Vietnam: The War That Won't Go Away

Christian G. Appy. Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered From All Sides. New York: Viking, 2003. 574 pp. Index. $34.95.

Douglas Brinkley. Tour Of Duty: John Kerry and The Vietnam War. New York: William Morrow, 2003. 546 pp. Illustrations, timeline, glossary, interviews, notes, selected bibliography, and index. $25.95.

David Maraniss. They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace Vietnam and America October 1967. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003. 572 pp. Illustrations, notes, selected bibliography, and index. $29.95(cloth); $16.00(paper).

Four years into the new century and twenty-nine years after the fall of Saigon, memories of the Vietnam War continue to preoccupy many Americans. In Errol Morris's prize-winning film, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert McNamara, the former secretary of defense confronts once again the ghosts of the war, while the 2004 presidential campaign and the growing controversy over the war in Iraq and the occupation there have pulled Americans back to the controversies surrounding the Vietnam War. The war records of President George W. Bush and of his Democratic challenger, John F. Kerry, have raised the question of the relevance of military service to presidential leadership. And issues familiar to those who lived through the Vietnam era have now returned—issues such as the credibility of American leaders, their inability to understand a distant society and culture, the paucity of international support for a foreign intervention, and the lack of an exit strategy from the bloody and troubled occupation of Iraq. One critic of the administration, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, claims that "Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam," while Senator Kerry notes that Vietnam "seems to be the war that won't ever go away . . . [and believes that it was] the pivotal event of our generation."¹

The authors of these three books all assume the continuing fascination of the American people with the war, writing long, leisurely narratives—all over five hundred pages—aimed at a general audience. Douglas Brinkley's Tour Of Duty traces Kerry's early life, his service in Vietnam, and his involvement in the antiwar movement; David Maraniss's They Marched Into Sunlight describes two events in October 1967—the ambush of the Black Lions battalion of the First Infantry Division and the anti-Dow demonstrations at the University of Wisconsin, Madison; and Christian Appy's Patriots brings together interviews with 135 Americans and Vietnamese who participated in the war. And all three—especially Maraniss and Appy—are long on detail and thin on analysis, leaving our understanding of the contours of the war unchanged.

Tour Of Duty is grounded in extensive research in Kerry's early life and experience in Vietnam. Brinkley conducted over one hundred interviews (including nine with Kerry), had unrestricted access to Kerry's large personal archive, and closely studied riverine warfare in the Mekong Delta in the late 1960s. The result is an impressive effort in recent history that will surely be drawn on by Kerry's future biographers.

Brinkley identifies many important themes in Kerry's life—his cosmopolitan family background, his lack of geographical roots and sense of being an outsider, his love of the sea and of sports, and the seriousness of purpose that emerged during his teenage years. At St. Paul's School and later at Yale University, Kerry was noted for his fascination with public service, his identification with the Kennedys, and his intense ambition. He was a young man with a sense of destiny.

The contrast between George W. Bush and Kerry is striking. Bush was absorbed in fraternity life and disengaged from the great issues of the late 1960s that shook the foundations of American society. While he supported the war in Vietnam, he had no desire to serve in it and on graduation from Yale in 1968 joined the Texas Air National Guard rather than the Air Force. Prior to his graduation two years earlier, Kerry had...