write an essay on the topic indicated in the files attached. The essay is to be 5-6 pages (1500-1800 word).

write an essay on the topic indicated in the files attached. The essay is to be 5-6 pages (1500-1800 word).
HIST 2732: World History 1945-1992: The Age of Three Worlds Essay Writing Guide – Winter 2021 General Information: You are to write an essay on the topic indicated below. The essay is to be 5-6 pages (1500-1800 word). The paper should be double spaced, in 12 point font with standard margins. Title page or citation pages do not count toward the page count. The paper must present a thesis statement that answers the question you were given. The main source for the paper is the book assigned for this course (Attached). However, you may use additional outside sources if you find it helpful to provide more context. All sources must be cited in Chicago style, meaning footnotes or endnotes. Topic: Essay: A Vietnam Reader Question: After reading “Michael H. Hunt (ed), A Vietnam War Reader: A documentary History from American and Vietnamese Perspectives.”(attached) : How are the two perspectives different and what accounts for these differences? What if anything do the two perspectives have in common? How do historians write an “objective” history of this event when dealing with different perspectives”? You will be required to read the book “Michael H. Hunt (ed), A Vietnam War Reader: A documentary History from American and Vietnamese Perspectives. (Attached in the File). Essay Writing Tips and Suggestions These are some general tips on writing essays that might be useful to you. 1. Introduce your main thesis (argument) clearly in the first few paragraphs. In this case your argument will be an answer to the question I have given you. 2. Throughout your paper, stay on topic and include only information and analysis that is directly relevant to the main thesis. Make sure the reader understands how this information is relevant to the main thesis. 3. Be sure that you are proving rather than just stating your argument. While your opinion is important in this assignment, what’s more important is your ability to support your opinion and convince the reader t 4. End your paper with a brief conclusion that sums up your argument and reminds the reader how you have proven it. Don’t make the conclusion too long or too repetitive 5. Avoid using the passive voice, “it was thought” etc. If possible explain who is performing the action, “Mary thought” etc. 6. Remain in the same tense, avoid shifting from past to present tense. Usually history is written in the past tense, but at times when writing about recent history you might need to shift into the present tense. Avoid doing this mid sentence or mid paragraph if possible. 7. Try to retain a certain formality in your writing without being unnecessarily verbose or pretentious. Use plain language as much as possible but don’t be conversational or colloquial. 8. Be specific in your adjectives, avoid, “good”, “great”, “nice” etc. 9. Introduce your quotations, don’t just change who the speaker is without telling us who that person is and why you’re quoting them, ex, “in the words of historian Mary Beard…” 10. Avoid relying on opinion quotations as evidence. Just because a historian thinks something doesn’t make it true. You still have to prove it’s true 11. Stay away from “I intend to show” or “this paper will”. It’s a short paper. You don’t need to tell the reader what you’re going to write, just do it. If your argument is well laid out the reader should be able to follow it and understand what you’re arguing without that much direction.
write an essay on the topic indicated in the files attached. The essay is to be 5-6 pages (1500-1800 word).
