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Books > History > American history > From 1900 > Postwar, from 1945
For American children raised exclusively in wartime-that is, a Cold
War containing monolithic communism turned hot in the jungles of
Southeast Asia-and the first to grow up with televised combat,
Vietnam was predominately a mediated experience. Walter Cronkite
was the voice of the conflict, and grim, nightly statistics the
most recognizable feature. But as involvement grew, Vietnam
affected numerous changes in child life, comparable to the
childhood impact of previous conflicts-chiefly the Civil War and
World War II-whose intensity and duration also dominated American
culture. In this protracted struggle that took on the look of
permanence from a child's perspective, adult lives were
increasingly militarized, leaving few preadolescents totally
insulated. Over the years 1965 to 1973, the vast majority of
American children integrated at least some elements of the war into
their own routines. Parents, in turn, shaped their children's
perspectives on Vietnam, while the more politicized mothers and
fathers exposed them to the bitter polarization the war engendered.
The fighting only became truly real insomuch as service in Vietnam
called away older community members or was driven home literally
when families shared hardships surrounding separation from cousins,
brothers, and fathers.In seeing the Vietnam War through the eyes of
preadolescent Americans, Joel P. Rhodes suggests broader
developmental implications from being socialized to the political
and ethical ambiguity of Vietnam. Youth during World War II
retained with clarity into adulthood many of the proscriptive
patriotic messages about U.S. rightness, why we fight, heroism, or
sacrifice. In contrast, Vietnam tended to breed childhood
ambivalence, but not necessarily of the hawk and dove kind. This
unique perspective on Vietnam continues to complicate adult notions
of militarism and warfare, while generally lowering expectations of
American leadership and the presidency.
In late 1971, the People's Army of Vietnam launched Campaign "Z"
into northern Laos, escalating the war in Laos with the aim of
defeating the last Royal Lao Army troops. The NVA troops numbered
27,000 and brought with them 130mm field guns and T-34 tanks, while
the North Vietnamese air force launched MiG-21s into Lao air space.
General Giap's specific orders to this task force were to kill the
CIA army under command of the Hmong war lord Vang Pao and occupy
its field headquarters in the Long Tieng valley of northeast Laos.
They faced the rag-tag army of Vang Pao, fewer than 6,000 strong
and mostly Thai irregulars, recruited by the Thai army to fight for
the CIA in Laos. By the time the NVA launched their first attack,
4,000 Tahan Sua Pran had been recruited, armed, trained and rushed
in position in Laos to defend against the impending NVA invasion.
They reinforced Vang Pao's indigenous army of 1,800 Lao hillstribe
guerrillas. Despite the odds being overwhelmingly in the NVA's
favour, the battle did not go to plan. It raged for more than 100
days, the longest in the Vietnam War, and it all came down to
Skyline Ridge. As at Dien Bien Phu, whoever won Skyline, won Laos.
Against all odds, against all WDC expectations, the NVA lost, their
27,000-man invasion force decimated. James Parker served in Laos.
Over many years he pieced together his own knowledge with CIA files
and North Vietnamese after-action reports in order to tell the full
story of the battle of Skyline Ridge.
Few historians of the Vietnam War have covered the post-1975 era or
engaged comprehensively with refugee politics, humanitarianism, and
human rights as defining issues of the period. After Saigon's Fall
is the first major work to uncover this history. Amanda C. Demmer
offers a new account of the post-War normalization of US-Vietnam
relations by centering three major transformations of the late
twentieth century: the reassertion of the US Congress in American
foreign policy; the Indochinese diaspora and changing domestic and
international refugee norms; and the intertwining of
humanitarianism and the human rights movement. By tracing these
domestic, regional, and global phenomena, After Saigon's Fall
captures the contingencies and contradictions inherent in
US-Vietnamese normalization. Using previously untapped archives to
recover a riveting narrative with both policymakers and nonstate
advocates at its center, Demmer's book also reveals much about US
politics and society in the last quarter of the twentieth century.
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