Family Debate about Vietnam 1969

When I was nine years old, I remember going downstairs at night when conversation in the kitchen was particularly lively. My parents were there and so were my mom’s parents, her brother and sister. I could slip down the stairs and onto a couch in the living room with an air conditioner humming nearby. From this vantage, I was cool and could hear every word of the debate without being detected. They were talking about Vietnam and the debate got so heated from upstairs it sounded like a fight was about to break out. The conversation was led by my grandfather and my mom – he was saying the U.S. had to be involved because the Communists were taking over the country and if they got Vietnam, they could sweep into other countries. My mom said the South Vietnamese government was corrupt and should rise or fall on its own; that our military was pushing for involvement after the French tried and gave up on Vietnam. This was 1969 and by 1973 Richard Nixon and the entire U.S. government concluded the U.S. had to get out of Vietnam.

As a child growing up in Cinnaminson, New Jersey, I tried to imagine what life was like in Vietnam. I remember older kids in the neighborhood talking about My Lai—a village where U.S. troops had slaughtered innocent civilians. One of our neighbors had a son who served in Lieutenant Calley’s regiment at My Lai. When I asked questions about it, someone told me it was best to drop the subject. During those years, it seemed like everyone defined themselves by whether they supported U.S. involvement in Vietnam or not.

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Now, more than 50 years after U.S. troops evacuated Saigon, it is safe to say the domino theory carried far less weight in Vietnam than local culture, nationalism, and political realities. A majority of Vietnamese cared far less about communism, but far more about the anti-colonial movement. Also, there is a historical consensus that U.S. decision makers on Vietnam were long on credentials, but short on wisdom and they confused technical proficiency for strategic insight.

China played an interesting role in Vietnam, in the mid-1960s China refused Russia’s request to use Chinese rail lines to transport military supplies forcing Russia to use more dangerous and time-consuming sea routes to supply the North Vietnamese. Then, in 1979 China took up arms against Vietnam to “teach them a lesson.”

What the Vietnam War taught me is that even the smartest, most accomplished American policymakers can lead a nation into disaster when they lack humility. Instead of striving to truly understand Vietnam, its history, its people, its nationalist struggle, they forced the conflict into their own Cold War framework. They saw what they expected to see. That blindness cost tens of thousands of lives and trapped the United States in a war it couldn’t win, all because those in power refused to ask the right questions or listen to the answers that didn’t fit their narrative.