A. As a bare historical beginning, see this elementary encyclopedia entry.
B. For excellent college courses + core documents, see this Vassar College site.
C. Click here for a time-line sketch of crucial events.

Lecture Thesis: With the exception of the Civil War in the 1860s-- and perhaps the Great Depression of the 1930s -- no period of U.S. history has been as traumatic and damaging to American society, in my view, as our participation in the war in Vietnam. The experience produced lasting damage. The costs come in several categories:

National Vietnam Veterans Memorial photograph © Larry Powell (1995)

(1) lives lost
over 50,000 American dead, 100,000s injured
1,000,000s of Vietnamese dead, mostly civilians
[click here for some estimates]

(2) lives damaged
post-traumatic stress disorder
Agent Orange
families destroyed (US & Vietnamese)
villages obliterated (a US military officer explained, "It was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.")
huge areas of country devastated by defoliation, carpet-bombing (Operation Rolling Thunder)

(3) financial cost
military costs approx. $1 trillion
more bombs dropped than in both World Wars

Lyndon Johnson (1964)

(4) social cost
LBJ’s Great Society program / JFK’s War on Poverty
liberal social programs re: poverty, disease, illiteracy, housing, roads & bridges, etc.
potential redirection of federal funds from U.S. society to battlefield
Cold War understanding of "national security" (external threat)
new notion of national security as social infrastructure

(5) moral cost
immorality of war itself (O’Brien’s dilemma)
gradual consensus about national error of judgment (though still volatile topic)
Robert McNamara’s misgivings: In Retrospect (1994)
LBJ’s audiotapes (released in 1997)
disclosures of US government deceit

Joseph Fornelli, Dressed to Kill (1965)

Gulf of Tonkin incident
CIA Phoenix Program and PSYOPS
inflated "body counts" & appraisals of victory
My Lai Massacre (1968)
general disillusionment with federal government
Nixon & Watergate
attitudes toward Pentagon, FBI, DEA

(6) cultural cost
deep split in US sentiment
"My country, right or wrong" / "America, love it or leave it"
hawks and doves
1968 Democratic National Convention
campus protests (link includes Vietnam War Internet Project)

photograph © John Filo Valley Daily News (1970)

Columbia University (1968)
tear-gassing of UC Berkeley campus (1970)
students killed by National Guard at Kent State University (1970) & Jackson State University (1970)
protests at SUNY Buffalo & "The Buffalo 45"
American anti-intellectualism & distrust of universities

(7) military cost
America’s only military defeat
Nixon's characterization of America as "a pitiful, helpless giant"
failure of military strategies against guerilla fighters: e.g., French in Indochina, British in American Revolution
popular support for liberation of Vietnam from Western oppressors
WW2 made us feel good about defeating absolute evil & rescuing Europe
Korea = "forgotten war" / undeclared "police action" (1950-54 & continuing)
national sense of shame, dishonor, unwillingness to face truth

contemporary vestiges

lack of special recognition or ritual praise for Vietnam veterans
recent wars as antidote to Vietnam defeat & reclamation of U.S. supremacy (e.g. 1991 Gulf War)
- ending the "Vietnam syndrome"

 

text © David Willbern 1999