The Vietnam War Over Time: Hindsight Isn't Always 20/20

Our group chose to explore and reflect upon this topic because many of us define history—the subject we teach—as change over time. Furthermore we realize and must constantly remind ourselves and our students that just as history is not static, neither is historical understanding of the past;   rather, our perceptions and interpretations of the past continually change.

There can be many challenges to serious historical research.   Sources may be inaccessible, destroyed, or non-existent.   Over time, memories fade, become distorted, or disappear altogether with the bodies and minds of those who once bore them.   Issues which certain groups or the general public once found critical may seem to diminish in importance, while issues that were once overlooked or under-emphasized may eventually become a center of interest and discussion.   Oftentimes today's agenda greatly affects the way we view yesterday.   Our group believes these concepts are critical for understanding what history is and how it always changes. They are also a dynamic starting point from which we try to impart to our students the understanding that history is not passive, dead and buried, but that it also belongs to them and bears itself wide-open to their own creative interaction, individual interpretations, probing questions, and counterfactual analyses.

Our group finds this theme to be a particularly useful lens through which to explore the Vietnam War.  

This first passage contains the views of one teacher responding to both how critical oral history changes our view of the past and also how overwhelming the evidence it produces can be for the classroom teacher.

Critical Oral History and the Changing View of the Vietnam War

Time can be a great asset to history. Time allows us to achieve a greater understanding of the events, time allows us to draw upon new information and challenge old viewpoints, and time provides us with a chance to examine and evaluate new and different perspectives. In general, time allows us to question history. The disadvantage of time is that it does not always heal old wounds, or change the image of an event in the minds of those who experienced it. Thus, questioning history can also be quite controversial.  

The Vietnam War is one such event in which time has been an advantage and a disadvantage. The advantage time has had is that it has shed new light on the events leading up to the war, the events that occurred during the war, and the events following the end of the war. Critical oral history has played an integral role in the advantage time has. Key players such as Robert McNamara have expressed their views of the situation at the time, as well as examined it with what we now know. He and other key players from both the American side and the Vietnamese sides, have sat down and discussed their viewpoints of the time, questioned what happened along the way, and re-examined their initial views and beliefs in an effort to look at the mistakes made and the opportunities missed along the way.

Listening to and reading excerpts from these discussions provide an invaluable tool when looking at the Vietnam War. Critical oral history questions what happened and looks at why it happened. What were the perceptions of the opposing sides, what were the views they held of each other, and how did this lead to the escalation of events and decisions made concerning these events? Critical oral history brings events in history to life, and provides students with a complete view of the issue, not just one side of the issue.

Time has given us the ability to view the Vietnam War from all sides, and to achieve a more holistic view of the situation. Critical oral history presents these views and can lead to great discussions as to what were some of the key points missed and why they were missed. What can we learn from an event like the Vietnam War, and have these lessons been learned today? Questioning history, while it can be controversial, can be an invaluable teaching tool in presenting the full view of what happened in the past.

So Much Information, So Little Time

The exciting thing about history is that the image of it and the way in which it is perceived changes over time. Take for example the Vietnam War. In the past, the perspective most often taught in schools was the American perspective. Today though, in light of declassified documents, discussions held among key players on all sides, and a greater interest in understanding the whole story, teaching the Vietnam War has shifted to looking at all sides of the war, and listening to all voices involved. Specifically, teachers today are looking at what were the reasons behind the American involvement, and how American involvement was perceived by the North Vietnamese government and its supporters. What were the goals of all the parties involved, and how did their military actions work towards or against those goals? How did enemies view each other and their motives?

In colleges and even some upper level high school classes, teachers have the luxury of spending weeks or even months looking solely at all the angles of the Vietnam War. However, those of us teaching general ed. U.S. History do not have that luxury. So does teaching all the angles of the Vietnam War seem overwhelming? Slightly. But is it an impossible task? No. Obviously, it is necessary to teach the background information, and present the facts and main events of the Vietnam War, but it is equally important to provide students with the different voices behind these facts and events. Supplementing lessons with narratives, pictures, music, and documents are ways in which the many voices of the Vietnam War can be heard, compared, and discussed.