Copyright 2010. The University of North Carolina Press. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 2/20/2021 1:44 PM via UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA AN: 315559 ; Michael H. Hunt.; A Vietnam War Reader : A Documentary History From American and Vietnamese Perspectives Account: s5519424 A viETNAm WAR READER hunt, A Vietnam War Reader final pages, i EBSCOhost – printed on 2/20/2021 1:44 PM via UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use This page intentionally left blank EBSCOhost – printed on 2/20/2021 1:44 PM via UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use the university of north carolina press chapel hill A viETNAm WAR READER edited by michael h. hunt A Documentary History from American and Vietnamese Perspectives hunt, A Vietnam War Reader final pages, iii EBSCOhost – printed on 2/20/2021 1:44 PM via UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use © 2010 the university of north carolina press All rights reserved Designed by Kimberly Bryant Set in Arnhem, The Sans, and Coldharbour Gothic types by Rebecca Evans Manufactured in the United States of America The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A Vietnam War reader : a documentary history from American and Vietnamese perspectives / edited by Michael H. Hunt. — 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-8078-3350-6 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn 978-0-8078-5991-9 (pbk : alk. paper) 1. Vietnam War, 1961–1975 — Sources. I. Hunt, Michael H. ds557.4.v 626 2010 959.704 ´3 — dc22 2009031224 The map of Vietnam is from The World Trans­ formed: 1945 to the Present by Michael H. Hunt. Copyright © 2004 by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Used with permission. cloth 14 13 12 11 10 5 4 3 2 1 paper 14 13 12 11 10 5 4 3 2 1 hunt, A Vietnam War Reader final pages, iv EBSCOhost – printed on 2/20/2021 1:44 PM via UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use To the students in my Vietnam War course at Colgate University, UNC–Chapel Hill, and Williams College (1978–2008), whose enthusiasm for these documents fed my own. hunt, A Vietnam War Reader final pages, v EBSCOhost – printed on 2/20/2021 1:44 PM via UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use This page intentionally left blank EBSCOhost – printed on 2/20/2021 1:44 PM via UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use Contents Preface xiii Introduction. The Vietnam War: From Myth to History xvii Guide to Abbreviations xxiii Chronology xxv Map of Vietnam xxix 1. The Setting: Colonialism and the Cold War (to 1954) 1 Emergence of a Nationalist Vision 4 1.1 Nguyen Dinh Chieu, funeral oration, 1861 4 1.2 Phan Boi Chau, call for Vietnamese to awaken, 1907 5 1.3 Phan Chu Trinh, open letter to the French governor-general, 1907 6 Ho Chi Minh’s Rise to Prominence, 1919–1945 8 1.4 Recollections of discovering Communist anticolonialism in July 1920 8 1.5 Statement on behalf of the Indochinese Communist Party, 18 February 1930 10 1.6 Proclamation of the Viet Minh–led independence struggle, 6 June 1941 12 1.7 Declaration of independence, 2 September 1945 12 The Popular Appeal of Revolution 14 1.8 Nguyen Thi Dinh on her political awakening in the 1930s 14 1.9 Truong Nhu Tang on his conversion to the nationalist cause in the mid-1940s 17 1.10 Peasants in the Red River Delta on the Viet Minh in the late 1940s 19 Deepening U.S. Engagement in Indochina, 1943–1954 21 1.11 U.S. policy shifts from self-determination to containment, 1943–1950 22 1.12 Ho Chi Minh, denunciation of U.S. intervention, January 1952 24 1.13 The Eisenhower administration on the French collapse, March–April 1954 25 hunt, A Vietnam War Reader final pages, vii EBSCOhost – printed on 2/20/2021 1:44 PM via UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use 2. Drawing the Lines of Conflict, 1954–1963 29 A Country Divided or United? July 1954–December 1960 32 2.1 Ho Chi Minh, report to the Communist Party Central Committee, 15 July 1954 32 2.2 “Final Declaration of the Geneva Conference,” 21 July 1954 33 2.3 The Eisenhower administration on the Geneva accords, July and October 1954 34 2.4 Ngo Dinh Diem, speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, 13 May 1957 36 2.5 Hanoi goes on the offensive, 1959–1960 37 The Perspective of nlf Activists 41 2.6 Le Van Chan, interview on rural organizing during the late 1950s 41 2.7 Regroupees interviewed on returning to the South in the early 1960s 44 Reacting to nlf Success, 1961–1963 46 2.8 The Kennedy administration wrestles with an insurgency, November 1961 47 2.9 Central Intelligence Agency, secret memo on