The Theme of Vietnam Books - Literature review Example

Books on Vietnam: Compare and Contrast 2006 The only major conflict that the U.S. encountered during the Cold War era was that in Vietnam, the land that American war veterans love to hate as a swampy marshland. It still lingers in the American psyche, one that is filled with hatred for socialist doctrinaire. It still acts as a leitmotif in the US’ repeated involvement in clashes and squeamish in central and South Asia as America had the longest fight in its history of occupation and war in Vietnam. Yet, the country remains swathed in mystery to the outside world, as indicted by recent studies on the country’s history - by Spencer Tucker and by Marilyn Young. Books on Vietnam began to hit the stands well before the war reached its peak, most with pre-arranged design and slants. Some books stressed on reconstructing the war from political and military point of view, while others were personal memoirs. The journalists found the subject attractive because of its contentious elements. Hollywood, too, came into the picture, turning “Komer” into “Kurtz” and “Giap” in to “Gump” and cluttering Vietnam with swamps and marshes. New works continue to multiply, the bulk of which deals with the general idea and synopsis of events, primarily intended to offer more detailed studies to the more relevant aspects of the war. The political frame, the social psyche and the administrative maneuvering of the war are also analyzed either from a military strategist’s point or from that of an academic. Spencer C. Tucker's 200-page book, Vietnam, begins with a synopsis of the unknown areas regarding Vietnam related with its history, geography, ethnology and global relations. Typically, experts start writing on Vietnam’s history from 1961. Tucker goes back to the year 2000 BC. The reader might feel a little weighed down by the heaviness of such a remote past but Tucker moves fast forward to the modern time from that time- tattered backdrop. Over the next two chapters, he narrates the history of French colonization in Vietnam. He points out to the conflicting blend of ideas pertaining to “Enlightenment” and “Classic Realism” that paved the way for the U.S. to invade the region, providing a initial trade and missionary groundwork. Tucker is careful to pay attention to the critical period in the last part of World War II. He insinuates on the wrong military strategies and the short terms gains swapped against log-term advantages. To analyze America’s role in the Vietnam War, Tucker shifts his focus on the diplomatic aspects. Details that are often lost in oversized books find importance in his references. For example, how the Viet Cong attack was made even after the Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin appealed for self-control during his stay in North Vietnam. It pushed the erstwhile USSR to change its guidelines of restricted participation considerably. Tucker does not end his book with the fall of Saigon or the great American escape from the land that they once sarcastically described as a political quagmire, as do most other writers. His last chapter deals with the reunification of Vietnam, its role as an aggressor on Cambodia, short term conflict with Red China, its newfound rapport with its former intruder America and its attempt to fit into the new world economic order by reversing its former pro-socialist and anti-imperialist standing. To the majority of Americans, the Vietnam War is a sustaining cause of guilt and remorse. Americans blame no one else for the war but themselves. Tucker harks back that America's role was much stronger than that of guilt (Vietnam, 2000). To most readers of the West, Tucker’s book would be an eye opener. Tucker, who introduces himself, “first as an Army captain in charge of preparing daily intelligence summaries on North Vietnam and Laos for the chief of staff of the Army and later as a college professor offering a course on the war” (Preface, Vietnam, Page Number: vii), admits that it was unfeasible to investigate the war in “isolation, as so many Americans were wont to do at the time”. He considers that one could not find out the “truth” about the Vietnam War “without first studying the Indo-China War, which in turn could not be understood without probing Vietnamese nationalist attitudes during the period of French rule. That in turn was conditioned by long Vietnamese opposition to China”. Vietnam War, he stresses, is a war in modern times that shows “the need to study history”. It is, according to Tucker, a shocking affair for the United States “in terms of lives and treasure as well as in domestic upheaval”. The Vietnamese have done “much better at putting that war into perspective than have Americans”, says Tucker (Vietnam, Page Number, vii.), asserting that the history of Vietnam revolves around two major themes. The first is the attempt to conserve the “national identity” against outsiders. This led to the “thousand-year-long struggle” against Chinese rule (111BCC—AAD938), ensued by a long endeavor to save freedom and harmony among different regions against the Portuguese, Dutch, French, and then the Americans. The second premise is spreading out of the land in so far as the Cà Mau Neck of land. Civil Wars and war with other countries have long been an element of the turbulent history of Vietnam. Tucker quotes the noted nationalist- scholar Pham Quynh who said, “We Vietnamese are a people in search of a country and we do not find it ” (from General Y. Gras, Histoire de La Guerre d’Indochine (cited in Vietnam, chapter 1, Page Number: 1). Marilyn Young, in the