Providing students with a view of the different angles and perspectives of the Vietnam War goes a long way in viewing the Vietnam War over time. Moving away from looking at just the American perspective opens the floor for discussion about why things happened the way they did, what the views of those in power were at the time, as well as the lessons we can take away from the Vietnam War and how (or do) these lessons apply to the world today. By taking the facts needing to be taught, and looking at them through different lenses, we provide our students with a more complete view and better understanding of the Vietnam War.

In this next passage another teacher from the conference wrestles with two critical questions raised by the Vietnam War: was it avoidable, particularly if Kennedy had lived, and does it make sense in 2005 to draw parallels between the Vietnam conflict and Iraq?

New Information, Same Old Story?

It is amazing to think about how this war could, and perhaps, should have been avoided, if not for missed signals and misinformation on both sides.   I am really not sure what to make of it all.   It would be interesting to know what former soldiers, government officials that supported the war, families that lost loved ones, and even citizens that supported the war feel now that this information is known.

Does this mean the war was a waste of time and lives, even more so than those claimed so previously?   Those that were in favor of the war so staunchly as a result of the "domino theory" would likely now have to seriously rethink their position.   After all, we now know, and should have known then, that Vietnam in no way saw itself as a pawn of the communist powers, and at best viewed China's assistance as a necessary evil.

Not only does this have implications for our justification(s) for the war in Vietnam, but also as we look at the reason(s) we invaded Iraq, it tells us that we have not made nearly enough improvements in our intelligence systems in the past fifty years.   It was poor/faulty intelligence that led us to believe that Vietnam was aligned with the Soviet Union and China, as well as the fact that we felt direct orders from Hanoi led to both the Gulf of Tonkin incident and the attack on Pleiku.   This is not unlike the misinformation from our intelligence (as well as the British and Russians in this case) that led the current administration to believe that Iraq had a stockpile of WMDs.   As we can see, in both cases unreliable information from our intelligence system was a major step in the road to war.

Would Kennedy have withdrawn from Vietnam?

It has been proposed this week in discussions and in "The Fog of War" that the evidence points to Kennedy pulling the U.S. out of Vietnam by the end of 1965.   This type of counterfactual study is one of the most enjoyable, yet difficult, aspects of history.   This perhaps rings even more true when discussing the Vietnam War.  

I remain skeptical of the contention that Kennedy was prepared to fully withdraw U.S. troops from Vietnam by the end of '65. Granted, Kennedy had given the go-ahead to McNamara to start the wheels in motion for this possibility towards the end of 1963.   I have no doubts that Kennedy would liked to have had this happen.   However, he was a politician, clearly aware of the repercussions of an unsuccessful early withdrawal.   He plainly states this in the second conversation of October 2, 1963, where he says, "My only reservation about it is, if it commits us to a kind of a, if the war doesn't continue to go well, it will look like we were overly optimistic."  In addition, the evidence is hardly clear on what he truly thought of the Vietnam conflict. In fact, in a single interview with David Brinkley in late September of 1963, he expressed contradictory feelings. Kennedy initially states, "In the final analysis it is the people and government of South Vietnam itself who have to win or lose this struggle.   All we can do is help."  However, just moments later in the interview, he seems quite committed to the war, saying "But I don't agree with those who say we should withdraw. That would be a great mistake." 

Still, it is nonetheless intriguing to consider the possibilities. While no one can say definitively what would have happened if Kennedy had lived and pulled the U.S. out of Vietnam, it is safe to say the country would have traveled a very different path. Profs. Blight and Lang brought up this interesting point, emphasizing the fact that Kennedy was far more interested in foreign policy. Thus, if he had lived, it is likely that the Civil Rights Movement would have at least been delayed. In addition, the wave of domestic legislation that Lyndon Johnson supported and pushed through, including such things as Head Start, Medicaid, Medicare (at least the modernization of it), etc. would perhaps still be in their infancy, if started at all.  

Another teacher reflects on the value of incorporating multiple perspectives in the classroom. In the Vietnam War in particular, it is ironically the Vietnamese themselves (both the leadership and the civilian population) who are ignored.

