The Origins of the Vietnam War 1945-1948

Extract

Although several years have passed since the end of America's involvement in Vietnam, this war remains a highly controversial subject about which great reservoirs of heated emotion are easily let loose. No consensus has been reached concerning the lessons American foreign policy should have learned from this experience, and perhaps more important, how such situations should be approached in the future. Indeed, the dialogue on Vietnam that has taken place among political leaders, scholars, and the public at large has scarcely touched upon this issue at all, but has instead focused upon the question of which segment of American society's actions were justified at the time and which were not. Most recently, the study by Peter Braestrup, entitled Big Story: How the American Press and Television Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of Tet 1968 in Vietnam and Washington, has drawn the conclusion that the American military actually won the Tet offensive, but the media unjustifiably portrayed it as a defeat. Others, such as Robert Gallucci in his book Neither Peace Nor Honor: The Politics of American Military Policy in Viet-Nam, have described how the Pentagon continually claimed that the war was being won in Vietnam when actually it was being lost. In short, the dialogue on Vietnam that has taken place since the war has been primarily a restatement by various people of the same views they held during the war.