The Wrong War at the Wrong Time for the Wrong Reasons in the Wrong Place

Why did American policymakers confuse nationalism with communism in Vietnam and try to superimpose a European model of the Cold War on to Southeast Asia? What was the rationale in taking the United States military halfway around the world and involve them in a 10 year unwinnable war?

It seems almost a cliché, but it appears that the American policymakers could not see past 1917 and the Russian Revolution. The proud population of what we now call Vietnam had been struggling for many centuries, trying to throw off the yoke of foreign domination. It made little difference to them whether it was the Chinese from Asia are they French colonists from Europe, they preferred to rule their own country. The Four Power allies of World War II could not seem to leave anything alone after the war and spent their time slicing and dicing countries like pieces of pie. Berlin, Germany, Korea, and Vietnam all received the same treatment. The Cold War demanded borders, regardless of their impracticality. And as Ho Chi Minh had courted the Russians as well as the Americans for military hardware, we saw the specter of communism right around the corner. If that wasn't enough, along comes "Tailgunner Joe" McCarthy, waving smoke and mirrors about Communists in the State Department. The politicians, while running for cover, were only too willing not to dispute the communist bugaboo in Vietnam.

So even though it had been agreed that there were to be free elections in Vietnam, the United States simply could not walk away and allow Ho Chi Minh to take over the South.

During the Japanese occupation of Vietnam during the Second World War, Ho Chi Minh was willing to beat every bush in order to obtain necessary war material. He established a codependent rela...

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... the Baghdad hotels and broadcast the aerial bombardment live and in full color. And the technology of satellite telephones, cassette recorders, and personal video cameras were being sold in the post exchanges throughout the country and their output rapidly transmitted back to the States. So when every soldier has a camera, a cell phone, and a grudge, his viewpoint can be broadcast all most instantly throughout the world on the World Wide Web. As this counter viewpoint became more prevalent, the harder it was for the political establishment to control the public perception of the war. And so we returned back to the American public's perception of the Iraqi war following the same path as that developed in Vietnam.

As has been said time and again, "it was the wrong war at the wrong time for the wrong reason in the wrong place." We should have been somewhere else.