HISTORY CONTENT LEVEL 1

COLD WAR

The Origins of the Cold War. The Cold war emerged from the breakdown of
relations between two of the primary victors of World War 11, which were the
United States and Soviet Union along their respective allies in the Western block
and Eastern bloc in 1947. The roots of the Cold war can be traced back to
diplomatic and military tensions preceding World War 11. The USA and the USSR
gradually built up their own zones of influence, dividing the World War 11 into two
opposing camps. The cold war was therefore not inclusively a struggle between
USSR and US but a global/ world-wide that affected many countries, particularly
the continent of Europe. Indeed, in Europe divided, became one of the main
threats of the war. Although the two great powers never fought directly, they
pushed the world to the brink of nuclear war on several occasions; nuclear
deterrence was the only effective means of preventing military confrontations.

BERLIN WALL
Main reasons for the Berlin Wall in August 1961, East Germany police and military units
sealed all arteries leading to West Berlin. The communist pulled up train tracks and roads,
erected barriers topped with barbed wire, completely isolating to western Sectors and
preventing East Germans from escaping to the West. The Berlin wall was the first step
towards German reunification and Berlin was the heart of the Cold war. In 1962 the Soviet
and East Germany added a barrier, about 100 yards behind the original wall, creating a
tightly policed no man’s land between walls. After the wall went up more than 260, people
died attempting to flee to the West. In 1989, political changes in Eastern Europe and civil
unrest in Germany put pressure on the Eastern government to loosen some of its regulations
on travel to West Germany. There was a mass protest that Berlin Wall dividing communist
East Germany from West Germany crumbled. East German leaders had tried to calm
mounting protest by loosening the borders, making travel easier for East German. The
solution of the crisis was the Berlin airlift, an operation that carried food, fuel and other
supplies into west berlin by plane. The effort required a lot of careful planning and many
resources, but the Airlift allowed the USA to keep a foothold in post war Germany

32
Exploring the
Vietnam War
A Teacher’s Resource Essay

By Raymond A. Marcus

He didn’t even hear what I said; he was absorbed already in the

dilemmas of Democracy and the responsibilities of the West; he was
determined . . . to do good,
not to any individual person but to a country, a continent, a world.”
––Graham Greene, The Quiet American (1955)1

T he purpose of this essay is to

provide classroom instructors and
other interested parties with a
review of a range of readings, films, and
documentaries about the Vietnam War. The
French colonial
experience,
establishing Indochina
as a far-flung colonial
outpost, enriching the
eight areas presented explore the conflict mother country while
in its complexity, from background to brutally suppressing
culture to the legacy for US foreign policy. resistance. From the
The areas can be shaped into instructional 1870s to the 1950s, the
units, with readings and films chosen with French regime raised
a secondary school or college audience in generations of
mind. Vietnamese civil
servants, who
developed cultural and
Vietnam’s French intellectual ties with
their occupiers. A class
Colonial of Western-educated
Background nationalists emerged in
the twentieth century
Before the American war came the who denounced the
foreign occupation and

