81. Why Vietnam Matters
- Author:
- Scott Moore
- Publication Date:
- 12-2010
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- PRISM
- Institution:
- Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
- Abstract:
- The Vietnam War, long viewed as an example of a U.S. military and political failure best to be forgotten, has reemerged as a hot topic of historical revision. With counterinsurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, analysts and pundits are drawing parallels between American mistakes today and those of 40 years ago. Unfortunately, too many merely offer polemics over reasoned analyses, either restating long-held assumptions about Vietnam formulated in the immediate aftermath of the war and unquestioned since or providing shallow summaries of the war intended to prove preconceived points. The Vietnam War, according to much of the literature, remains a fiasco directed by arrogant politicians and inept commanders and fought by luckless troops who stumbled about the countryside blind to the realities they faced. Yet the Vietnam War-as with all wars, to include today's-proved to be a far more complex conflict than some would have us believe. If there were those whose hubris failed us, there were also dedicated military and civilians who fought mightily to achieve success. The inept served side by side with the skilled. While blame for ultimate failure can be fairly apportioned, in the end the United States eventually succumbed as much to the conditions and, with due credit not often granted by historians, the competent and well-led enemy it faced as to its own incompetence. Whether or not the Vietnam War could have been won (assuming winning is ever the objective of counterinsurgencies) remains a question that cannot be reduced to simple formulas or indictments of individuals or institutions. Instead, understanding the complexities of counterinsurgency, both then and now, demands a far more nuanced examination of the challenges inherent in these types of conflicts.
- Political Geography:
- Afghanistan