Japanese Film, NHK Video — Dialogue of Enemies

Truly, the film and subsequent discussion points out the importance of empathy in terms of "knowing your enemy."  The various misconceptions at so many different levels led to a prolonged war. To think that in 1997, the two sides could meet and still not really understand the basic premise that led to the longest war in US history is fascinating for scholars, participants and certainly for today's students.   It is difficult to understand McNamara, he seems to be utterly arrogant and difficult in his dealings with the Vietnamese delegation, yet he seems a man adrift trying to understand his mistakes. This type of personality must find it truly difficult to comprehend the depth of his mistakes. The Vietnamese seem to need to see the Americans as those that need to be blamed for the war and need to take responsibility for that blame. Even these many years later that seems to be important to them.  

The Pleiku story is one of immense interest. The fact that Americans believed that all attacks were approved by Hanoi seems rather far-fetched considering the fact that this was guerilla war, meaning that tactics changed constantly and instantly.  

The concept of empathy is a tremendous tool to use when trying to teach students about the Viet Nam War. The approach will be very different than anything found in basic texts. It will be a wonderful jump-off point to initiate discussion by first creating the team of players, probing their personalities and then trying to comprehend their actions during the crisis. The hope is that the point of not understanding cultural traits and ideas may help to get the students to understand how a war becomes so widespread and continues well beyond the point of no-return.

Question to pose and answer is the concept of using bombing to get the enemy to the table and not realize that it is the bombing that is preventing one side from getting its enemy to the table.  

Johnson and Ho

Professors Blight and Lang are infectious.   It is that inquisitive nature and the truly wonderful interest that they have in sharing that with students that makes their time during this seminar so valuable.   They truly tend to give you options concerning how you will approach different aspects of the conflict with your students.   They do this in a nurturing manner that is remarkable.   As I sit there, I am amazed at the places they have been and the people they have gotten to participate in controversial work that only serves to shed light on the never ending, or, as they have put it, Argument Without End.

Once again, through it all, the key to success is the documents which will allow the teacher to show in concrete terms how the players came to present the ideas that became the mantra they carried in their decision making. Certainly, letters between Johnson and Ho are fundamental in explaining and once again getting around to the idea of empathy. That means a desire for each side to have empathy and gain understanding of the other. To use the documents, clips and quotes to show the wide gap in understanding may well explain the concept of total war and the reasons for much of it occurring, certainly the Vietnamese conflict. To create options to allow for critical thinking and role playing in terms of some of these events brought to the fore, such as the bombing while trying to arrange peace talks, leads to some interesting takes on the Choices theme of role playing options for better understanding of concepts and for critical thinking.

Using Personal Stories

The panel certainly expressed, just by their very different backgrounds, the necessity to show the differences in points of view, when teaching the war. The diversity of the panel set up an interesting discussion of divergent views. The concept that many of the views of the war are personal views taken from only one possible experience, that of the person themselves. The fact that all different sections of the country provided the troops in those areas with very different experiences makes the war different from each of the two main theatres of war in the Second World War. Further information concerning the prisoner of war experience will provide students with a very real look at the human cost of war and the horrors of the aftermath. Halyburton would certainly be able to expand on his concept of being able to leave the hate behind in order to move forward with the rest of his life.

The whole dissident point of view is one that should be mentioned to broaden the experience culturally.   The women of the war provide us with a whole different aspect and there are some good oral histories available to look at the situation facing women, especially the horrors of nursing.

Quyen Truong's work provides the historian again with a rich opportunity to continue to follow up on the cultural and personal stories of the Viet Nam War and of war in general.   The horrors of "losing" may well be greater than the wonderfulness of winning.   These paintings raise numerous opportunities to look further into the Vietnamese aspect of the war.   To fully discuss the war we have to look at all of the aspects of the war.   Cultural history filled with personal stories, primary sources are the best way to teach the horrors of war along with the factual concepts.   The use of visual images is very powerful and serves as a hook for further information.

From the Blight assembly there is no doubt that sense and stress must be given to the obvious differences not only in cultural understanding, but also in the concept of language.   The use and interpretation of language has much to do with the possibility of even having any empathy for an enemy.   How can one empathize when the idea of not really understanding the connotations of certain phrases and usage and its affect on the other side is unknown.   The fact that the State Department had been purged of Southeast Asian experts and the fact that the Vietnamese had very little diplomatic experience helped to widen the gap between the two sides and prolong the war.   The four points and the fourteen points were never really starting points for further negotiation, much of it due to neither side understanding the concept of a starting point.   The use of actual documentation at this point, whether it be written or taped, would be very valuable.   The idea of personality of individuals in places of power is also necessary to understand that hawks and doves were in place on both sides.   The language played to each of these divisive factions and controlled the balance of power within each government.