the nlf, 29 November 1963 49 The Diem Regime in Crisis, July–November 1963 50 2.10 John F. Kennedy, press conference, 17 July 1963 50 2.11 Diem, press interview, 26 July 1963 51 2.12 Communist leaders’ appraisals of the U.S. position, summer and fall 1963 52 2.13 The Kennedy administration contemplates a coup, August–November 1963 53 3. From Proxy War to Direct Conflict, 1963–1965 57 The Saigon Government on the Ropes, November 1963–August 1965 59 3.1 A new president faces an old problem, November–December 1963 59 3.2 Communist Party Central Committee, resolution 9, December 1963 61 3.3 pavn officer, interview on the military effort, 1963–1964 64 3.4 James B. Lincoln, letter comparing Vietnamese forces, 14 August 1965 65 hunt, A Vietnam War Reader final pages, viii EBSCOhost – printed on 2/20/2021 1:44 PM via UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use Johnson Escalates, August 1964–April 1965 66 3.5 Tonkin Gulf resolution approved by Congress, 10 August 1964 67 3.6 McGeorge Bundy to Lyndon Johnson, 7 February 1965 68 3.7 Johnson, speech at Johns Hopkins University, 7 April 1965 69 Hanoi Prepares for War, October 1964–May 1965 71 3.8 Conversations between Vietnamese and Chinese leaders, October 1964 and April 1965 71 3.9 Pham Van Dong, statement on terms for a settlement, 8 April 1965 73 3.10 Le Duan, letter to Nguyen Chi Thanh on U.S. military escalation, May 1965 73 “Going off the Diving Board,” June–July 1965 75 3.11 Johnson, comments to Robert Mc Namara, 21 June 1965 76 3.12 George Ball opposes a major troop commitment, June–July 1965 77 3.13 Mc Namara, memo to Johnson, 20 July 1965 79 3.14 Johnson, meetings with advisers, 21–25 July 1965 80 3.15 Johnson, press conference statement, 28 July 1965 83 4. The Lords of War, 1965–1973 85 Strategies for Victory, September–November 1965 87 4.1 Le Duan, letter to comrades in cosvn, November 1965 88 4.2 William Westmoreland, directive to U.S. commanders, 17 September 1965 89 4.3 Mc Namara’s deepening doubts, November 1965 and May 1967 90 The Tet Offensive Gamble, July 1967–March 1968 93 4.4 Hanoi’s difficult strategic decision, July 1967 and January 196?8 93 4.5 The impact on the Johnson administration, March 1968 96 4.6 Communist Party assessment, March 1968 98 Getting beyond Stalemate, November 1968–July 1969 100 4.7 drv delegation, meeting with Chinese leaders, 17 November 1968 100 4.8 Richard Nixon plots a way out, March–May 1969 103 4.9 Ninth cosvn conference, resolution, early July 1969 105 hunt, A Vietnam War Reader final pages, ix EBSCOhost – printed on 2/20/2021 1:44 PM via UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use Talking and Fighting, April 1970–January 1973 106 4.10 Nixon, address on the invasion of Cambodia, 30 April 1970 106 4.11 Le Duan, letter to cosvn leaders, July 1970 107 4.12 Henry Kissinger and Xuan Thuy, exchange of views, 7 September 1970 110 4.13 Nixon and Kissinger, taped Oval Office conversation, 2 June 1971 111 4.14 Nixon and Kissinger, taped Oval Office conversations, April–Ma?y 1972 112 4.15 Hanoi on striking a compromise settlement, May–October 1972 114 4.16 Nixon on the Saigon government’s survival, October–November 1972 116 4.17 Nguyen Van Thieu, address to the National Assembly, 12 December 1972 118 4.18 Peace agreement signed in Paris, 27 January 1973 120 5. The View from the Ground, 1965–1971 123 To the Rescue, 1965–1967 126 5.1 Jack S. Swender, letter to “Uncle and Aunt,” 20 September 1965 126 5.2 George R. Bassett, letter to “Mom, Dad, and Kids,” 28 March 1966 127 5.3 John Dabonka, letter to “Mom and Dad,” 23 December 1966 127 5.4 Carl Burns describing the dawning doubts about the war effort, 1966–1967 128 5.5 Richard S. Johnson Jr., letters to “Penny,” February–March 1967 129 In the Shadow of the Giant, 1965–1968 130 5.6 Two Saigon loyalists between a rock and a hard place, 1965 131 5.7 Ha Xuan Dai, diary entries, November 1965 136 5.8 Nguyen Van Hoang, interview on going into the army in 1967 137 5.9 Huong Van Ba, oral history of fighting, 1965–1968 138 5.10 Nguyen Van Be, personal papers, 1966 139 5.11 Le Thi Dau, recollections of service in the resistance, late 1950s–late 1960s 142 The War Goes Sour, 1968–1971 143 5.12 Soldiers of Charlie Company on the My Lai massacre of 16 March 1968 143 5.13 David W. Mulldune, letters home, May–October 1968 146 hunt, A Vietnam War Reader final pages, x EBSCOhost – printed on 2/20/2021 1:44 PM via UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use 5.14 Clarence Fitch, interview on discontent in the military in 1968 147 5.15 Rose Sandecki, reflections on caring for casualties, 1968–1969 149 5.16 William Kahane, recalling