book Vietnam Wars 1945-1990 (1991), takes a firmer stand. She argues that the war in Indochina disproved the naïve idea, for some time at least, that overseas policies of the U.S. always "meant well" and that Marxism was always "bad." Before the war, the Americans portrayed the Vietnamese as deceitful hordes, cruel, apathetic and unconcerned lots. Young thinks that the war proved it otherwise. In 1954, she reports, the French had to pull out and the Geneva treaties were signed. This necessitated Ho Chi Minh and his group to leave the North of Vietnam and the French pawn government ruling the South. A temporary line promised to be erased when elections for the reunification of the country took place in July 1956, divided North and South Vietnam. The Americans then started bringing in arms to the French to capture Vietnam to squash the growth of nationalism in Vietnam. The U.S., she points out, realized that the Viet Minh would succeed any free and just election and that Ho Chi Minh was more of an autonomist than a communist. Hence, it was needed to set up a stable separate nation in South Vietnam, under the absolute rule of Ngo Dinh Diem, who unleashed a reign of terror against his rivals, leftist or else. In an endnote, she cites Diem's past chief of staff as saying that had the Diem government restricted the state terror and torment to only communists or communist adherents, one could accept that such persons naturally warranted such dealing. But his terror extended to other political parties, people who did not like his government and those opposing extortion by corrupt government representatives. Despite of being regularly dribbled over as a great compassionate statesman in the U.S. media and among American moderates, conservatives in South Vietnam were starting to overtly resist his rule, agonizing U.S. officials about his government 's strength. In 1959, Hanoi approved the Viet Minh in the South to oppose the terror of Diem's regime. A few thousand North Vietnamese, most hailing from the South, started to penetrate the country. In 1960, the National Liberation Front (NLF) was set up amongst many South Vietnamese rebels led by the former Viet Minh ("viet cong" in U.S. misinformation). Diem was ousted and killed in 1963 in a U.S.-supported coup d'état. They set up a succession of military dictatorships until they found one adequately bendable represented by Ky and Thieu. The U.S. widened its bombing on North Vietnam, then began a thorough attack on South Vietnam, speeding its agenda of mass murder. Some of the more exciting documents cited in this book are from the Rand corporation, like the one scrutinizing the notorious "strategic hamlet" plan in the village of Duc Lap. Another document describes the backing for the NLF effecting from the huge “defoliation” agenda started by the U.S. purportedly to refute food sources to the NLF that significantly ravaged peasants. This aggravated the mood that the U.S were "at best minimally concerned with the peasant's welfare." The author talks about the domestic aspects of the Vietnam war, in addition to the mass murder actions carried out in Laos and Cambodia. She notes that the U.S., as in South Vietnam, shunned prospects to make peace by supporting the formation of an alliance government with the left wing rebels as recommended by the dictator Prince Siahnouk. He had been thrown out in 1970 when he was fervently disparate to the U.S’ bombing on his country despite the U.S. claim of his support. When the U.S. bombing attained its terrible climax in 1973, Cambodia's infrastructure and liberal and progressive civil society were almost totally razed, leaving the cruelest and most atrocious elements, as shown by the Khmer Rouge, formerly a very peripheral weird group of the rebels, grasping power. Thieu's government fell in 1975. The author notes that in his final pitiable words in power, he attacked Kissinger for purportedly giving in South Vietnam in the January 1973 peace accord. However, the author also notes that Thieu continued to grab NLF areas, prolonging the war as if there had been no peace accord with U.S., which gave him army aid. Thieu was resisted by the entire South Vietnamese society since the unlawfulness of his government could not be concealed. Vietnam is colored in the exotic hue that the western audience finds intriguing. Any euphoric idea about a Vietnam, where the guerilla fights desperately in extreme rainfall or in rough winter, in the dense jungle or in the mountain hideouts for their country’s freedom evokes romanticism but may not necessarily depict the truth. For a compassionate reader, Vietnam remains a seminal area of research and revelation. The two books deal with the history of Vietnam from its birth in the third century B.C and its revolt against Chinese authority and of the era of French colonization and finally the American incursion on it’s land and people. Sometimes unbiased and at times annoyingly anti-American, both supply adequate details to express the ethical/strategic uncertainty that besieged the War. Readers would come to finally question why Americans were in Vietnam let alone why they could not decipher the mystery of the insurgency at all. Works Cited Tucker, Spencer C., Vietnam, UCL Press. London. 1999. Young Marilyn, Vietnam Wars 1945-1990, Harper Perennial; Reprint edition, 1991 General Y. Gras, Histoire de La Guerre d’Indochine (Paris, 1992), p. 584 Vietnam - The Scar That Will Not Heal, The Journal of Conflict Studies, Volume XX Number 1 Fall 2000department of social Studies, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, New Jersey, USA, Read More