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Introduction: Vietnam Reconsidered: Lessons from a War
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11781 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1987 |
1,357 Words |
| Author
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Phil Cohan is a free-lance writer who lives in Washington,
D.C. |
In recent times, no single event has torn at America's self-concept more than the Vietnam War. America was traumatized by the war; it opened a deep chasm that tested our will and threatened to redefine our national character.
Over ten years have passed since the fall of Saigon. Still vivid are images of that city as the news spread that the North Vietnamese were hours away: U.S. Marines with rifle butts pounding the fingers of Vietnamese civilians who tried to claw their way into the U.S. Embassy compound in the futile attempt to escape from their homeland. Still poised atop the embassy, amid the panic, chaos, and fear, is that last solitary helicopter preparing to leave.
We know too well of the upheaval that followed in Indochina - the thousands of Boat People fleeing for their lives in the South China Sea, the unfortunate fate of those who couldn't escape, and the terrible destiny of over two million people who died at the hands of their "liberators" in Cambodia and Laos.
The costs of the war are embedded in the collective memory of the families of the 58,000 Americans who died there, the 300,000 who suffered physical injury, and the thousands who were mentally impaired as a result of it. For them, the direct victims of the Vietnam War, the memory is like a living nightmare that they will carry for the rest of their lives.
In a less obvious way, we are all victims of the war. Buried deep in our common memory are irreconcilable images of the war. On one side, there is the painful memory of the horror and brutality on the battlefields of Southeast Asia witnessed nightly in our living rooms on the family television. On the other side, there are the resounding voices of dissent, echoed from campuses and streets at home. It was a war that divided us against each other, against ourselves.
Some say Vietnam is where America lost its innocence - perhaps. More importantly, Vietnam may be where we lost the vision of America.
Today, Vietnam functions less as a place than as a mirror of America. Where we once saw ourselves as a virtuous people, a nation with purpose and humanity, projecting hope for freedom and justice in an often dark and dangerous world, Americans now see an unfamiliar image of themselves - that is, the image of an America that is tarnished, hollow, inept, power-crazed, and
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