conditions in support bases, late 1970–early 1971 151 Staggering through an Endless War, 1968–1971 152 5.17 Trinh Cong Son, “A Lullaby of the Cannons for the Night” 152 5.18 “ k-11,” comments on morale building, January 1969 154 5.19 Dang Thuy Tram, diary entries, May–July 1969 155 5.20 Trinh Duc, recollections of his rural work, 1968–1971 157 6. The War Comes Home, 1965–1971 161 Opening Shots, 1965 163 6.1 Paul Potter, antiwar speech in Washington, 17 April 1965 163 6.2 Hans J. Morgenthau, articles critical of intervention, April and July 1965 166 Criticism Goes Mainstream, 1966 –1968 167 6.3 J. William Fulbright on “the arrogance of power,” 1966 168 6.4 Martin Luther King Jr., address on conscience and the war, 4 April 1967 169 6.5 John C. Stennis, speech on a more forceful war strategy, 30 August 1967 170 6.6 Walter Cronkite, editorial comment on the Tet Offensive, 27 February 1968 172 6.7 Marvin Dolgov, recollections of the “dump Johnson” movement 172 Rising Contention and Polarization, 1969–1970 174 6.8 Weathermen manifesto, 18 June 1969 174 6.9 The Nixon administration appeals for public support, November 1969 176 6.10 Kent State and public opinion, May 1970 178 The Vietnam Veterans Movement, 1971 181 6.11 John Kerry, statement before a Senate committee, 23 April 1971 181 6.12 Nixon, address from the White House, 7 April 1971 183 hunt, A Vietnam War Reader final pages, xi EBSCOhost – printed on 2/20/2021 1:44 PM via UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use 7. Outcomes and Verdicts 185 Endgame, 1974–1975 188 7.1 Le Duan, letter to Pham Hung, 10 October 1974 188 7.2 Thieu, resignation speech, 21 April 1975 190 7.3 Gerald Ford, address on the eve of the fall of Saigon, 23 April 1975 190 7.4 Le Duan, victory speech, 15 May 1975 191 South Vietnamese Looking Back on a Lost Cause 192 7.5 Nguyen Cao Ky, interview from 1977 192 7.6 Ly Tong Ba, interview from the late 1980s 194 7.7 Vu Thi Kim Vinh, interview from the late 1980s 195 Living with the Ghosts of a Long War 197 7.8 Micheal Clodfelter, essay from the 1980s 197 7.9 Bao Ninh, novel on the sorrow of war, 1991 199 Political Verdicts 202 7.10 Ronald Reagan, remarks at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 11 November 1988 202 7.11 Vo Nguyen Giap and Nguyen Co Thach clash with Mc Namara, 1995 and 1997 203 Concluding Reflections 206 Sources of Documents 209 Index 217 hunt, A Vietnam War Reader final pages, xii EBSCOhost – printed on 2/20/2021 1:44 PM via UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use xiii Preface The prolonged and bloody conflict widely known as the Vietnam War touched the lives of many people in many different social and political situations. There is thus not one or two perspectives on it but a great va- riety. Incorporating that variety is an interpretively urgent goal yet one of the most difficult tasks faced by anyone confronting that conflict. In shaping this volume, I have made some practical editorial deci- sions: • Limiting the documents that appear here to a carefully selected rep- resentative sample from a large and still growing body of evidence. In the interest of providing diverse points of view, I have done con- siderable excerpting, sometimes cutting sharply. • Focusing tightly on Americans and Vietnamese at war and thus excluded materials that deal with the allies that Hanoi and Wash- ington recruited, including Soviet, South Korean, Australian, Phil- ippine, and Thai. Also missing are the Cambodians and Laotians, who felt the side effects of the struggle in Vietnam with special in- tensity. So too have I left out the accounts of young people world- wide — in places as far flung as Paris, Tokyo, and Mexico City — who responded to the war with a passion that defines the time. • Giving Vietnamese and Americans equal time. In what follows, American policy makers and soldiers share the spotlight with the Vietnamese, who were their main antagonist and whose land took the main pounding. Thus the seven chapters here go well beyond the dates normally associated with the U.S. war (1965–1973) and in- clude not just the Communist leaders defying Washington but also early nationalists, ordinary activists and soldiers, peasants, and those on the Saigon side. In the interest of balance, I have included a fair sample of official Vietnamese documents (internal and pub- lic) even though some are available only in rough translations and are couched in what may seem formulaic Marxist terminology. My interest in balance has also led to a decision in treating the societal dimensions of war to give Vietnamese a heavy emphasis in chap- hunt, A Vietnam War Reader final