Another teacher explores the emotional dimension of the conflict and its eerie resonance in both the hearts and minds of participants and historians.

American Idealism

I really found the theme of American idealism fascinating, and still as relevant today – if not more so – than it was 40 years ago (and even earlier of course). Instead of the constant flux described by Heraclitus, perhaps sometimes the simple age-old adage, "the more things change, the more they stay the same," seems more true.  

The film we watched Thursday night, The Quiet American, illustrated this beautifully through the protagonist Howard Pyle, and based on all the professors' comments regarding Graham Greene's novel of the same name, perhaps the book demonstrates the same idea more clearly. I thought the notion of the archetypal American – including policy-makers and politicians — as somehow innocent in the sense of somewhat naive or immature, to be extremely thought-provoking. Many of our guest speakers seemed to allude to the possibility that perhaps the Vietnam quagmire and even America's involvement in Iraq today might somehow be [mis]guided by American idealism gone astray.

Professor Christian Appy commented on this when he said that many good-willed Americans seem to think the purity of their intentions and motives seems to ultimately absolve them of the responsibility of all unpleasant consequences of their actions. Of course, those who suffer those consequences would probably disagree.  

This perhaps helps explain in part the enormous disparity between America's view of its role and actions in Vietnam [Iraq] compared to that of the international community, including its allies. This cornered the United States into all sorts of awkward and ironic positions, so that most policy makers (at least initially) insisted that we must honor our commitments and continue to fight a war we had inherited from the French, meanwhile even the French thought we had embarked on a hopeless disaster and should find a way to disembark, the sooner the better. Another paradox explained through this lens of American Idealism might be an example that Professor Appy had so head-buttingly called to our attention, when he said, "The ironic fact is that the U.S. became involved because it claimed it was fighting to uphold South Vietnamese independence and self-determination, but the longer we stayed, the more South Vietnam became dependent on us." 

Life without ideals to which to aspire would be squalor, but it is unwise to proceed with our foreign policy pursuits as sparkly-eyed romantics.  

Sensitivities

It seems like a banality to point out that Vietnam is still such a sensitive topic to so many people, but this was clearly demonstrated at this summer's Choices program. Many of our speakers – from Quyen Truong (Brown, Class of 2005), who explained her father's grueling reeducation camp experience under Vietnamese Communists and her attempts to comprehend and visually capture his personal story, to Professors James Hershberg, James G. Blight, and janet M. Lang – emphasized the difficulty they found or sympathized with as they were eager to capture bits and pieces of peoples' stories, explanations, and perspectives. Of course, during the war, but even in its aftermath, many people feared saying anything about the war and their experiences, because doing so was always dangerous: for a Vietnamese peasant who wasn't an adamant Communist supporter, this might mean exposing yourself to persecution whereas for an American policy-maker or a Vietminh general perhaps interested in engaging in a Critical Oral History project, this might mean voluntarily exposing oneself to sharp criticism from many sides.

When many participants (and I use this term in the broadest sense) discuss the war, emotion and raw nerves are visible. The powerful Japanese Documentary we watched Thursday with Professors Blight and Lang, Missed Opportunities: Dialogue of Enemies of the Vietnam War, made a lasting impression on me because in a very artful way it demonstrated the proceedings of many American and Vietnamese war leaders, at least two decades after the fall of Saigon, gathered together (presumably) in hopes of achieving better understanding after all the years of bitterness of what happened and didn't happen to cause so much needless death and destruction, yet the air of tension – even just in the Conference room in Hanoi – at times seemed it would not clear. One Vietnamese general illustrated this nearly from the outset when, shaking with anger, he asked the Americans, "Are you suggesting that the North Vietnamese leadership had no regard for the pain of our people?" Often these living testaments of history, including Robert McNamara in The Fog of War or John Kerry's war-companions interviewed in Going Up River: The Long War of John Kerry, demonstrate the immense emotional burden that the Vietnam War still carries for so many people.

