How is the Vietnam War taught in the U.S?

[Shock and Awe]

Usually its a segment about the size of the one on Korea, or half the size of the one on World War 2. The gist of the lessons are usually that militarily it went fairly well but we were forced to leave due to politics and public opinion. Fairly accurate, though it could be better.

 

[Jonabob87]

That and my grandfathers always tells them that he pities them for having to fight that war, and by comparison WW2 was the easier war to fight in.

I'd say that depends entirely on which front of WW2. Look up both the Red Army and the Wehrmacht 6th army, both went through utter hell.

Few of those who survived from the 6th army were left with all of their limbs, and I'm not talking about war wounds.

Not trying to say "YOU AND YOUR GRANDAD KNOW NOTHING" I just read up on the battle of Stalingrad not long ago and feel like people should know what a horrible war truly is.

/derail

No, I understand. he Fought int he european theatre, but at least there, it was easier then the Vietcong. you werent fighting the losing battle, the nation was behind you. Plus, like I said, you werent fighting the Viet cong. Again, its all his personal opinion though.

Thoguh I can say one thing. my uncle (who's in his sixties now) gets spit on from time to time if he mentions he fought in Viet Nam, and told that he must have been one of those murdering dogs that just liked to murder anyone he could get in his cross hairs. I can see where my grandfather would say his war was "easier".

I mean, just that abuse against my uncle alone while my grandfather is told he's a hero is so... degradingly... horrible. And thats not even with what happened to him int he war (which any time I ask, he always just says dont ask, things I've done I'd never wish for anyone to do or have done), and fighting in the war (whcih, if you've done any travel, South east Asia is a far more dangerous place just naturally then europe).

Some people just like to hate soldiers for some reason. We had a similar thing with british soldiers coming home from Iraq/Afghanistan and being attacked/verbally abused in the street.

It's sad as hell. These people are free to do and say whatever they want because they have men who are willing to defend them, and they use that freedom to abuse those men? Sickening.

 

[SomethingUnrelated]

Our goal was to prevent North Vietnam from conquering South Vietnam.

There was no North Vietnam and south Vietnam, most of the VC were communist fighters from the South.......

The idea that there was some kind of a battle line is a popular misunderstanding.

Spoiler: Spoilered for Size

Oh Hai map of Vietnam from 1969! I didn't see you there!

I'm going to jump in and support Canid on this one; the idea of a line between the North and the South, which moved during the war, was taught to us as being actually quite an important idea during the war, in measuring who was more successful at the time.

 

[RA92]

I remember that the MiG-21 kicked so much ass that the US had to create the 'Top Gun' Navy school back in '69. Yep, a second generation Soviet fighter was tackling a wide range of specialized third generation American aircrafts all by itself.

 

[JackandTom]

From reading this it seems that I, as a British 17 year old history student, I know more about this part of american history than the equivilent american 17 year old. Thats kinda weird...

 

[syd95]

This year my U.S. History class spent about two weeks covering everything from the Tet Offensive to the My Lai Massacre, and if there's anything I learned from that "Police Action" was that it was something that America should have never been involved in and too many innocent people died because of it.

 

[Spade Lead]

I recall spending a couple weeks on it. Propping up what amounted to a dictatorship in South Vietnam, pouring more and more resources into a clearly losing conflict...

I don't know about that 'Search and Destroy' thing. There were a few guys who snapped under the strain and just started shooting, but I never heard of it as official policy.

It was. I remember it from my High School courses... Yeah, we were patently in the wrong, just to stop the spread of Communism. (If you can't tell, I am an American.) We covered it pretty well. The horrors, the atrocities, the victories, the defeats, and the defeat. (If you understand the difference...) Basically, it was a lesson in what not to do, and how not to do it.

 

[triggrhappy94]

"Oops"

JK

I actually went over this in History and English this year.
My teachers taught, pretty much, straight foreward. This is why our ships were there, this is what happened at the Bay of Tolken, these are the riots, this is what the soldiers thought, this is the Tet offensive, this is the etc.

