Mara Oliva
The Conversation, Jan. 9, 2023
“Military and government officials in both the Bush and Obama administrations deliberately misrepresented conditions in Afghanistan to appease an American public opinion suffering from war fatigue.”
2023 marks the 50th anniversary of the US withdrawal from Vietnam and the war still casts long shadows over American life.
The cost in lives was enormous. Over almost 20 years, more than 2.7 million Americans served in uniform in the conflict, and around 58,318 lost their lives. Estimates of Vietnamese deaths are more than 3 million civilians and soldiers from both sides.
Thousands of US veterans suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and tried to readjust on their return home.
Americans struggled to make sense of events in Vietnam. They had to come to terms with the reality that for the first time in the country’s history, they had lost a war. Disturbing televised images of conditions on the ground and war atrocities made them question the wisdom and the morality of US foreign policy.
Vietnam had been a very different experience from the second world war. The “good war” against the fascist powers in Germany, Italy and Japan had united the country in a fight to save democracy and freedom and made it the leader of the free world. Vietnam had divided the nation and turned it into the world’s bully.
Soldiers returning from south-east Asia were received with mixed feelings: anger and hostility in some cases, but mostly indifference and a desire to forget and move on. In the decades that followed the end of the conflict, the national trauma shaped many aspects of American politics, society and culture. … [To read the full article, click here]