pages, xiii EBSCOhost – printed on 2/20/2021 1:44 PM via UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use xivpreface ter 1, offset by devoting all of chapter 6 to developments within the United States. • Devising a format that is meant to be engaging and user-friendly. The overall arrangement of the documents is chronological so that Vietnamese and American views on particular issues and during particular phases of the war are again and again juxtaposed, thus inviting attention to the interplay between the actors and compari- sons among them. I have provided only the background informa- tion essential to moving through materials sprawling across some seven decades and dealing with topics as exotic as Vietnamese na- tionalism and communism and the contested countryside. My in- troduction sketches the misconceptions surrounding the war and the various stages in its evolution. Accompanying that introduction are a guide to abbreviations, a detailed chronology, and a map of Vietnam. Each of the seven documentary chapters opens with a brief overview of the main themes and questions raised by the doc- uments to follow and includes background information for each section and each document within each section. A brief conclud- ing section at the end of the final chapter gives readers a chance to reflect on what they have learned and offers some general questions to facilitate that task. Throughout I have tried to keep my own views on a leash so that readers will feel free to grapple on their own with the important questions still surrounding the Vietnam War. • Editing of the source texts in a way that follows a consistent set of guidelines and that keeps editorial clarifications and corrections to a minimum. Spellings and italics follow the source texts. In chang- ing capitalization and inserting ellipses, I have followed the “rigor- ous method” of The Chicago Manual of Style . The main goal of this collection will have been realized if readers find they can critically engage the evidence gathered here and, from that evi- dence, formulate their own, historically grounded sense of what the Viet- nam War was about. It is a pleasure to acknowledge those who have helped make this volume possible. Once more I owe thanks to the University of North Carolina Press: foremost my editor, Chuck Grench; his assistant, Katy O’Brien; Paul Betz, who brought order to the manuscript and the production process; Vicky Wells, my patient guide on copyright issues; Anna Laura Bennett, who provided thoughtful and meticulous copyediting; and Kim hunt, A Vietnam War Reader final pages, xiv EBSCOhost – printed on 2/20/2021 1:44 PM via UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use prefacexv Bryant for a design done with flair and care. I received helpful advice in the early stages of this project from Pierre Asselin and Allan M. Winkler. Christopher Goscha as well as Winkler provided incisive comments on the first full draft. At a pivotal point Rosalie Genova read the manu- script with a keen editorial eye and sharp pedagogical sense, while Peter Agren made sensibly ruthless suggestions on tightening the documents. Will West did yeoman service checking the accuracy of the documents excerpted here. Finally, my thanks to Jon Huibregtse for permission to draw in the introduction on my “Studying the Vietnam War: Between an Implacable Force and an Immovable Object,” New England Journal of His­ tory 54 (Spring 1998): 45–61. hunt, A Vietnam War Reader final pages, xv EBSCOhost – printed on 2/20/2021 1:44 PM via UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use This page intentionally left blank EBSCOhost – printed on 2/20/2021 1:44 PM via UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use xvii Introduction The Vietnam War: From Myth to History For most Americans today, the history of the Vietnam War is like a play that unfolds in ways quite different from the audience’s preconcep- tions. Ticket holders take their seats expecting a drama about American soldiers. But once the curtain goes up, there are some surprises — the Vietnamese characters dominate the stage at the outset, the American characters arrive late (soldiers among the last), the play proves far longer than anticipated, and the plotline takes some unfamiliar twists. This col- lection of documents — snippets from a real drama — should also shat- ter some expectations that readers carry in their heads. The materials gathered here suggest that the Vietnam War was not mainly about U.S. soldiers and that it spanned a good deal more than the decade of direct U.S. combat. misunderstanding an unpopular war Many Americans feel instinctively that they know the Vietnam conflict in large measure because of popular myths and misconceptions incor- porated and propagated, if not actually created, through the movies and other widely consumed U.S. media. Hollywood, with its trademark ca- pacity for neat packaging and simple messages, tackled the war in the late 1970s, and in a steady output over the following decades, it became the single most important source for public memory. One movie critic commented wryly, “Since 1977, Hollywood has been succeeding where Washington consistently failed: namely, in selling Vietnam to the Ameri- can public.” 