33
called for self-determination. Ho Chi Minh, Television History, beginning with Episode I:
the leader of the Vietnamese Communist “Roots of a War (1945–1953).”
Party, was in the forefront. Much of Ho’s
popular appeal can be read and dissected
in Bernard Fall’s edited volume, Ho Chi Minh US Objectives in
on Revolution: Selected Writings, 1920–1966
(1967). These primary sources offer an Cold War Context,
idea of the hope Ho offered to so many
Vietnamese who chafed and suffered under
the Case for the War
French domination. The best biography on
Ho is William J. Duker’s Ho Chi Minh: A Life
and Reasons Lost
(2000). Graham Greene’s graceful novel, The rationale that led America into
The Quiet American (1955), captures the mood Vietnam must be placed firmly into the
of the French under siege, while Cold War mindset. In the years after World
foreshadowing the American experience. War II, US policymakers perceived
The French were defeated in 1954 by the communism as a near-monolithic entity.
communist Viet Minh. Thus, the communist and anti-colonial
struggle in Vietnam played upon US fears
A familiarity with the French colonial of communist global expansion: Russia,
experience in Vietnam is important for 1917; Eastern Europe and Poland, post-
Americans’ study, as the Americans 1945; China and North Korea, 1949; Tibet,
ignored or misread the lessons from the 1951; North Vietnam, 1954; and Cuba,
French failure. The French war was also 1959. As Herring writes, although
America’s initial entry, as the US funded 80 Indochina was considered by the
percent of the war by 1954, as a Cold War Americans to be “important for its raw
fight against communism. The first chapter materials, rice, and naval bases . . . it was
of deemed far more significant for the
presumed effect its loss would have on
George C. Herring’s excellent work,
other areas,” otherwise known as “the
America’s Longest War (1979), “A Dead-End
domino theory.”2 If South Vietnam fell, then
Alley: The United States, France and the
“Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Malaya
First Indochina War, 1950–1954,” is a fine
(and then, successively, the Philippines,
introduction to France’s defeat and
Indonesia, and Australia) would ‘fall to the
America’s entry onto the scene. Indeed,
Communists’ in their proper order.”3
Herring’s book is well worth reading in its
entirety, for both high school and college The answer was the “containment
classes. In addition, for this first unit on the doctrine,” established during the Truman
war I strongly recommend the 1983 PBS administration, and pursued, with
variations, on through
“American Experience” series, Vietnam: A
Top image: Original photo source for the illustration: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/05/in_pictures_the_vietnam_war_/html/1.stm
Ho Chi Minh illustration by Willa Davis.

the 1980s. Students would benefit from reading George Kennan’s 1946 “Long Telegram”
sent from the US Embassy in Moscow to Washington, DC, in which Kennan argued that
Soviet encroachments be contained at every opportunity, meeting force with force.
Kennan’s telegram is a seminal document in Cold War history. 4 Although the threat of
communist expansion was the primary concern in Vietnam for Presidents Kennedy,
Johnson, and Nixon, additional motives included US credibility and domestic political
concerns, with administrations fearful of seeming to appease totalitarian aggression.

34
 For a counterbalance to more
mainstream histories, I also find
useful Howard Zinn’s chapter,
“The Impossible Victory:
Ho Chi Minh’s tomb in Hanoi, containing the leader’s embalmed body. His wishes for
Vietnam,” in his classic polemic, A cremation and dispersal of his ashes were disregarded by the government following his
People’s History of the United States death in 1969.
Photo by Raymond Marcus, 2004.

(1980). Zinn presents a critical

leftist perspective, stressing US
economic motives behind the
nation’s overseas ventures.
Focusing on the disconnect
between official democratic
principles and cynical self-
interest, his work can be counted
on to provoke lively class
discussions.
For documentaries, I strongly
recommend Errol Morris’ The Fog of
War, which won an Academy Trophies of War: US military relics at the museum and battle site at Khe Sanh, where
Marines endured a seventy-seven-day siege by North Vietnamese forces in 1968.
Photo by
Award in 2003. The film presents Raymond Marcus, 2004.

a series of interview clips with

Robert McNamara, Kennedy and
Johnson’s Secretary of Defense
and a key architect of the war. An
eighty-five-year-old McNamara
reflects on Vietnam, the danger of
too much power, Cold War
presumptions, and mistakes that
were made, interspersed with
combat footage.
While the antiwar movement
opposed the basic tenets of why
the US should involve itself in
Vietnam, plenty of bipartisan
foreign policy experts were firmly
Signs of Hope: Commerce and an appeal for international tourism at a stop near Da
convinced that America was both Nang, the former home of a major US military airbase duringPhoto
the war.
by Raymond

morally and strategically justified Marcus, 2004.

in seeking to contain North Vietnam.