EDIT: After reading some other posts...
I spent just as much time on it this year as I did WWII.
The French came up some when we were at the premiss of how it all started.

 

[Spade Lead]

I remember that the MiG-21 kicked so much ass that the US had to create the 'Top Gun' Navy school back in '69. Yep, a second generation Soviet fighter was tackling a wide range of specialized third generation American aircrafts all by itself.

Yes, and then came the F-15... Which dominated all the way from '71 until the mid-2000's when the F-22 was finally mass produced. I still prefer the F-15 for several short-sighted reasons (The Top speed is a little higher, supposedly, and it looks prettier), but on the whole, the Russians build a damn sexy aircraft... (We STILL can't match the MiG-31's top speed in a fighter...)

 

[spacecowboy86]

I am actually doing this right now. All my class has been told is that we didn't want to launch nukes at Russia, whom could return the favor, so we fought in and with other countries like vietnam and korea, and the hippies weren't happy about it.

 

[triggrhappy94]

I'm in 9th grade and I haven't been taught anything about it. The only things i know I learned from media.

Its normally covered in 11th grade U.S. History

 

[teh_Canape]

if I may give an input of my country, the way it's taught (at least in my school) was that shit was happening between North Vietnam and South Vietnam, so they allied themselves with north Vietnam, I think, then the whole thing went tits up and they lost

that's all we were taught basically, we didn't touch much on the Vietnam war as much as we did the Cold War

it's mostly taught as the "USA came in thinking they were almighty and got their asses kicked back to the west hemisphere"

 

[Caligulust]

I took an AP course in US History, so it was taught in depth along with every other part of the country's history. The exam even included two letters between Ho Chi Minh and Nixon.

 

[Spade Lead]

So, you think more losses than gains, a complete loss on the propaganda front, repeatedly feeling the need to commit crimes against humanity, then making a treaty destined to fail and running qualifies as a victory on any grounds?

All I can ask now is "wanna fight?". This one I could gladly "lose".

From a military perspective yes. It was a clear cut win. The Armed Forces were sent in to stop North Vietnam from conquering South Vietnam. They did so. That's the whole point I'm arguing, that the US Military did it's job and won the war. I'm not arguing the Propaganda War (which was an overwhelming loss), or the various ethical complaints about the legality of the war. I'm just saying that from a purely objective point of view, the US won during their time when they were involved in Southeast Asia.

The peace treaty was meaningless, however, without continued US presence as was seen when the North broke the treaty after the US forces left. While it was certainly the fault of the North Vietnamese for breaking the treaty, it does, however, throw into light how the US campaign cannot be called a victory. It is clear from the results of the treaty that communism could not be contained to the north without a US presence. Given how no-one would wish for US soldiers to have to remain permanently in Vietnam to maintain order, it would have to be assumed that the war in Vietnam would need to end with South Vietnam being safe from invasion without a continued, external military presence.

The US' inability to neutralize the threat to South Vietnam pretty much left them in the exact same position they were before the war started. This cannot be viewed as a victory. Even if the military's aim was simply to hold off the threat while they were present, this does not count as a victory. Why? Because the Vietnam War did not end when the Americans pulled out. It ended when North Vietnam gained control of South Vietnam, something the US failed to stop due to the withdrawal of their troops.

