The Vietnam War, American Remembering, and the Measure of Sacrifice, Fifty Years On

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Beidler
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Iraq War ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
History And Memory ◽  
American Experience ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
Robert Zemeckis

Fifty years on, the American experience of the Vietnam War seems suspended between ancient history and rapidly fading cultural memory; or perhaps consigned to the vicissitudes of that habit of negotiating between history (what happened) and memory (how it is retrospectively mythologized). This chapter considers Vietnam War writings, including Michael Herr’s Dispatches (1977), and Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried (1990), as well as popular music and films such as Oliver Stone’s Platoon (1986) and Robert Zemeckis’ Forrest Gump (1994), in relation to the cultural lineage of those negotiations between history and memory. It considers literary engagements with more recent wars—such as Kevin Powers’ Iraq war novel Yellow Birds (2012)—that hark back to the Vietnam War. In discussing the war’s mythologizations and commemorations across history, the chapter explores the extent to which the Vietnam War has been seen to involve sacrifices that are politically and culturally redemptive.

In the Crossfire or the Crosshairs? Norms, Civilian Casualties, and U.S. Conduct in Iraq

2007 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin H. Kahl
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Culture ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Iraq War ◽  
Military Culture ◽  
Noncombatant Immunity ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
The Military ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Over Time

The belief that U.S. forces regularly violate the norm of noncombatant immunity (i.e., the notion that civilians should not be targeted or disproportionately harmed during hostilities) has been widely held since the outset of the Iraq War. Yet the evidence suggests that the U.S. military has done a better job of respecting noncombatant immunity in Iraq than is commonly thought. It also suggests that compliance has improved over time as the military has adjusted its behavior in response to real and perceived violations of the norm. This behavior is best explained by the internalization of noncombatant immunity within the U.S. military's organizational culture, especially since the Vietnam War. Contemporary U.S. military culture is characterized by an “annihilation-restraint paradox”: a commitment to the use of overwhelming but lawful force. The restraint portion of this paradox explains relatively high levels of U.S. adherence with the norm of noncombatant immunity in Iraq, while the tension between annihilation and restraint helps to account for instances of noncompliance and for why Iraqi civilian casualties from U.S. operations, although low by historical standards, have still probably been higher than was militarily necessary or inevitable.

scholarly journals The Western and the War Film: Clint Eastwood’s „American Sniper” as Genre Hybrid

2017 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 105-119
Author(s):  
Martin Holtz
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Iraq War ◽  
World War ◽  
War Films ◽  
Westward Expansion ◽  
Moral Ambiguity ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
War Film

The article explores the similarities of Westerns and war films and the ways in which the two genres have cross-fertilized each other since World War II. Central to their similarities are their efforts to render violence as a “regenerative” Slotkin means to establish or defend American civilization. Since the Vietnam War, however, the Western has taken a revisionist turn, and its subsequent evocations in war films expose the frontier ideology of justified violence in the name of the advancement of American civilization as a failed ideological project and highlight the imperialist aggression that connects America’s westward expansion with its military efforts. Using the example of Clint Eastwood’s film American Sniper 2014, the article argues that the use of Western elements in contemporary films about the Iraq War adds a sense of moral ambiguity to the portrayal of the hero, who exhibits a pathological obsession with a Western image of the righteous protector of civilization that is ultimately destructive to himself and the society he wants to protect.WESTERN A FILM WOJENNY — SNAJPER CLINTA EASTWOODA JAKO GATUNKOWA HYBRYDAArtykuł jest eksploracją podobieństw między westernem a filmem wojennym i sposobów, w jakie obydwa gatunki wzajemnie się przenikały od czasu II wojny światowej. Głównym ich podobieństwem jest próba prezentowania przemocy jako „odradzającego się” Slotkin środka służącego ustanowieniu bądź obronie amerykańskiej cywilizacji. Jednakże od wojny wietnamskiej western przeszedł rewizjo­nistyczny zwrot, a jego kolejne ewokacje w filmach wojennych eksponują ideologię Pogranicza bę­dącą usprawiedliwieniem przemocy w imię zaawansowania amerykańskiej cywilizacji jako projektu ideologicznego upadłego i ukazują imperialistyczną agresję, która łączy amerykańską ekspansję na zachód z jej militarnymi wysiłkami. Na przykładzie Snajpera Clinta Eastwooda 2014 niniejszy esej przekonuje, że zastosowanie westernowych elementów we współczesnych filmach o irackiej wojnie przydaje moralnej dwuznaczności portretowi bohatera, przejawiającego patologiczną obsesję wester­nowym image’em prawego obrońcy cywilizacji, skrajnie destrukcyjnego wobec siebie oraz społeczeń­stwa, które chce osłaniać.                                                                                              Przeł. Kordian Bobowski

