be and in fact was used as a fig leaf to goading the citizens to cater to the whims and fancies of the politicians in power. The American youth got disillusioned with the political leadership of that period. More importantly large sections of American society came forward to refuse to tow a Government policy on the grounds of call of conscience. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. argued that America’s involvement in Vietnam War was discrimination against the poor and the disadvantaged.
Some Vietnam veterans felt that American soldiers were fighting somebody else’s war, not of USA. They thought that while South Vietnamese loyal to the past French colonialists were enjoying a civilian life, America is getting its men go through a tortuous war and getting its men killed in Vietnam.
Lasting impact:
The fear of communism of the type seen in McCarthy-era was probably the first causality in America of the Vietnam War as a lasting impact. Even if the Ho Chi Minh’s men were communists many a young man in USA opposing the war said “I don’t have anything against those in Vietnam”. And the American leadership also underwent major change in its views. The earlier idea of America as a dominant power in the world was given a go by and a new policy of seeking relations with both China and the then Soviet Union, both communist citadels, was adopted. A major shift in American policy influenced by the war towards the end was seeking peace and abandoning a military confrontation with countries supported by or leaning towards the Communist bloc. This of course left the cold war between NATO and the Warsaw pact countries untouched.
The Vietnam War however gave America an experience that was useful in its future wars against Islamic terrorist groups that targeted US interests. The Vietnam War was particularly useful because it was a different kind of war. It was not a frontal war. The terrorists groups used techniques similar to the guerilla type of attacks used by Vietnamese. US had to send armed forces in to situations spatially similar to Vietnam; it had to send troops to areas where it had collaborators as well as enemies like in Vietnam. And the long experience from Eisenhower to Nixon in how the leadership handled the Vietnam War coupled with a decade long combat experience enabled USA to make decisions to send its armed forces to far away areas in fighting several terrorist groups or nations.
References
William Bruce Wheeler, Susan D. Becker, and Lorri Glover. Discovering American Past. Chapter 10: A Generation in War and Turmoil. Boston: MA, 2012. Print.
