- LECTURE ON WED.
- PLEASE BE SURE TO LOG INTO YOUR DISCUSSION SECTION THROUGH COLLAB AT THE REGULAR TIME, THURSDAY OR FRIDAY.
- Film:
- Coming Home (1978), 130 minutes
[VHS 5107, LD 1018, and LD 0508]
- Coming Home (1978), 130 minutes
- Read:
- Jonathan Schell, The Real War: The Classic Reporting on the Vietnam War (New York: Pantheon, 1987) pp. 3-55. Part I and Part II
- Balogh, Brian. "From Metaphor to Quagmire: The Domestic Legacy of the Vietnam War," pp 24-55, in Neu, Charles E. After Vietnam: Legacies of a Lost War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), Part I and Part II
- Robert D. Schulzinger, "'It’s Easy to Win a War on Paper': The United States and Vietnam, 1961-1968," Ch. 6, pp 183 – 218 in Diane B Kunz, ed., The Diplomacy of the Crucial Decade: American Foreign Relations in the 1960s.
WHY VIETNAM?
HEIGHT OF US INVOLVEMENT IN VIETNAM (1965-70) IS DIVIDING LINE FOR OUR PERIOD
Divides fear of communism and Cold War rationale for national security from Skeptiicism re intl role
Divides turst in government
divides strong presidency from resurgence of Congress
We begin with the long history -- as a way of revisiting some changes in the intl. scene since WWII
Vietnam colonized by France in 1867
Ho Chi Minh: nationalist
Ho rejected, turns towards communist support against France
After WW II Nationalist movements thrive
US involvement goes back to Truman
aid to France increases during 1950s
rationale is "Domino Theory"
this is another way of expressing fear of autarky
French trapped at Dien Bien Phu
Geneva Accords signed by all, except the US
U.S Supports Diem, who controls the south
1960, Ho organizies the National Liberation Front: South calls them Viet Cong
Kennedy and Vietnam
- holds the line against communism
- Diem hung out to dry, 1963
- Why Vietnam
- Munich metaphor: aggression unchallenged is aggression unleashed
- hold the line against expansionist communism: domino theory
- must demonstrate our loyalty to our allies
- credibility
- Public rationale is not far from real rationale
- Escalation from 1965 through 1969
- Richard Nixon's choice
- widens the war to Cambodia, 1970
- Paris Peace Accords, 1973
- Congress cuts of funding, 1973
- Saigon renamed Ho Chi Minh City, 1975
- Legacies of Vietnam:
- human cost
- myth of invincibility shattered
- tests our will to reshape world in our own image
- we fight for credibility: but war damages our credibility
- Vietnam Syndrome shaped future ability to intervene
- domestic legacy of strife and division -- especially in Dem party
- Congress challenge imperial presidency
- credibility gap and loss of faith in all institutions
- damage to the economy
- the power of the media
- Vietnam disrupts the American story
- Vietnam Memorial is a Black gash, not heroic tribute
- what Vietnam means for us today
- forces a choice on where you stand on limits to american power