The Myths of Vietnam Essay - 5554 Words

Contending versions of the Vietnam War and the antiwar movement began to develop even before the war ended. The hawks version, then and now, holds that the war was winnable, but the press, micromanaging civilian game theorists in the Pentagon, and antiwar hippies lost it. . . . The doves version, contrarily, remains that the war was unwise and unwinnable no matter what strategy was employed or how much firepower was used. . . Both of these versions of the war and the antiwar movement as they have come down to us are better termed myths than versions of history because they function less as explanations of reality than as new justifications of old positions and the emotional investments that attended them (Garfinkle, 7). Pro-war or†¦show more content†¦- George Bushs promise not to make Kuwait another Vietnam in 1991. - Bill Clintons attempts to avoid military service and whether those attempts were justified. - Comparisons between Gulf War Syndrome and Agent Orange-related health problems among veterans. - Continuing questions about whether N.A.T.O. involvement in the former Yugoslavia could become another Vietnam. While the controversy over the war has often been reduced to simplistic pro-war or anti-war arguments as illustrated in the opening quotation, a more nuanced reading of post-war literature shows many more areas of controversy. All of these controversies cross over from hawks to doves and back again. Much of the post-war controversy over Vietnam can be summarized in four myths. The first myth is that the micormanaging civilians in Washington lost an otherwise winnable conflict. A second myth deals with the degree to which the radical, countercultural anti-war movement forced President Nixon to end the war. A third is the Rambo myth which claims that American prisoners of war were kept in captivity in Southeast Asia after the cessation of American military involvement and may still have been imprisoned into the 1990s. And lastly, we will examine the myth that the US government would never knowingly harm its soldiers. These four myths have been examined in numerous books published since the end of theShow MoreRelatedThe War Of All Time1288 Words   |  6 PagesTrouble Comes Vietnam War, one of the most controversial war of all time, it is best known as the American War, a war between France who had claimed Vietnam as their territory against the communist forces Viet Minh. The year of 1947 when the Truman Doctrine was passed, to send United State trooped across the globe to oppose any communist force. 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