1 The Hollywood version of the war — perpetuated in dvds and television reruns — worked its magic above all by draining the war of much of the controversy that would have gotten in the way of entertain- ment. In often powerful, frequently reiterated images, Vietnam became a fantasy world where Americans tested their manliness, underwent youthful rites of passage, embarked on perilous rescues, suffered per- sonal corruption, or replayed frontier dramas with the Vietnamese as the 1. Thomas Doherty, “Full Metal Genre: Stanley Kubrick’s Vietnam Combat Movies,” in Perspectives on Stanley Kubrick, ed. Mario Falsetto (New York: Hall, 1996), 307. hunt, A Vietnam War Reader final pages, xvii EBSCOhost – printed on 2/20/2021 1:44 PM via UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use xviiiintroduction “wild Indians.” Seldom do the serious political issues raised by the war come into view, and the Vietnamese rarely figure as anything more than bit players in an American drama. What comes across most forcefully in Tinseltown products is the no- tion that Vietnam as a disembodied force somehow made a victim of Americans. Witness the treatment of soldiers in combat films such as Go Tell the Spartans (1978), Apocalypse Now (1979), Platoon (1986), and Hamburger Hill (1987). The theme of victimization is also central to the movies that show veterans returning home twisted in mind and ruined in body. The once normal young Americans made into psychopaths, para- plegics, and enraged muscle men inhabit such films as Taxi Driver (1976), Coming Home (1978), and the Rambo series (1982 and 1985). Some, such as The Deer Hunter (1978) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989), manage to develop both themes — the wounds inflicted on soldiers in the field and in the lives of warriors back home. Forrest Gump (1994), perhaps the most widely viewed of these films, offers a lighthearted version of this conventional story line of the soldier as victim during and after the fight- ing. These stories of victimization have reduced the war to easily grasped terms to reach and hold a broad audience. Their appeal may be rooted in the way soldiers as victims serve as stand-ins for their country whose innocence the war destroyed. Personal victimization becomes an easily understood expression of national victimization. Public opinion polls conducted in the early 1990s suggest a popular acceptance of Hollywood’s simple but symbolically loaded version of the war. 2 Consistent with the view that Vietnam somehow managed to do bad things to the United States, about 70 percent of those surveyed held that the Vietnam commitment was a mistake (up from around 60 percent in the early 1970s, during the last phase of U.S. troop involvement, and virtually unchanged when the question was asked again in 2000). Nearly as many (68 percent) carried the indictment further and said that Viet- nam was not a “just war.” Also consistent with Hollywood’s portrayal, the public strongly identified with the American soldier. Overwhelmingly (87 percent) the public thought favorably of those who served and sacrificed 2. The polling data in this and the following paragraphs come from George Gal- lup Jr., The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1990 (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1991), 47–50; George Gallup Jr., The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1993 (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1994), 228; George Gallup Jr., The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1995 (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1996), 228; and Gallup Poll Monthly, November 2000, 44. hunt, A Vietnam War Reader final pages, xviii EBSCOhost – printed on 2/20/2021 1:44 PM via UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use introductionxix in a conflict that respondents thought was more costly in American lives than any other in the twentieth century. (In point of fact, each of the two world wars resulted in more Americans killed in action