Friday's panel entitled "American Experiences During Vietnam" also illustrated these sensitivities quite dramatically (as did many of my colleagues' private reactions to some of the panelists' comments).   Although some of CT Commissioner of Veteran's Affairs Dr. Linda Schwartz's comments and manners made me shudder, she was an incredibly moving speaker, and as she described the horrors and mutilations she witnessed on a daily basis operating as a nurse in Vietnam, I literally fought the tears that came to my eyes.   Porter Halyburton proved himself once again to be the epitome of dignity and offered the inspirational closing words of the importance of forgiveness and breaking free from the prison of hatred, yet just moments earlier, he was visibly restraining himself from speaking out as anti-war activist Jerry Elmer tried to too easily dismiss the dubious basis for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.

Regarding forgiveness, I was somewhat surprised to hear how many of our informed speakers pointed out that by their own assessments, the Vietnamese as a people have been able to overcome the horrors and hatreds of the "American War" (as they call it) better than many Americans have. Professor Christian Appy even suggested that a trip back to Vietnam was cathartic and might prove more helpful to many maladjusted or psychologically disturbed veterans than most drugs prescribed to ease their pain. I ask myself why the Vietnamese were able to move on better than some Americans who experienced the war. I try to look past the explanations that the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong propaganda ministers always directed their supporter's hatred toward the U.S. government and not American citizens.   Perhaps part of the reason lies in the fact that so many Vietnamese were born, like my own generation of Americans, after the war. Perhaps after so many generations of suffering they are just eager and anxious for a brighter future.

Re-examining Evidence (as it becomes available)

Obviously newly released documents are critical to any historian's understanding of the past. Professor James Hershberg, as well as Professors Blight and Lang, stressed the importance of documents released through the efforts of the National Security Archive, a lobby for historical openness, to shed light on their own investigations on the Vietnam conflict. Hershberg also discussed the importance of FRUS (Foreign Relations of the United States), officially declassified documents which are supposed to be published no more than 30 years after they were created, to his research.

Documents are so important to understanding the past that Hershberg explained to us that he and other historians regularly file their own "FOIAs" (Freedom of Information Act) to pressure various government agencies to release potentially important documents. Obviously interpretations of the past depend on the evidence available upon which we base them.  

Also, when evidence is re-examined, new pieces of the historical puzzle are often discovered. For example, Professors Blight and Lang told us that when McNamara insisted upon some effort to hasten a resolution to the Vietnam conflict, the official notes of the National Security Council failed to reflect this. However, years later, researchers discovered that this was simply because the National Security Council note-taker, Brown Lee Smith, had his own right wing agenda which was reflected in the minutes he was supposed to take. This, like other revelations, including the shocking information that in October of 1962 Cuba actually had and was ready to use nuclear missiles, was not discovered until much later. With this in mind, Robert McNamara, together with the rest of the Critical Oral History team, initiated the meetings between former policy makers, generals, and scholars, because he wanted to investigate possible missed opportunities and derive lessons from them.

In this final passage of teacher reflections, the writer addresses the theme of time and specifically the evolution of the Vietnam War as a "lesson."

Past—The Mystery of LBJ's Motives

Knowing Johnson's awareness of the Korean War's impact on Truman's domestic agenda, and WWII on FDR's—both legacies from which he drew inspiration, both ideologically and politically the foreshadowing of his ambitious Great Society—why would he consider something so reckless as escalation in Southeast Asia? Foreign entanglement loomed as perhaps the only force that could eject his presidency from the safe cocoon of a landslide political victory in 1964 and a House and Senate whose every closeted skeleton he knew well. What don't we know that might explain why? If he saw escalation as the necessary price of the Great Society, a compromise he had to make with Senate conservatives in both parties in exchange for funding and votes (something to which his own taped conversations point), what does that tell us about the relationship between foreign and domestic policy? janet Lang pointedly asks, is it possible that the Vietnam War was in Johnson's eyes the ghoulish price of the Great Society? It seems essential that we discourage our students from compartmentalizing their historical thinking into tidy little folders.

