President Bush is making his historic trip to Vietnam. It's a sign that in recent years relations between the U.S. and Vietnam have improved markedly.
Asked by reporters if he saw any lessons from that conflict for today, Bush said he thought the lesson was not to give up. Americans still do not agree about what lessons, if any, Vietnam holds, however. The ghosts of the Vietnam War a generation ago are hard to escape.
Over the years, a long string of movies and television productions with a Vietnam War theme have kept memories of the conflict fresh, though often at the cost of blurring historical fact. Now, with increasing comparisons between the Iraq War and the war in Vietnam, those memories have a new importance.
The author of a new book about the Vietnam and the media says that comparisons between the wars Iraq and Vietnam illustrate the lack of consensus about the war in Southeast Asia. “Americans are still fighting about the Vietnam War,” according to the Gordon Arnold.
“The Vietnam War ended, but the national trauma it caused was never resolved,” says Arnold, a professor of politics and media at Montserrat College of Art in Massachusetts. “We’re still fighting the ghosts of Vietnam thirty years later. It colors our perceptions and influences America’s leaders.” Adding to the problem, according to Arnold, is the muddled picture of the war that has been presented in a long series of movie and television productions.
Hollywood’s frequent use of the Vietnam War as a subject has made things more complicated, according to Arnold. Beginning in the 1970s, the major studios produced a string of movies dealing with Vietnam. The intersection of Vietnam movies and politics is the subject of Arnold’s book, The Afterlife of America’s War in Vietnam.
Article comments
1 - MCH
Wow, GW finally went to Vietnam. Isn't he about 36 years too late?
2 - SHARK
"Bush said he thought the lesson was not to give up."
Oh.
My.
Gawd.
Vietnam = 50,000 dead American G.I.s -- and now, they're our little Commie trading partner.
Iraq = 2,865 dead American G.I.s + 46137 wounded -- and they'll eventually end up worse off than when Saddam ran the place.
Way ta go, George!
3 - Martin Lav
Funny how the evil empire associated with communism is now the axis of evil associated with Muslim extremism and the message is "not to give up"
???????????
What the F am I missing?
Sounds to me that if history is any sort of lesson, we should give up and things will work themselves out on their own.
I mean I don't remember Rambo much, but weren't most of these HOLLYWOOD movies about the futility of war?
I mean if our esteemed President is so dense that he thinks we the AMERICAN people are so dense that we don't see the irony of him in a communist country/capitalist country where we did give up that is successful and prospering contrasted to a country where we aren't giving up that's in utter ruins and chaos, then God save us.
4 - Peter J
Bush camp is so muddled trying to figure our the American peoples take on war they can't see that war is not what we're thinking about.
Bush has had nothing on his mind since he took office except war, his being a "War President" and how history will perceive him 30 years down the road. Obviously he plans on being around to soak it all in, putting on a different uniform for each of his "achievements".
He doesn't get that the election was not as much about the war and how HE handled it, it was Tenet and Rumsfeld and Powell. They fucked up his glory, but he's gonna make it A'OK.
Th3e man is a lost soul.
5 - Mohjho
We occupied Vietnam to keep the entire region from falling to Communist aggression via a domino effect of political expansion. Result? The Communism never forced its way beyond Vietnam. War won, lets celebrate.
We occupied Iraq to make sure Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction to threaten the region. Results? No WMDs in Iraq. War won, lets get out of Iraq and celebrate.
We can hand out a few medals, promote some Generals for doing a heck-of-job, and get back doing what we do best, franchising.
6 - Richard Rothstein
One of the lessons we should have learned about Vietnam was that it had nothing to do with communisim as Iraq has nothing to do with religion. Both nations were imperiled by voracious militaristic Western Imperialism. The Vietmanmese fought almost to the death for their independence and national soveriegnty. The Iraqis will do the same. Furthermore in both cases the United States stepped in to exploit a mess created by French and British Imperialsim.
The lesson we seem incapable of learning as a nation is that the world isn't our plaything.
The domino effect never happened, because it was a red herring created by Washington to justify some very bad behavior. In some future decade, we will realize the same about Islamic terrorsim.
7 - Nancy
Peter J, the man is not a 'lost soul'; he HAS no soul. Maybe at one time, but he's obviously sold it to the highest bidder since then.
8 - Arch Conservative
"Wow, GW finally went to Vietnam. Isn't he about 36 years too late?"
Yeah and slick willie still hasn't made it there.
9 - MCH
"Yeah and slick willie still hasn't made it there."
Nor have you, to Iraq.
10 - Jack T
A lot of people forget that before he left office, Bill Clinton visited Vietnam in November 2000.
11 - Clavos
Wow, GW finally went to Vietnam. Isn't he about 36 years too late?
He probably accomplished way more now than he ever would have as a GI...
12 - Arch Conservative
Nor have you, to Iraq.
Yeah well I'm not running for office either so what's your fucking point Major Cerebral Hemorrhage?