Four presidents had declared that the survival of South Vietnam was essential for U.S. containment policy, but their predictions that a Communist victory in South Vietnam would set the dominoes cascading did not materialize. Although Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia all fell within the Communist camp in the spring of 1975, the rest of Southeast Asia did not. When China and Vietnam reverted to their historically hostile relationship, the myth of a monolithic Communist power overrunning Asia evaporated.
Antigovernment sentiment was just one of the war’s legacies. It also left bitter divisions among Americans and diverted money from domestic programs. The war created federal budget deficits and triggered inflation that contributed to ongoing economic crises throughout the 1970s (as discussed in chapter 30).
The long pursuit of victory in Vietnam complicated the United States’ relations with other nations, as even its staunchest ally, Britain, doubted the wisdom of the war. The use of terrifying American power against a small Asian country alienated many in the third world and compromised efforts to win the hearts and minds of people in developing nations.
The cruelest legacy of Vietnam fell on those who had served. “The general public just wanted to ignore us,” remembered Frederick Downs, while opponents of the war “wanted to argue with us until we felt guilty about what we had done over there.” Many veterans believed in the war’s purposes and felt betrayed by the government for not letting them win it. Others blamed the government for sacrificing the nation’s youth in an immoral, unnecessary war, expressing their sense of the war’s futility by referring to their dead comrades as having been “wasted.” Veterans of color had more reason to doubt the nobility of their purpose. A Native American soldier assigned to resettle Vietnamese civilians found it to be “just like when they moved us to the rez [reservation]. We shouldn’t have done that.”
United States | |
Battle deaths | 47,434 |
Other deaths | 10,786 |
Wounded | 153,303 |
South Vietnam | |
Killed in action | 110,357 |
Military wounded | 499,026 |
Civilians killed | 415,000 |
Civilians wounded | 913,000 |
Communist Regulars and Guerrillas | |
Killed in action | 66,000 |
Source: U.S. Department of Defense. |
Because the Vietnam War was a civil war involving guerrilla tactics, combat was especially brutal (Table 29.1). The terrors of conventional warfare were multiplied, and so were the motivations to commit atrocities. The 1968 massacre at My Lai was only the most widely publicized war crime. To demonstrate the immorality of the war, peace advocates stressed the atrocities, contributing to a distorted image of the Vietnam veteran as dehumanized and violent.
Most veterans came home to public neglect. Government benefits were less generous to Vietnam veterans than they had been to those of the previous two wars. While two-
By then, the climate had changed. The war began to enter the realm of popular culture, with novels, TV shows, and hit movies depicting a broad range of military experience—
REVIEW: What strategies did Nixon implement to bring American involvement in Vietnam to a close?