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Long T. Bui
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
Asian American ◽  
The United States ◽  
History And Memory ◽  
South Vietnam ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Heuristic Device ◽  
Critical Refugee Studies ◽  
The Cold War

The introduction presents the book’s main argument, theoretical framework, and primary research questions. It provides a brief summary of the second Indochinese War or the Vietnam War and how the Republic of Vietnam came into being. It then discusses the Nixon strategy to “Vietnamize” the war in 1969, arguing that the term Vietnamization provides a productive term to interrogate the gendered racial logics of U.S. imperialism during the Cold War in Southeast Asia and its relationship with foreign allies. The chapter first begins with how the twenty-first century offers a generational lapse and new historical occasion to reflect upon the Vietnam War. It then offers a theorization of Vietnamization as a heuristic device to elaborate why cultural memory and discourse surrounding the Vietnam War remain conflicted as tied to the collapse of South Vietnam and its inability to protect and save itself. Vietnamization serves as a critical vocabulary for imagining the “arrested future” or delayed moment of freedom/liberation for American allies, shaping postwar ideas of citizenship, nationalism, and emancipation. As a critical refugee studies project, the book is situated and contextualized within larger debates in Asian American cultural studies and criticism over war. Finally, the introduction provides an elaboration of relevant scholarship under way in this field of history and memory. It explains why it is important to conduct research in the United States, Vietnam, and the Vietnamese American community discussing the geopolitical dimensions of refugee culture and consciousness.

The Literary Dubbing of Confession

PMLA ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 133 (2) ◽  
pp. 413-419
Author(s):  
Ben Tran
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
The United States ◽  
Capitalist Development ◽  
Culture Industries ◽  
Economic Ideology ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
Global Influence

Although the united states lost the vietnam war on the battlefield, it won the war on two long-term fronts: economic ideology and cultural memory. A mere eleven years after the fall of Saigon in 1975, the Vietnamese government officially transitioned from a ration economy to a market-socialist one. This perestroika resulted in capitalist development, more akin to what the United States had propagated when it entered the war to prevent the cascading growth of communism throughout Asia. The United States also triumphed in terms of memory, dominating narratives of the war through the global influence of its culture industries.

Sheilas, Wogs, and Poofters in a War Zone

2020 ◽  
pp. 138-158
Author(s):  
Erik Nielsen
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
Australian Government ◽  
The South ◽  
American Experience ◽  
War Zone ◽  
South Vietnam ◽  
Australian Football ◽  
Soccer Team ◽  
The Vietnam War

This chapter charts the visit of the Australian football soccer team to South Vietnam in 1967 during the Vietnam War. It scrutinizes the claim made by former captain of the Australian soccer team Johnny Warren that the team was sent with the connivance of the Australian governance to provide a propaganda boost for the South Vietnamese government. The incomplete archival evidence does not substantiate Warren’s claim that the Australian government cynically sent the Australian team to Saigon to firm up the position of the South Vietnamese government. Despite his position in Australia, Warren has been influenced by American debates about the legacy of Vietnam. This fits a wider pattern whereby Australians have conflated the American experience of Vietnam with their own when coming to grips with Vietnam.

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