than did Viet- nam.) In line with the fixation on victimization, a substantial majority (69 percent) regarded veterans as ill used by their government and unap- preciated by their countrymen. Indeed, 64 percent believed U.S. officials so indifferent that they had abandoned servicemen to permanent captiv- ity in Southeast Asia. Where Hollywood provided less clear guidance, Americans were more divided in the early 1990s polls. They split evenly on whether any good came out of the war, such as slowing the advance of communism in Southeast Asia or contributing to the decline of communism worldwide. Respondents also split when asked whether American warriors died in vain. Fifty-one percent said “yes,” while 41 percent answered “no.” Fi- nally, the public divided on how to appraise the protest movement at home. In 1990, 39 percent of respondents had a favorable view, and the exact same percentage had an unfavorable view. Asked three years later about dissent from another angle — whether draft avoidance by all legal means was justified — the public again divided (with the “no’s” outnum- bering “yes’s” 53 to 41 percent). how history matters What is remarkable about the films and the polls is their omissions. Popular conceptions of the war have little room for the Vietnamese, even though the war was fought on their soil, resulted in deaths and injuries in the millions, and imposed lasting societal costs. Vietnamese appear at best on the periphery, limited to cameo appearances. The enduring American images of the Vietnamese at war — the shadowy foe darting through the underbrush or lying crumpled on the ground, the prostitute camped outside an American base, the child in frightful flight from na- palm — first appeared in contemporary media. Soldiers’ memoirs and Hollywood films have perpetuated this extraordinarily limited, invariably superficial, and often caricatured treatment. So dim has the public sense of the Vietnamese political context grown that a fifth of those polled in 1990 thought that the United States had fought alongside, not against, North Vietnam. Because the popular view of the Vietnam War focuses on Americans in combat and thus is concerned only with the period of direct U.S. engage- ment, it is fundamentally ahistorical. The U.S. war was but one phase hunt, A Vietnam War Reader final pages, xix EBSCOhost – printed on 2/20/2021 1:44 PM via UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use xxintroduction in a string of conflicts in Vietnam that began with the struggle against the French and continued as an insurgency against the U.S.-backed gov- ernment in Saigon, which in turn morphed into the American war that spilled over into Cambodia and ultimately gave way to the ceasefire war of 1973–1975. Within each of these phases, the nature of the conflict var- ied from place to place (for example, large cities versus remote villages; highlands versus river deltas). And because this long-lasting, far-flung struggle incorporated elements of social revolution, national liberation, and civil war, it swept up a wide variety of people, turning their lives up- side down. As the documents that follow suggest, the Vietnam War was not a sin- gle, neatly played out drama featuring the Americans, and it was never primarily about U.S. soldiers. It was more like a long, loosely unfolding story by a playwright who had lost control of his plot and players. Char- acters wander onto the stage, often barely mindful of the other members of the cast. They deliver their lines, often speaking past each other. And then they exit, sometimes never to reappear. They don’t even agree on the name of their shared drama. What Americans call the Vietnam War their Vietnamese foe thought of as the American war or “the war of resistance against American aggression.” Even the chronology of the play is off-kilter. For Vietnamese the war had its roots in the nineteenth century; it encompassed at least three generations, going back to resistance to the French conquest. By the time the play reached the final act in the 1970s, virtually all segments of Vietnamese society had made an appearance — from nationalist in- tellectuals to political activists, to peasants pulled into the struggle, to ordinary soldiers, to those who hitched their fortunes to the French and then American causes. The Americans walked onto the stage relatively late — in the 1940s — and even then acted only as minor players, largely unaware of previous plot developments. Despite their late appearance, an impressive range of Americans did manage to get into the act. They included

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