America's Longest War Term Paper

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Vietnam

Herring, George C. 1996. America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950 -- 1975. New York: McGraw-Hill.

George C. Herring has laid out a comprehensive history of America's involvement in Vietnam. In addition to describing the events as they unfolded in Vietnam, Herring has provided detailed information of how the military operated and interacted with both presidents and Congress, and how U.S. foreign policy affected events. He also addresses how President Lyndon B. Johnson's management approach to the Vietnam War affected how it was conducted and details about the controversy over the war among the American people.

Thus, this book is more than a simple chronological list of events. Woven throughout, Herring shows the reader the larger context within which the war took place. While Johnson is often blamed for the escalation of the war, resulting in a rising tide of anger among Americans against the war, the history of the war is far more complex than a simple issue of trying to prevent one small southeast Asian country from turning to communism. All major events are placed in their historical contexts, making the larger issue of how the problems with Vietnam evolved over time more understandable.

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The book opens with an ironic twist: Ho Chi Minh, the leader of the first Vietnamese rebels against French rule of that country, announced the country's independence from France by quoting The United States Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal" (p. 3). Herring explains the United States' enduring interest in Vietnam, an interest dating as far back as World War II, and credits our first involvement with Vietnam as being based on racial stereotypes rather than real knowledge of the country. This, plus our relationship with France as that of an ally, encouraged the U.S. government to provide military aid for France as it attempted to put Ho Chi Mihn's revolution down. In the early fifties, as the struggle continued, Eisenhower's administration worried that Vietnam was not ready for independence and would be vulnerable to a communist takeover, something intolerable to them during the Cold War with the U.S.S.R.

As the supposedly temporary partition of Vietnam continued, the United States….....

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