Richard Nixon asserted in No More
Vietnams (1985) that the conflict was no
civil war, but rather, “the Vietnam War
was the Korean war with jungles,” in
which a hostile communist force
“camouflaged its invasion to look like a
civil war,” while undertaking a stream
of ceaseless border crossings while
supporting the Viet Cong.5 The
American media and antiwar
movement are both singled out by

35
 Nixon, but also the failure of the
Kennedy and Johnson administrations
to explain “what we were fighting for,”
thus failing to secure enduring public
support.6 Nixon also blamed the US
Congress for allowing Saigon to fall in
the two years following America’s
withdrawal.
Nixon’s polemical book is useful in
providing an alternate perspective to
the antiwar critique, whether in
explaining the US justification or in de-
romanticizing Ho Chi Minh, whose
1950s agrarian policies sparked “major
peasant revolts,” resulting in the
deaths of 50,000 North Vietnamese.7
Additional arguments for support of the
war are to be found in Robert F.
Kennedy’s oral interviews in Robert
Kennedy: In His Own Words: The Unpublished
Recollections of the Kennedy Years (1991),
edited by Edwin O. Guthman and
Jeffrey Shulman, and in Lyndon
Johnson’s memoir, The Vantage Point:
Perspectives on the Presidency, 1963–1969
(1971).
As arguments are studied for the
war’s justification, so should debates
be reviewed on why the war was lost.
The issue of whether the American
media helped lose the war and the
theory of an “oppo-

While a growing majority conceded that the war had become “a mess,” that did
not mean they were ready to mount the barricades—far from it. Instead, the
curious situation arose in which “most of those who disliked the war, disliked
the peace movement even more.” threatening an “immediate
termination of U.S. economic and
sitional” media are discussed by military assistance” if Thieu did
Melvin Small in Johnson, Nixon, and not sign the document.9
the Doves.8 In Nixon Reconsidered In We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young,
(1994), a largely positive Retired Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore in his final
reevaluation, Joan Hoff reviews chapter, “Reflections and Perceptions,”
flaws in the 1973 peace singles out flaws in US military and political
agreement, which was essentially policy as to why America failed in Vietnam,
forced upon South Vietnam’s including one-year tours of duty and
President Thieu, with Nixon frequent officer rotations. Failure also
resulted from losing the hearts and minds

36
of the populace by bombing heavily (1985), edited by Bernard Edelman; and
populated areas. “None of us,” Moore Robert Mason’s Chickenhawk (1983), a
wrote, “had joined the Army to hurt fascinating account by a US helicopter pilot
children and frighten peaceful farm who flew more than one thousand combat
families.”10 Nor would the American people missions in Vietnam. Of these works,
condone the ongoing losses as the years Baker’s Nam is the most graphic, in terms of
passed, despite superior firepower. Even violence, language, and brutality, and thus
with a “kill ratio of 10–1 or even 20–1” should be read carefully by the teacher
against the enemy, eventually Americans before the book is assigned, since the
would demand that the troops come home, material is disturbing. For a popular
mission accomplished or not.11 fictional treatment, many fine examples
exist, but perhaps the best remains
Vietnam veteran Tim O’Brien’s The Things
The Face of War They Carried
As historian John Dower once wrote, (1990).
“atrocities follow war as the jackal follows
a wounded beast.”12 Vietnam was no On the other side,
different, and, like Dower’s own area of Bao Ninh’s The Sorrow of
expertise on the Pacific War, the war in War (1991) is a novel by
Vietnam was carried out between peoples a North Vietnamese
of different races, languages, and cultures; Army veteran. One of
cruelty, racism, and dehumanization 500 soldiers who served
followed in its wake. Certainly, atrocities in the North’s 27th Youth
occurred on both sides, from the 1968
massacre by US soldiers in the village of Brigade, and one of only ten who
My Lai, to the mass executions by survived,
communist forces in the city of Hue during Ninh was seventeen
the 1968 Tet Offensive. For students to when he joined the war and
form an accurate perception of the face of twenty-three when it ended. His
the Vietnam War, works that present the novel has become a literary
American soldier’s experience should also classic. Nor did the decade
include a feel for the camaraderie, the following Hanoi’s victory bring
stultifying dullness, the struggles against the longed-for reconciliation for
heat, loneliness, brutality, loss, and fear. which many had hoped, as
Truong Nhu
Mark Baker’s Nam: The Vietnam War in the
Tang makes clear in A Viet Cong Memoir
Words of the Men and Women who Fought There
(1985), written with David Chanoff and
(1981) is a collection of veterans’ oral
Doan Van Toai. A former guerrilla who
histories, at times starkly graphic, and
served as Minister of Justice after the war,
cannot fail to hold students’ attention. “You
Tang’s bitter disillusionment with postwar
can’t tell who’s your enemy,” one veteran
Vietnam eventually forced him into exile.
recalled. “You got to shoot kids, you got to
For an excellent visual, the National
shoot women. You don’t want to. You may
be sorry that you did. But you might be Geographic documentary, Vietnam’s Unseen
sorrier if you didn’t.”13 Other veteran War: Pictures from the Other Side (2002), offers
accounts include Charlie Company: What a series of interviews and photographs by
North Vietnamese photographers, giving
Vietnam Did to Us (1983), with accounts
more of a face to “the faceless enemy” in
gathered by reporters Peter Goldman and
the jungle.
Tony Fuller; Philip Caputo’s A Rumor of War
(1977); Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam

