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The United States put its weight behind an anti-communist regime in the South headed by Ngo Dinh Diem, but Diem could not cope with the growing Viet Cong insurgency and in 1963 he was murdered in a coup by his senior officers. Though Kennedy approved the coup, he was stunned by the assassination. Despite much conjecture, there is no evidence that Kennedy would have withdrawn from Vietnam had he been reelected in 1964.

Also Visit our Vietnam: 25 Years Later site for more articles like this one.

Johnson, like Kennedy, believed in the domino theory, which held that if the communists took over Vietnam, the rest of Southeast Asia would fall. And not just Southeast Asia: If the Viet Cong triumphed, LBJ notoriously said, "we'd end up fighting on the beaches of Waikiki." Richard Nixon, who succeeded him as president, echoed this claim with his famous statement that if the United States did not hold the line, it would end up "a pitiful, helpless giant."

These fears did not come true -- nor is there any proof that the war had much effect one way or the other on the region's eventual embracing of capitalism. The Vietnamese did attempt to exercise control over Laos and Cambodia, neighboring nations that had been part of French Indochina. Laos was vital to the Viet Cong because the Ho Chi Minh Trail ran through it. They weren't as successful in Cambodia, where Prince Norodom Sihanouk, a master political juggler, relied heavily on China, which dreaded Vietnamese expansionism, to thwart them.

Despite his fear of communist expansion, Johnson was not the warmonger caricatured by cartoonists. His obsession was the Great Society, his liberal agenda. But as the situation in Vietnam deteriorated, he felt that he had to send in combat troops. By late l967, 500,000 Americans were serving there.

Their commander, Gen. William C. Westmoreland, had at his disposal the most sophisticated technology in America's arsenal -- automatic rifles, heavy artillery, supersonic planes, aircraft carriers and a panoply of spooky electronic devices. He was persuaded that, with his superior firepower, he would overwhelm the communists and crack their morale. I saw mountains of enemy corpses piled up after battles, but Westmoreland's optimism was an illusion. He was up against obdurate, resilient adversaries who refused to surrender. For them the war was a sacred crusade.

Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, the communist commander, explained this phenomenon to me during a lengthy talk in Hanoi in 1991. As we reviewed the past, I asked how long the communists would have continued fighting. Without the slightest hesitation he thundered, "Another 10, 20, 50, maybe 100 years until victory -- regardless of cost."

So, as the war ground on and U.S. casualties steadily mounted, it became clear to Americans that the war was unwinnable, and they greeted the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, with a mixture of shock and relief. Defeat was a debacle, but not a disaster. The long nightmare was finally over.

Americans old enough to remember Vietnam bitterly recall the duplicity of leaders who propelled the United States deeper and deeper in the futile endeavor in Southeast Asia. Among the numerous legacies of the distaste is a pervasive distrust of politicians, a trend that was visible during the recent primary elections, when many voters deemed character to be more important than issues -- an attitude that benefited Sen. John McCain. Thus citizens are more skeptical than they have ever been -- a healthy development that could be construed as the silver lining in the stormy Vietnam experience.
salon.com | April 27, 2000

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