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Do
Lessons from the Vietnam War Say "No" to Military
Action in Afghanistan? As the Bush administration contemplated launching a war, both overt and covert, against terrorism, antiwar voices surfaced in peace rallies and in the print media. These antiwar expressions, as echoed in some of the articles included in this selection, often brings out the Vietnam War as a classic example of military action on a foreign soil that turned into a disaster, in hopes of allying hostility against any and all overseas warfare. One of the authors of this selection observes: "Americans easily forget the Vietnam lesson. Or they never learned…" Antiwar activists' strategy in evoking the now-familiar images of the Vietnam War is misguided. The American public has learned and continues to learn from the Vietnam War, largely thanks to Hollywood. But the reconstructed American experience in Vietnam does not appear to support a categorical opposition to all foreign military actions. Neither does it necessarily offer, without elaboration, reasons to oppose the current military actions taken by the administration. It is not that people forget, but that they have learned, maybe differently from what the antiwar activists had hoped for. I. What Did America Not Learn From the Vietnam War? A significant reason that the Vietnam War was emotionally devastating to the American public was the same reason that the September 11th attacks brought many of us to tears. It was the access to both images of wartime carnage and first-hand accounts of the atrocity. These images and voices are reenacted by Hollywood every now and then, along with many writings on the subject. Most of those movies focus on the sufferings of their heroes: an American boy thrown into the killing field of Indochina, coming home as a disabled, both physically and mentally, veteran only to be called a "baby-killer" in his hometown. "The Deer Hunter," "Born on the Fourth of July," "The First Blood," and "Apocalypse." Portrayals of the Vietnam War in the pop culture rarely go beyond depiction of suffering, primarily American suffering, to adequately address losses by the other side, or to explore the reasons of these sufferings. First of all, while the losses by the Vietnamese people are presented in these iconic works, virtually no celluloid space, and for that matter, literature space, is devoted to losses by the Vietnamese communists and their supporters. Instead, they are consistently demonized as deceitful guerilla fighters and ruthless torturers. This dehumanization of the enemy reinforces a demarcation between "us" and "them." And the legacy resulting from this is the surviving notion that as long as we can draw this line, the enemy represents "evil" and therefore they are not human, and killable. Two examples are in point here. One is the central message President George W. Bush has been sending to the world, "You are either with us, or with them." The other is: after identities of the hijackers were revealed, the media was flooded with reports and commentaries where people expressed how profoundly bothered they were by the fact that those hijackers actually settled in the comfort of the American suburbs for quite a few years, socialized with the local communities and still unleashed the deadly attacks on America--the implication being the hijackers are not human beings. While there is little doubt that the Vietnam War has caused much reflection on the suffering by foreign civilians, the effect of such reflection is more dubious. The Vietnam Veteran Memorial Wall, designed by a Vietnamese American, stands prominently on "the Mall" in Washington, D.C. It is only inscribed with the names of American military personnel lost to the war. In sharp contrast is another famous memorial in D.C., the Holocaust Museum in memory of all the victims to the Holocaust. Where is the monument or museum for ALL victims or lives lost to the Vietnam War? But even if there is enough public awareness to build a physical memorial for all the lives lost to the Vietnam War, that will not automatically translate to the resolve to refrain from all overseas military actions. Quite to the contrary, if the lesson we learn from the Vietnam War is to care for the loss of innocent lives within the fighting zone, it would support the current military actions in Afghanistan. The last time the Taliban regime made the front page of newspapers before September 11th was because of its willingness to irritate the entire international community by destroying one of the few treasured cultural relics of its land--two gigantic Buddha figures carved into the side of mountains. As people reckon on international communities' failure to interfere timely in the Balkan crises, a regime with a track record of blatant disregard for its own heritage and its own people, especially its female population, can hardly make a case that its citizens will fare better under its ruling. Second, while the just war notion in the public mind has not been sufficiently challenged by the legacy of the Vietnam War, public attention has rarely been guided to look at the roots of the Vietnam conflict, such as geopolitics. In WWII, the Allies fought against Nazism, against genocide, against ethnic cleansing, against colonization and slavery. In Vietnam, America fought against the spread of communism. Was it morally inadequate to fight a war because of ideological differences? Apparently not, as America went on, after Vietnam, to fight the Cold War, ready to evoke the wrath of the Mars through decades of direct and indirect confrontations against the communist bloc. Religious fundamentalists indoctrinate their followers much like radical communists. During the radical years of "Cultural Revolution," countlessly more cultural relics than the Buddha figures in Afghanistan were destroyed in the hands of the Chinese "Red Guards." Since the Vietnam War did not conclude that America should not fight for difference in beliefs, why not crusade against fundamentalist terrorists now? II. What Did America Learn From the Vietnam War? So,
what have people learned from the Vietnam War? First, American
casualties and civilian casualties, in a foreign land, have
to be low. In this aspect, the answer to the Vietnam lesson
was the Gulf War. The American military has devoted tremendous
amount of resources to design weapons that can be launched
far away from its target and guided to the target without
human escort. Examples include laser guided missiles, pilot-free
aircraft and the use of the GPS technology. The American casualties
during the Vietnam War was around 200,000 and was around 600
for the Gulf War. The administration has taken pains to exclusively
target military targets in Afghanistan and avoid civilian
casualties. And the precision weapons have helped. I cite Oklahoma bombing side by side with the attacks on WTC. Indeed, terrorism, often led by exclusionary cult or belief, does not have borders or citizenship. Terrorist acts, whether of foreign or domestic origins, have been threatening the foundations of the American society, freedom and democracy, in the same way. What are the differences between Al Qaeda and far-right fanatics in this country who are not reluctant in perpetrating heinous crimes against other Americans? The day America launched military actions in Afghanistan, an old black man standing next to a newsstand was talking to no one in particular. "Look, we are bombing the terrorists! And why ain't we doing the same to the Ku Klux Klan?" he mused, "Ah yeah, because they are Americans!" Domestic attacks on abortion clinics, the arson of black churches, the bludgeoning of gay soldiers, are all acts of terrorism. Period. A particularly serious threat to the American society is posed by state sponsorship of terrorism. That is a good reason why the Taliban regime is now the primary target of military actions in Afghanistan. In addition, it is probably necessary for the Bush administration to readjust the goal of its military action--from the original capture of Bin Laden to the toppling of the Taliban, as the Vietnam War showed us that there are limits to what can be achieved through overt military actions. With an increasingly amorphous enemy such as the terrorists, covert operations including intelligence gathering and non-military approaches should weigh more and more in the overall warfare against new enemies. The Berlin Wall did not fall because tanks overpowered it, but because the economy behind one side of the wall collapsed. The administration's effort at forging a global coalition aimed at cracking down the financial network of terrorist groups, amid other economic, diplomatic actions, is yet another piece evidence that it had learned from Vietnam. Jan Scruggs, who started the movement for the Vietnam Veteran Memorial Wall, stated:
This is the basic lesson from the Vietnam War learned by the American public: war is not glorious, and if you have to fight it, fight smarter. That the American government has learned that lesson well is reflected in its war against terrorism so far. (The author is an attorney in Boston, Massachusetts.) |
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