37
 For American POWs, the war included
the nightmare of internment. A useful
account of one American POW’s
experience in Hanoi’s notorious French-
built Hoa Lo Prison is Jeremiah A. Denton,
Jr.’s When Hell Was in Session (1976). Lionel
Chetwynd’s dramatic film, Hanoi Hilton
(1987), offers stark images for viewers
unused to seeing American POWs at the
mercy of others. The documentary Return
with Honor (2001), directed by Freida Lee
Mock and Terry Sanders, depicts the
POWs’ plight and their return to America.

The Antiwar
Movement
Much has been written on the anti-
Vietnam War movement, and abundant Promotional art for The Weather Underground with 1969 police
films and documentaries are readily mug shots of Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, and Mark Rudd,
former members of the Weather Underground. (Photo credit:
available. Two comprehensive tomes are Courtesy of Chicago Historical Society).
Tom Wells’s The War Within: America’s Battle
over Vietnam (1994), and Terry H.
Anderson’s The Movement and the Sixties marijuana on a regular basis or
(1995). Born on the Fourth of July (1976) by experiment with psychedelic drugs, and
Ron Kovic is an excellent choice for high did not ‘dress like a hippie.’”14 Paul Lyons’
school audiences, presenting Kovic’s work, Class of ’66, is a wonderful corrective
journey from an all-American high school in this area. Indeed, as Godfrey Hodgson
athlete who comes home from the war in wrote in America in Our Time (1976), the
a wheelchair and becomes a spokesman 1968 “swing of public opinion against the
for the antiwar movement. The Sixties war did not mean that the peace
Papers: Documents of a Rebellious Decade (1984), movement had succeeded in achieving its
edited by Judith Clavir Albert and Stewart dream of mass conversion.”15 While a
Edward Albert, is an excellent growing majority conceded that the war
compendium of primary sources that had become “a mess,” that did not mean
cover six main areas, from the cultural to they were ready to mount the barricades
the political and from the moderate to the —far from it. Instead, the curious situation
extreme. arose in which “most of those who
disliked the war, disliked the peace
Although the dominant popular movement even more.”16
perception of the sixties generation
The collection Second Thoughts: Former
depicts a “politically and socially
Radicals Look Back at the Sixties is a useful
rebellious” youth, a 1989 Gallup poll
resource containing reflections by three
found otherwise. Among those surveyed
dozen former activists. A common theme
who came of political age during the
in the section “Second Thoughts on
sixties, “large majorities . . . say they did
Vietnam” is how, after 1975 and the
not get involved in anti-war or civil rights
ensuing communist repression in both
movements, did not smoke
Vietnam and Cambodia, many New

