As Olson and Roberts state, “If anything, the war made Vietnam more dedicated to communism, not less,” (x). So what went wrong in Vietnam? The answer is pretty much everything: American hubris, a lack of understanding of the history and culture of the people, and an overestimation of what the latest munitions tools could accomplish. The United States fought the war with an unbridled and unchecked sense of righteousness, ignorant of the importance of international and domestic support for the cause. Persistence in a lost cause led not to victory but to profound demoralization among the troops, which caused an even longer-range effect of undermining trust in the American government.
The first failure was a lack of understanding of the culture, history, and worldview of the enemy. Reflecting on the war honestly, Robert McNamara admits that the Americans exhibited a “profound ignorance of the history, culture, and politics” of not just Vietnam but of the entire region (Olson and Roberts x). Of course, the United States was not alone in demonstrating cultural superiority; the French before them had done the same during the colonial era and their legacy likewise failed to induce Vietnam to become sympathetic to the West (Olson and Roberts 16). Without an admission that the world does not revolve around Western Europe or North America, it is impossible to genuinely devise workable diplomatic or military strategies. The same lessons can be applied to almost every other futile war the United States has involved itself in: most notably Iraq and Afghanistan (Skidmore).
The second thing that went wrong was that the United States believed that it could pursue its anti-communist pogrom without the support of its own people, let alone the international community. McNamara admits...
References
Morelock, Jerry D. “Strategy for Failure.” Historynet. http://www.historynet.com/strategy-failure-americas-war-vietnam.htm
Olson, James.S. & Roberts, Randy.W. Where the Domino Fell. 6th Edition. John Wiley & Sons, 2014.
Sandhu, Nevin, Charlie Ruckus and Otis Geddes. The Vietnam War. http://oandcvietnam.weebly.com/what-went-wrong.html
Schroth, Raymond A. “Ken Burns’s ‘Vietnam’ revisits a barbaric war and asks, what went wrong?” America Magazine. 13 Sept, 2017. https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2017/09/13/ken-burnss-vietnam-revisits-barbaric-war-and-asks-what-went-wrong
Skidmore, David. “Vietnam: Who was right about what went wrong – and why it matters in Afghanistan.” Salon. 8 Sept, 2017. https://www.salon.com/2017/09/18/vietnam-who-was-right-about-what-went-wrong-and-why-it-matters-in-afghanistan_partner/
“Why Did America Lose the War?” BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/mwh/vietnam/usgetsoutrev2.shtml
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