No conflict since the Civil War more divided Americans than U.S. involvement in the Civil War in Vietnam. American involvement in Vietnam resulted in deep divisions in U.S. society and remains a bitter pill in history and consciousness for many Americans. The Vietnam War was a largely unpopular war that claimed 58,148 men with an average age of 23.11 years, (Roush 2003, 1). There were deep polarities and divisions within American society over the issue of AmericaÆs participation in the Vietnam War. Because of the dubious motives for U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and strong opposition toward it, the basic concept of patriotism underwent reexamination by many Americans. In her book discussing the creation of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Carried to the Wall, author Kristin Ann Hass (1998) argues, ôThe Vietnam War shattered what it meant to be a patriotic American,ö (1). To fully understand the impetus for the deep divisions engendered from American involvement in the Vietnam War, one must explore U.S. policy toward the region prior to and during American involvement in the conflict.
During the period from 1954 and 1973, United States officials from President Dwight D. Eisenhower to Richard M. Nixon were convinced that they had to ôsaveö Vietnam from Ho Chi Minh and his communist brand of nationalism. The pursuit of this goal was to prove not only fruitless, but extremely damaging to domestic interests as well (Roberts and Martin 1989, 915). While most analysts tend to consider American involvement in Vietnam as very much an artifact of the 1960s and the Cold War, the reality is that American foreign policy had incorporated some degree of participation in VietnamÆs nationalistic struggle since the 1940s. Roberts and Martin (1989) have pointed out that by the late 1940s, the U.S. had assumed a large part of the cost of FranceÆs effort to regain control of its Indochina possessions (i.e., Vietnam) as the force o...