38
 Leftists who had cheered communist- advocated peace to those who sought to
driven wars of national liberation later end the war and change society through
ignored or sought to discredit reports that far more violent means.
reflected poorly on the new communist
regimes. As one writer stated, “such
methods of imposing the Party’s power Culture Clash:
over a newly ‘liberated’ society have been
a part of every Communist victory since America and
1917.”17Another writer spoke of the
inherent danger of romanticizing “the
Vietnam
other side,” a pitfall experienced not only The great cultural, linguistic, political, and
by the New Leftists but also by “old historical differences that separated the
leftists” who glorified Stalin in the Americans from the Vietnamese
1930s.18A fine study on the evils that contributed to the war’s tragedy, fueled by
befell Cambodia and the danger of the frustration that arose between
romanticizing guerrillas of any stripe is mutually uncomprehending people.
William Shawcross’s Sideshow: Nixon, Kissinger “America was involved in Vietnam for thirty
and the Destruction of Cambodia (1979), which years, but never understood the
indicts the Nixon administration for Vietnamese,” wrote Loren Baritz in his
work Backfire (1985).19 Vietnamese men, for
The Weather Underground (2003), example, had the custom of holding hands
directed by Sam Green and Bill Siegel, in public with their friends. For American
youths raised on John Wayne films, this
shows the radicalization of a small practice repelled many GIs who felt that
band of revolutionaries who sought to their Asian allies were either effeminate or
cowards, prompting them to wonder “why
bring down the US government, with Americans had to die in defense of
their reflections thirty years later. perverts.”20 Baritz’s first chapter, “God’s
Country and American Know-How,” is
particularly informative as to the clash of
destabilizing fragile, neutral Cambodia, cultures, though the entire book offers
leading to the Khmer Rouge’s seizure of much insight.
power and the genocidal slaughter of over
a million Cambodians. Another excellent place to start for
exploring cultural differences is Frances
Perhaps the best documentary of the Fitzgerald’s landmark work, Fire in the Lake
protest movement is Berkeley in the Sixties (1972), in which each culture’s view of the
(1990), directed by Mark Kitchell. In the historical process differed, which affected
previously-mentioned Vietnam: A Television their view of revolution. Traditional
History series, the antiwar movement is Vietnamese view history as cyclical, in
portrayed in the episode “Homefront USA.” keeping with their life as an agrarian-based
For a look at the most radical and violent people, while Westerners view history as a
protest group that arose from the sixties, path of progression, with humanity
The Weather Underground (2003), directed by emerging from a state of chaos to eventual
Sam Green and Bill Siegel, shows the order and stability. Thus, whereas
radicalization of a small band of Westerners tend to perceive revolution as
revolutionaries who sought to bring down “an abrupt reversal in the order of society,
the US government, with their reflections a violent break in history,” Vietnamese
thirty years later. Together these view it as “the cleansing fire to burn away
documentaries provide a fine cross-section the rot of the old order.”21 In Vietnam,
of the protest movement, from those who Americans were in the unenviable position

