Nearly a quarter-century after the fall of Saigon, the memory of
America's defeat in Vietnam continues to haunt the national psyche.
In "Vietnam Shadows," former war correspondent Arnold Isaacs turns
his reportorial eye to the conflict since Vietnam, covering the
skirmishes and firefights of a cultural battle--some would say
stalemate--that refuses to end.
Isaacs takes on the popular myths and misconceptions about
Vietnam--among them the mistaken belief that the U.S. military
lacked clear goals. ("In many conversations with U.S. officers in
Vietnam, I do not recall discovering any who were in doubt about
what they were supposed to do there.") He exposes the myth of the
MIAs--a myth sustained not only by grieving relatives but also by
professional con men of breathtaking cynicism--and shows how the
many false MIA stories may nonetheless reveal a deeper truth: "We
lost something in Vietnam and we want it back." Isaacs talks to the
veterans unable to forget the war no one wanted to talk to them
about. He explores the class divisions deepened by a conflict in
which the privileged avoided service that an earlier generation had
embraced as a duty. (691 Harvard alumni died in World War II,
Isaacs points out; in Vietnam, nineteen.) And he shows how the
"Vietnam Syndrome" continues to affect nearly every major U.S.
foreign policy decision, from the Persian Gulf to Somalia, Bosnia,
and Haiti.
Capturing the ironic legacies of a war that abounds in them,
Isaacs introduces the "new Americans"--the Vietnamese, Thais, and
Cambodians--who fled Indochina to settle in the U.S., where fashion
spreads in the "New York Times Magazine" feature models
photographed in Vietnamese settings wearing "Indo-chic clothes"
that sell for four to five years' income for the average
Vietnamese. ("Farm girl's jacket in 'periwinkle blue' raw silk:
$1,460 by Richard Tyler.") And he recounts the experiences of
Americans who have returned to Vietnam, only to find their former
enemies turned entrepreneurs--such as the operators of a popular
Saigon bar called Apocalypse Now.
Isaacs reports and writes for those whose lives were changed by
the war and also for a generation that has come of age without
memory of Vietnam but who nonetheless feels its shadow in the
country they soon will lead.
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