How did the Vietnam War change America politically and socially during that time?
Starting with Eisenhower in the late 50’s and then JFK in 1960, the government of South Vietnam sent representatives to the USA to ask for our help. JFK made a commitment that sent special forces to South Vietnam to help train the South Vietnamese soldiers to defend against the communist aggression from the North. During that same time, Nikita Krushev came from the USSR to the UN and threatened to overtake the USA and the world with communism. I was in high school when he pounded his shoe on the podium and stated that he would bury us. The phrase better dead than Red became popular at the time. There was a political split in the country over whether we should get involved or not. I joined the Marine Corps in the early 60s and volunteered to be stationed in Japan and while the troop carrier I was on was crossing the Pacific, President Johnson made the decision to honor JFK’s commitment and sent 50,000 troops to fight against the communists.
In the post-war era, Americans struggled to absorb the lessons of the military intervention. As General Maxwell Taylor, one of the principal architects of the war, noted “first, we didn’t know ourselves. We thought that we were going into another Korean war, but this was a different country. Secondly, we didn’t know our South Vietnamese allies … And we knew less about North Vietnam. Who was Ho Chi Minh? Nobody really knew. So, until we know the enemy and know our allies and know ourselves, we’d better keep out of this kind of dirty business. It’s very dangerous.” In the decades since end of the conflict, discussions have ensued as to whether America’s withdrawal was a political defeat rather than military defeat. Some have suggested that “the responsibility for the ultimate failure of this policy [America’s withdrawal from Vietnam] lies not with the men who fought, but with those in Congress…” Alternatively, the official history of the United States Army noted that “tactics have ofte