39
 of supporting the old order, a pro-Western his account of the Reagan presidency, as
series of anti-communist governments, Reagan’s former Secretary of State,
which the French had left in their wake. As George Shultz bemoaned the “Vietnam
for documentaries, Peter Davis‘s classic syndrome.” “The Vietnam War had left one
work Hearts and Minds (1974) presents tragic indisputable legacy,” Schultz wrote:
and starkly contrasting images of cultural “massive press, public, and congressional
differences and the Americans’ anxiety that the United States—at all costs
involvement in Vietnam. The film should be —avoid getting mired in ‘another
viewed in advance by the instructor due to Vietnam.’”22 In 1991, after America and its
images of violence and, more rarely, allies succeeded in pushing Iraq’s Saddam
nudity. Hussein out of Kuwait, President George H.
W. Bush publicly declared, “we’ve kicked
The anguish that the war inflicted upon the Vietnam syndrome once and for all.” 23
the American psyche left a legacy that Yet, amid the Serbian and Croatian acts of
genocide in the Balkans, Bush “was slow to
continues to impact US foreign policy, act” due to “the ghosts of Vietnam” and
providing a ripe and relevant area for “the great fear of being sucked into a
Balkan quagmire.”24
student research.
Former antiwar protester Bill Clinton
would himself face the Vietnam legacy in
determining US foreign policy. Clinton
pulled out the troops after eighteen US
tense, frustrated, and angry US soldiers servicemen died in civil-war-torn Somalia.
recalls the My Lai massacre. Hamburger Hill He experienced the same fears of over-
(1987), directed by Jon Irvin, deals with a engagement when he ordered limited air
specific battle and is brutal in its realism. strikes on Serbia during the Bosnian and
Coming Home (1978), directed by Hal Ashby, Kosovo conflicts, though he emerged
focuses on the hardship experienced by successful and limited US objectives were
returning veterans and their families. At achieved.
the end of the film a paraplegic vet, played
by Jon Voight, delivers a speech to a high His successor, George W. Bush, went
school audience that is particularly deeper. By December 2005, towards the
moving, in which he expresses remorse for end of the third year of Bush’s war in Iraq,
actions taken while “killing for one’s with roughly 2,200 US soldiers dead, many
country.” politicians began calling for an exit
strategy. “We are locked into a bogged-
down problem not . . . dissimilar to where
Lessons learned (or we were in Vietnam,” stated Nebraska
Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, himself a
not): “No more highly decorated Vietnam veteran. “We
should start figuring out how we get out of
Vietnams” there.”25 Former Clinton Secretary of State
The anguish that the war inflicted upon the Madeline Albright struck a middle ground,
American psyche left a legacy that stating, “The American military [in Iraq] is
from continues to impact US foreign policy, both the problem and the solution. They
providing a ripe and relevant area for are a magnet [for insurgents] but they’re
student research. In the thirty years since also helping with security.”26 Democratic
1975, with each new military foray, cries politicians attacked each other for fear of
ters and are issued on the danger of the US finding seeming weak.27 For his part, President
itself once more in “another quagmire.” In Bush maintained that US forces in Iraq
luding would emerge victorious, promising
, and
ericans 40

y of
“complete victory,” in which US forces
would eventually withdraw as Iraqi forces
increased their level of readiness against
the insur-

41
gency.28 As with Vietnam, politicians of both parties were increasingly caught
between their record of past support, public discontent, perceived US interests,
political vulnerability, and a faith in America’s potential for good amidst a sea of
troubles.
Disputing Vietnam comparisons, military historian Victor Davis Hanson
emphasizes that the number of US war dead in Iraq after two and a half years of
war in no way approximated the far higher losses in World War II, Korea, and
Vietnam. Since the 1970s, American expectations as to its own capabilities have
increased. In a war that seeks to defeat guerrillas and where victories are not
measured by ground taken, “our growing intolerance of any battlefield losses”
will only meet with frustration when US wars are fought without quick and easy
victories.29

Vietnam Today
As the communist forces neared Saigon in the spring of 1975, the

US military’s Stars and Stripes predicted in a bold headline that “AT

LEAST A MILLION VIETNAMESE WILL BE SLAUGH-

TERED.”30 The anticipated bloodbath did not come, though severe hardship and
repression did. For an excellent firsthand account of the prisons and re-education
camps under post-1975 communist rule in Vietnam, see The Vietnamese Gulag
(1986), by Doan Van Toai and David Chanoff. What followed was an eventual
“exodus of boat people, a transformative flotilla that would carry one million
South Vietnamese—about five percent of the South’s population,” to lands
overseas.31 It would take years before the country established a sense of
normalcy.
I thus recommend closing the unit on the Vietnam War with a glimpse of
Vietnam today, thirty years after the country’s reunification and the fall of
Saigon. In addition to my own teaching and research over the years, my
knowledge was greatly enhanced by a summer 2004 trip to Vietnam with Pacific
Village Institute, led by John Eastman. I was most impressed by the sheer energy
of the Vietnamese, their friendliness, optimism, and eagerness embracing
newfound opportunities currently available through the government’s policy of
increased economic liberalism and the encouragement of small private
enterprise.
Whatever the instructor’s political views, whether judging Vietnam’s current
economic trend as a cause for “free world” celebration or one of leftist utopian
mourning, the fact remains that the Vietnamese standard of living and per capita
income are both on the rise, after decades of economic mismanagement and
stringent government control.32 Although censorship of the press and restricted
civil liberties are as one would expect in a one-party state, a look at Vietnam at
the dawn of the twenty-first century provides a positive area for students to
discuss and an upbeat note to end on, in a unit that focuses on the grim reality of
war. As veteran war reporter David Lamb stated in his excellent work Vietnam Now
(2002), the cautious moves by the Vietnamese government have resulted in a
country that “remains closer to impoverished Laos than it does to developing

