History of the Vietnam Conflicts

Since much is made of the comparison between Iraq and Vietnam in the U.S. press, a recent reviewing of Errol Morris’s documentary “Fog of War” (interviewing Robert McNamara, the U.S Secretary of Defence during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations), made me do a bit of digging to refresh my history of the Vietnam conflict. Given I was born in ’67, it holds a weird mythological sensibility for me, growing up with the television discussion of the war (during and after) before I really had any sense of what it was or reflected.

Since much is made of the comparison between Iraq and Vietnam in the U.S. press, a recent reviewing of Errol Morris’s documentary “Fog of War” (interviewing Robert McNamara, the U.S Secretary of Defence during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations), made me do a bit of digging to refresh my history of the Vietnam conflict. Given I was born in ’67, it holds a weird mythological sensibility for me, growing up with the television discussion of the war (during and after) before I really had any sense of what it was or reflected.

The history professor Edwin Moise has a succinct and clear sighted summary covering the period of French colonialism onwards. I’d also recommend Noam Chomsky‘s “Manufacturing Consent” for a concise referenced debunking of many myths surrounding the conflict, most particularly that CBS broadcasts were responsible for the U.S. public losing faith in the war. Some of his other works cover the conflict in greater depth, but I’ve yet to tackle those.