Correct, however it wasn't the US Military's job to destroy the threat. They were called in to halt the North Vietnamese from conquering South Vietnam. They did so, and ended up with a treaty that halted the war. There's no doubt that the inability to destroy the North Vietnamese ultimately led to the fall of the South, but the US military achieved their primary goals while they were there. The Vietnam War may not have ended in 1973, but for the US Military it did and it was a victory for them at the time. In pure military terms the US entered with a clear goal, stop the NV, and withdrew having stopped the NV. Politically the war was a failure yes, but military wise it was a victory

Oh MY. GOD! No. It was a horrible defeat. It set the Army back decades. It took them until Desert Storm before the U.S. Military felt confident that they could defeat an enemy in a fight again. I read a book about the rebuilding process the Army went through following the defeat (Yes, the Army Generals felt Vietnam was a defeat, and it tore the Army's morale down to the ground. They had to rebuild it from the ground up) Let me tell you in short, what happened: The officer corps had to be rebuilt, retrained, and reorganized. The noncoms went through a different but similar struggle. And that doesn't even take into account cleaning out the druggies and "problem children."

No, unless you were there and have quantifiable proof to the negative, that is what I understand from <url=http://www.amazon.com/Into-Storm-Command-Tom-Clancy/dp/0425163083>this source.

 

[maturin]

We covered it for a decent amount of time in my World History class this year, I think. How the media greatly exaggerated how bad the war was going and barely showed any positive events, etc. I thought I got a pretty good explanation of it.

Total dead: ~1,912,846-3,992,846
Overwhelmingly civilians. Other effects include the defense of one brutal authoritarian regime by the U.S. until it was overtaken by another brutal authoritarian regime from the north.

And then you have this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Agent-orange-deformities-vietnam.jpg

500,000 million children born with birth defects from the spraying of highly poisonous Agent Orange on 12% of the ENTIRE Country, and ten million hectares of agricultural land. We did to Vietnam what Rome did to Carthage.

So are you trolling, or are you going to tell me how the Holocaust had some good effects too, like all the great fiction and art inspired by it? You're damn right I'm Godwin's Lawing your ass.

 

[darth gditch]

Inspired by the topic asking how the War of Independence is taught in the UK.

Basically, I ask because, generally, it's held that the US entered Vietnam (amongst other countries during the Cold War, like Korea) for what can be described as less than noble reasons, and then making a bit of a mess of it. For example, at my school, we shortly studied the 'Search and Destroy' tactics, which as far as I understand, was basically US soldiers walking into Vietnam villages and wiping them clean out, regardless of whether the inhabitants were innocent or not. That's one small part of a part of the course on US foreign policy we did.

Anyhow, back to the point. What sort of stance is taken when the Vietnam war is taught to US students? Under what light do they relay the information to you? How is the Vietnam War taught in the US education system?

In my school, we were taught that it was a monumentally terrible war for everyone involved.

Basically, we got some background on the geo-political tensions leading to it: Cuban Missile Crisis, the moderate Red Scare that caused, success (relatively speaking) of the Korean War, ect. We're taught that the power vacuum that France left when it pulled out of Indochina freaked the U.S. brass to no end. The U.S. actively supported the democratic south while the U.S.S.R. acknowledged and supported the Communist north. The south was generally outnumbered and outfought so the U.S. kept stepping up support. Then came the Gulf of Tonkin incident. NV torpedo boats engaged a U.S. destroyer, which the brass used as an excuse to go ahead with an invasion to bolster the south.

I won't go any further unprompted but the bottom line is that I was taught that it was a war fought because of a fear of communist takeover; that war proved to do more harm than good, and due to the South's fall, was an utter failure. It is described as the war that shattered the idea of American invincibility and the first war to truly demonstrate to the U.S. the power of war weariness in a democratic society.

Ironically enough, the strategies and tactics of the Viet Cong and the NVA were rather similar to those of George Washington and the Continental Army.

 

[Spade Lead]

Then came the Gulf of Tonkin incident. NV torpedo boats engaged a U.S. destroyer, which the brass used as an excuse to go ahead with an invasion to bolster the south.

My teacher went so far as to tell us that (and looking at the facts, it is kind of hard to refute) the U.S.S. Maddox was placed in the Gulf of Tonkin as Bait, designed to draw attention and get attacked, so we could escalate the war. That was just the first of many mistakes we made in that war.