In April 2000, nearly 20,000 Vietnamese citizens gathered in Ho Chi Minh City — once known as Saigon — to celebrate the 25th anniversary of their victory over the American invaders and the creation of their relatively stable country. Since the end of the war American and Vietnamese officials have resumed normal relations, and exchanged visits to promote business ventures and tourism.
‘Business with an Asian Flair: New Service to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’ read a full-page New Yorker advertisement by Delta Airlines in 2009. Looking back at the still highly politicized Vietnam War debate, 16 historians, eminent scholars of the war at home and abroad, have drawn on recent scholarship for their conclusions about that calamitous conflict.
The result is The Columbia History of the Vietnam War, a brilliant collective exposition of what happened and why. Editor David L. Anderson, professor of history at California State University, Monterey, and former president of the Society for Historians American Foreign Relations, explains: ‘The assumption behind this work is that many of the historical themes in the study of the Vietnam War have contemporary relevance.’
We need only consider our nation’s historical and unceasing addiction to war and military intervention and the abysmal failure to hold powerful decision makers accountable. When the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC, was dedicated and thus became a sacred shrine to the dead in a war that should never have been fought, no one in authority who had dreamed up the bloodletting had ever been held accountable.
In Andrew Bacevich’s important new book, Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War, he explains his opposition to our perpetual wars. Bacevich, whose son was killed while serving in the Iraq war, served in the army during the Vietnam War, retired with the rank of colonel, and is now professor of international relations at Boston University.
‘In the simplest terms,’ he writes, ‘the [American] credo summons the United States — and the United States alone — to lead, save, liberate, and ultimately transform the world,’ a doctrine which requires the U.S. to spend billions if not trillions of dollars and maintain a permanent military presence in some 700 overseas bases.
The invaluable Columbia History of the Vietnam War offers cautionary lessons even as our nation fights three wars and continues planning for and spending enormous amounts for our inevitable future wars.