42
Thailand. Yet,” Lamb adds, “the Vietnamese have always had staying power and
been good at capitalizing on opportunity; their country brims with potential.” 33
This potential, which the country is in the process of realizing, is reason enough
for an in-depth study of the Vietnam War, the Vietnamese people, and the nation
they are becoming. n
NOTES
1. Graham Greene, The Quiet American (New York: Penguin Books, 1977), 18.
2. George C. Herring, America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950–1975, 2nd ed. (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1986), 14.
3. Frances Fitzgerald, Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam (Boston: Little, Brown and Company,
1972), 33.
4. David M. Kennedy and Thomas A. Bailey, The American Spirit, Vol. II: Since 1865, 10th ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Company, 2002), 410.
5. Richard Nixon, No More Vietnams (New York: Arbor House, 1985), 47.
6. Nixon, 15.
7. Nixon, 43.
8. See Melvin Small, Johnson, Nixon, and the Doves (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989), 231–33.
9. Joan Hoff, Nixon Reconsidered (New York: Basic Books, 1994), 235. See the section “How Not to End a War,”
231–37.
10. Lt. Gen Harold G. Moore (Ret.) and Joseph L. Galloway, We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young: Ia Drang: The Battle that
Changed the War in Vietnam (New York: HarperPerennial, 1993), 403–04.
11. Moore and Galloway, 406.
12. John Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon Books, 1987), 12.
13. Mark Baker, Nam: The Vietnam War in the Words of the Men and Women who Fought There (New York: William Morrow and
Company, 1981), 171.
14. Paul Lyons, Class of ’66: Living in Suburban Middle America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), 103.
15. Godfrey Hodgson, America in Our Time (New York: Vintage Books, 1978), 392.
16. Hodgson, 393.
17. Peter Collier and David Horowitz, eds., Second Thoughts: Former Radicals Look Back at the Sixties (Lanham, Md.:
Madison, 1989), 78–79.
18 Collier and Horowitz, eds., 90.
19. Loren Baritz, Backfire: A History of How American Culture Led Us into Vietnam and Made Us Fight the Way We Did (New York:
Ballantine Books, 1986), 3.
20. Baritz, 6–7.
21. Fitzgerald, 30–31.
22. George Schultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993), 294.
23. George C. Herring, “America and Vietnam: The Unending War,” Foreign Affairs, Winter 1991/92,
www.foreignaffairs.org/19911201faessay6116/georgec herring/america-and-vietnam-the-unending-war.html.
24. David Halberstam, War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), 32.
25. Josh Meyer, “Republican Senator Says U.S. Needs Iraq Exit Strategy Now,”Los Angeles Times, August 22, 2005,
A4.
26. Robin Wright, “Democrats Find Iraq Alternative Is Elusive,” Washington Post, December 5, 2005, A1.
27. Jim VandeHei and Shalaigh Murray, “Democrats Fear Backlash at Polls forAntiwar Remarks,” Washington Post,
December 7, 2005, A1.
28. Paul Richter, “Bush Promises a U.S. Exit Linked to Iraqi Readiness,” Los Angeles Times, December 1, 2005, A1.
29. Victor Davis Hanson, “2,000 Dead, in Context,” New York Times, October 27, 2005, A31.
30. David Lamb, Vietnam Now: A Reporter Returns (New York: Public Affairs, 2002), 74.
31. Lamb, 78.

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