As a child growing up in the 1980s, my understanding of the Vietnam War was limited to a drama series called Tour of Duty. It was a riveting show, presenting the grim, messy realities facing an American platoon. Great entertainment for a child enamored by the travesties of war.
While I understood the war was tragic, I had no idea its extent until I watched PBS's Vietnam. After watching all 18 hours of this captivating documentary (yes, it's a long, gruesome haul), I now understand the inescapable folly of it all. It was a war that simply could not be won.
There's a lot to tell after 18 hours. I'll share out some of the most interesting/appalling things I learned:
This was one long war. It began with the French in 1946 and ended in 1975 when the last American soldiers left Saigon. This civil war, prolonged and exacerbated by two Western military powers, lasted an unfathomable 30 years.
The Americans could've learned something from the French. Little known to me, the French had their own disastrous intervention in Vietnam. When the Vietnamese asserted their independence from their French colonizers in 1945, the French dug in their heals to fight the new socialist government. The French lost almost twice as many soldiers (over 100,000) as America would lose a decade later. The French public finally had enough, forcing their government to withdraw from an unwinnable war in 1954. Sound familiar?
Nothing unites a country like a foreign invader. As one American diplomat disclosed, this was not a war over communism – it was a fight for independence. The majority of Vietnamese viewed the Americans the same way they viewed their French colonizers: with distrust and disdain.
John F. Kennedy was to blame. At least as much as any of the five presidents who presided over the Vietnam War. But JFK had the dubious distinction of meddling in South Vietnamese politics early on, tacitly approving a coup which led to the murder of then-Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem. Every corrupt leader thereafter would be viewed as a puppet of the American government.
Americans lost trust in government. Every president lied in some way to the American public about the war's inevitable failures. The lying eventually caught up to them. Lyndon B. Johnson, who ran as a "peace" candidate in 1964, escalated the war controversially through the draft, where approximately 300,000 men would be sent to Vietnam annually. He would not run for re-election. With a new generation of skeptical youth protesting the war, the U.S. government would never fully regain the trust of the American people.
Canadians fought, too. Much to my surprise, as many Canadians volunteered in the Vietnam War as there were draft-dodgers entering Canada. Thirty thousand Canadians would willingly sign up for service.
Nixon was a crook from the beginning. Even before his presidency began, Richard Nixon was accused of treason by Lyndon Johnson for sabotaging peace talks between North and South Vietnam in 1968. To ensure his electoral victory, Nixon secretly promised North Vietnamese leaders greater concessions if they delayed coming to the table until after the election. For their cooperation, President Nixon would go on to bomb North Vietnam to pieces.
More civilians died than soldiers. A number I was aware of: 58,000. That's the number of American soldiers who died in Vietnam. Casualty statistics I was not aware of: over 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers; over one million North Vietnamese soldiers; and most shockingly, over two million Vietnamese civilians, many killed by one of the most intensive bombing campaigns in U.S. history. More bombs were dropped on Vietnam than in all of World War Two.
Both sides have regrets. What makes this documentary interesting is that veterans from both sides of the war were interviewed. The North Vietnamese soldiers were just as scared, just as psychologically damaged, and just as remorseful as any of the American vets. A quote from a North Vietnamese veteran sticks in my mind: "In a war, no one wins or loses. There is only destruction."
Yet the documentary makes it clear: America lost the war; and even worse, it lost itself.
