SonofRage
4th May 2005, 17:44
Next Left Notes, the DAT discussion bulletin can be found at
http://www.nextleftnotes.net
"On the 30th anniversary of the end of the American war in Viet Nam"
is a new commentary piece at NLN contributed by Howard Machtinger,
professor, programmer, and former SDS and Weather Underground leader.
Written for the 2005 anniversary of the NLF victory, this article
addresses the meaning of the Vietnamese struggle for national
liberation in a time of "ahistorical amnesia" in the US.
To read the article:
http://www.nextleftnotes.net/current/hmach_30.html
On the 30th Anniversary of the end of the American War in Viet Nam
By Howard Machtinger
(Comments on this article sent to [email protected]
will be forwarded to the author).
I'd like to summon up images of 3 moments in the American relationship to Viet Nam as a way to appreciate the significance of the US war in Viet Nam in the lives of the American people and people throughout the world.
1. in the early 1950s as the US made its decision to intervene directly in Viet Nam
2. 1975, 30 years ago when the last US personnel skulked out of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) in the face of the victorious Vietnamese resistance, which accomplished its goal of reunifying its country independent of foreign control
3. today, in a world of US unilateralism, faltering neo-liberalism, and Viet Nam in the midst of dynamic change, in an America which has now memorialized the war in myth, sentimentality permeated by an ahistorical amnesia.
1. The world of the 1950s seemed to most western observers to be a bipolar split between US-led capitalism and Soviet-led communism. To most people inside America, the US seemed invulnerable - according to school textbooks, the US had never lost a war. Having turned back Hitler, in possession of the world's largest economy and a growing arsenal of nuclear weapons; the US was at the top of its game. It seemed to be a citadel of freedom and good intentions, the world's benign policeman.
What we now call Euro-centrism barely had a name, so ingrained were notions of western superiority in western consciousness, so taken for granted. What mattered, happened in the US, Europe, the Soviet Union. Anything else originated in and was reducible to these white centers of action.
So why did the US intervene in Viet Nam? Historians are divided: was it to combat the growth of Communism in Asia (particularly after the success of Maoism); was it to gain a foothold in the Asian mainland for the exercise of US power (a long-term fantasy of American rulers); or was it to assure access to SE Asian rubber, tin (and perhaps oil), as Eisenhower suggested? Very few credit the spread of democracy as a serious motive for US intervention - any democratic pretensions were shattered by the corrupt, dictatorial rule of the South Vietnamese government. Even though the Vietnamese had defeated the French imperial army, the deciding battle at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, American government analysts credited this defeat more to the decrepitedness of the French than to the power of Vietnamese resistance. A final motive was that the Americans were determined to erase the memory of Dien Bien Phu, to try to make sure that others would not follow the Vietnamese example. American know-how and ingenuity were sure to out-do the French. When US soldiers intervened in force in the 1960s, even sympathizers with the Vietnamese cause took American victory as a foregone conclusion.
read more... (http://www.nextleftnotes.net/current/hmach_30.html)
http://www.nextleftnotes.net
"On the 30th anniversary of the end of the American war in Viet Nam"
is a new commentary piece at NLN contributed by Howard Machtinger,
professor, programmer, and former SDS and Weather Underground leader.
Written for the 2005 anniversary of the NLF victory, this article
addresses the meaning of the Vietnamese struggle for national
liberation in a time of "ahistorical amnesia" in the US.
To read the article:
http://www.nextleftnotes.net/current/hmach_30.html
On the 30th Anniversary of the end of the American War in Viet Nam
By Howard Machtinger
(Comments on this article sent to [email protected]
will be forwarded to the author).
I'd like to summon up images of 3 moments in the American relationship to Viet Nam as a way to appreciate the significance of the US war in Viet Nam in the lives of the American people and people throughout the world.
1. in the early 1950s as the US made its decision to intervene directly in Viet Nam
2. 1975, 30 years ago when the last US personnel skulked out of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) in the face of the victorious Vietnamese resistance, which accomplished its goal of reunifying its country independent of foreign control
3. today, in a world of US unilateralism, faltering neo-liberalism, and Viet Nam in the midst of dynamic change, in an America which has now memorialized the war in myth, sentimentality permeated by an ahistorical amnesia.
1. The world of the 1950s seemed to most western observers to be a bipolar split between US-led capitalism and Soviet-led communism. To most people inside America, the US seemed invulnerable - according to school textbooks, the US had never lost a war. Having turned back Hitler, in possession of the world's largest economy and a growing arsenal of nuclear weapons; the US was at the top of its game. It seemed to be a citadel of freedom and good intentions, the world's benign policeman.
What we now call Euro-centrism barely had a name, so ingrained were notions of western superiority in western consciousness, so taken for granted. What mattered, happened in the US, Europe, the Soviet Union. Anything else originated in and was reducible to these white centers of action.
So why did the US intervene in Viet Nam? Historians are divided: was it to combat the growth of Communism in Asia (particularly after the success of Maoism); was it to gain a foothold in the Asian mainland for the exercise of US power (a long-term fantasy of American rulers); or was it to assure access to SE Asian rubber, tin (and perhaps oil), as Eisenhower suggested? Very few credit the spread of democracy as a serious motive for US intervention - any democratic pretensions were shattered by the corrupt, dictatorial rule of the South Vietnamese government. Even though the Vietnamese had defeated the French imperial army, the deciding battle at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, American government analysts credited this defeat more to the decrepitedness of the French than to the power of Vietnamese resistance. A final motive was that the Americans were determined to erase the memory of Dien Bien Phu, to try to make sure that others would not follow the Vietnamese example. American know-how and ingenuity were sure to out-do the French. When US soldiers intervened in force in the 1960s, even sympathizers with the Vietnamese cause took American victory as a foregone conclusion.
read more... (http://www.nextleftnotes.net/current/hmach_30.html)