Future—Documents

Will e-mail make it impossible to do document-based research in the future? Are we living in the twilight of this sort of scholarship? Paper communication almost guaranteed surviving records. Documents marked "read and destroy" could still linger on because the laws of probability dictated that someone somewhere would through negligence or active disobedience keep a copy. Yet as we move more toward digitally based communication, it will become easier for those who administer e-mail servers to delete the information at the source. Considering too the likelihood that no future U.S. president will return to taping conversations, we may be in for quite a drought when it comes to analyzing future conflicts the way we have the Cuban Missile Crisis or Vietnam. Students need to realize how precious the research we do have truly is.

Past x 2—Vietnam and Cuba's Parallels

In both Cuba and Vietnam, the U.S. assumed that a distant power exerted control over operations it in fact did not. We saw Castro as tethered to Khrushchev when in reality the two stood at loggerheads over the fate of the missiles, Castro—the player we discounted at the time—the more hawkish in his ideological commitment of the two. Similarly we assumed the Pleiku attack was ordered from Hanoi, calculated to coincide with McGeorge Bundy's visit, but it too sprang from a purely local military initiative. Will our students come to question if rational decision-making by nations in conflict is even possible? A certain macabre, staring-at-the-car-accident level of complexity haunts the Vietnam conflict. It fascinates us at the same time it overwhelms us. We warn our students like preachers in sinful times about the dangers of living in ignorance to our history, yet the Vietnam conflict can counter this accusation. Kennedy and Johnson saw themselves as learned students of history, applying the lessons of Munich, of appeasement—lessons only a few decades old—but in so doing they created America's longest war, and the most divisive of the 20 th Century.

Now—Ghosts: Debating Lessons

We often speak of the Vietnam War as a tragedy of overconfidence. That is not the whole truth. We certainly overestimated the odds of finding a military solution, certainly underestimated the passionate commitment of the Vietnamese on both sides of the conflict to ultimate independence, certainly failed to see that given that goal nothing consistent with the aspirations of the Vietnamese people could involve the long-term presence of thousands of U.S. troops on the ground or hundreds of bombers in the air. Yet we also underestimated ourselves. Were we ever confident enough to suggest that if American rights spring from a basic foundation of human rights, the eventual winner of Vietnam's civil war would in time open up, as Vietnam has itself started to do, and move however slowly out of the shadow of dictatorship? We never summoned the self-confidence to see Vietnam against the backdrop of imperialism rather than communism, to realize that the ideology we sought to contain was as much a vehicle for breaking with colonialism as it was an end in itself. This was the fatal miscalculation. This was the first step into the tragedy of three million dead.

Yet to condemn the entire Vietnam conflict as a flawed misadventure ignores the agony that followed U.S. departure, the suffering of the refugees and the brutality of the reeducation camp network. We did have allies in Vietnam, friends outside the corrupt Saigon cadre of Diem and his successors, friends we ultimately kicked from helicopter skids during our final panicked exit in 1975, friends we let down.

With what voice should Vietnam speak to us now? How does it inform the present? Can it inform the present? How should we converse with these ghosts of Vietnam? These questions may linger indefinitely or they may perish, papered over by the mythology we invent as a nation when the last veterans leave us, like Birth of a Nation taking a scalpel to the resonant moral questions that surrounded the Civil War and its aftermath. If Vietnam leaves us with few answers, I hope it at least leaves us with this question: when we use force beyond our borders, do we use it in cooperation with a legitimate, local authority whose values in some way parallel our own—in which case we may have some chance of success—or as a substitute for such an institution? In the Vietnam conflict we clearly took the second road and paved our past with ghosts.

Classroom Connections

In this final section of the journal we all share possible ways in which the conference and what we have learned at it might be applied to our classrooms when we study the Vietnam War.

Over the course of this conference ideas and methods have been discussed on how best to teach and utilize this information in the classroom. Ideas that have been put forth by our group are as follows:

Reflective writing prepared by:
Anthony Carbone—North Providence High School, North Providence, RI
Matt Heys—Millard West High School, Omaha, NE
Lindsay Hoefer—Bryan High School, Omaha, NE
Martina Musich—Harry S Truman High School, Bronx, NY
Joe Rasmus—Williamston High School, Williamston, MI