Understanding and Teaching the Vietnam War

Introduction: Key Questions and Enduring Debates

3 Intro­ duc­ tion Key Ques­ tions and En­ dur­ ing De­ bates john day tully, mat­ thew masur, and brad aus­ tin Any ­ teacher who has ­ taught the Viet­ nam War (or stu­ dent who has ­ learned about it) will rec­ og­ nize cer­ tain in­ her­ ent chal­ lenges in de­ fin­ ing the con­ flict. For ex­ am­ ple, how do we iden­ tify the be­ gin­ ning and end ­ points? Did it start, as many­ Americans be­ lieve, when US Ma­ rines ar­ rived in Da­ nang in 1965? If so, what does that mean for the first ­ American com­ bat fa­ tal­ ities, which were suf­ fered in 1959? Oth­ ers might argue that the Viet­ nam War began in 1954, or per­ haps in 1946, or maybe when Ho Chi Minh de­ clared­ Vietnam’s in­ de­ pen­ dence in 1945. The end­ ing is more cer­ tain: the with­ drawal of ­ American ­ forces in 1973. Un­ less it was the col­ lapse of South Viet­ nam in 1975, or the crea­ tion of the So­ cial­ ist Re­ pub­ lic of Viet­ nam in 1976, or the end of ­ Vietnam’s oc­ cu­ pa­ tion of Cam­ bo­ dia in the late 1980s . . . And this is only the be­ gin­ ning. Stu­ dents may have the gen­ eral idea that the ­ United ­ States was de­ fend­ ing South Viet­ nam from North Viet­ na­ mese ag­ gres­ sion. In re­ al­ ity the ­ United ­ States was work­ ing with the South Viet­ na­ mese govern­ ment to de­ feat a com­ bi­ na­ tion of south­ ern in­ sur­ gents and North Viet­ na­ mese sol­ diers. Many stu­ dents will un­ doubt­ edly be fa­ mil­ iar with the term Viet Cong, or VC, to de­ scribe Amer­ ica’s enemy, but some his­ to­ rians avoid the term, find­ ing it im­ pre­ cise and some­ what pe­ jor­ a­ tive. ­ Rather, they might refer to the Na­ tional Lib­ er­ a­ tion Front and the ­ People’s Lib­ er­ a­ tion Armed ­ Forces (PLAF), along with their north­ ern al­ lies, the ­ People’s Army of Viet­ nam (PAVN). And 4 introduction some his­ to­ rians ques­ tion ­ whether it is ap­ pro­ pri­ ate to use the terms South Viet­ nam and North Viet­ nam be­ cause these sug­ gest a con­ flict­ between two na­ tions when in fact the Ge­ neva Agree­ ments stip­ u­ lated a tem­ po­ rary di­ vi­ sion, which was not to be con­ strued as a na­ tional bor­ der. It is no sur­ prise, then, that even the term used to de­ scribe the con­ flict is con­ tested. The most com­ mon name ­ Americans use is Viet­ nam War. Some his­ to­ rians, how­ ever, con­ sider ­ American in­ volve­ ment to be one part of three con­ nected but dis­ tinct In­ do­ china Wars. The First In­ do­ china War (some­ times ­ called the ­ French In­ do­ china War) began in 1946 when ­ France went to war ­ against the Viet Minh and ended in 1954 with the Bat­ tle of Dien Bien Phu and the Ge­ neva Agree­ ments. The Sec­ ond In­ do­ china War pit­ ted the ­ United ­ States and the Re­ pub­ lic of Viet­ nam­ against the Na­ tional Lib­ er­ a­ tion Front and the Dem­ o­ cratic Re­ pub­ lic of Viet­ nam. The Third In­ do­ china War began in late 1978 when the So­ cial­ ist Re­ pub­ lic of Viet­ nam in­ vaded Cam­ bo­ dia; a few ­ months later China­ joined the fray by at­ tack­ ing ­ across ­ Vietnam’s north­ ern bor­ der. But even this does not tell the en­ tire story. In Viet­ nam the Sec­ ond In­ do­ china War (Amer­ ica’s “Viet­ nam War”) is of­ fi­ cially known as the War of Na­ tional Sal­ va­ tion ­ against the ­ Americans, some­ times ab­ bre­ vi­ ated as the­ American War. These var­ i­ ous terms il­ lu­ mi­ nate the many mean­ ings the war had for its par­ tic­ i­ pants. It was a war ­ between Viet­ na­ mese for the fu­ ture of their na­ tion and a war among ­ Americans about the role of the ­ United ­ States in the world. And it is a war whose leg­ acy and les­ sons are still being de­ bated in...