Can Ukraine Help Us Finally Understand the U.S. War in Vietnam?

Growing up in D.C. in the ‘60s and ‘70s, my parents took me with them to marches, rallies, and demonstrations against the U.S. War in Vietnam. Note that I do not call it the “Vietnam War.”

For my parents, I think they saw it as an extension of the lessons of the Holocaust: that we must speak up when our government is committing atrocities. Ideally, before the atrocities even begin.

The war abroad created a War at Home. And that war has never really ended, any more than the Civil War ever really ended. Opponents and supporters of the U.S. War in Vietnam each felt vindicated in many ways.

President Johnson created all-out war on the pretext of the “Gulf of Tonkin Incident,” claiming that U.S. war ships had been attacked. It took decades to reveal conclusively that the attack was a lie.

But the larger pretext was the “Domino Theory” that if one country “fell to Communism” then neighboring countries would also “fall” like dominoes. The idea was first suggested by President Truman in the 1940s, to justify sending military aid to Greece and Turkey. But the term really took off when Eisenhower applied it to Southeast Asia. This was the start of U.S. intervention, before all-out war began.

Republicans like senators Joe McCarthy and Nixon Red-baited Democrats as “Commie-crats.” As “soft on Communism” or even as actual covert enemies of the U.S. Forcing Democrats to “prove” their anti-Communist credentials.

In fact, when the U.S. lost the war and Vietnam became Communist, no neighboring countries became Communist, showing the fallacy of the Domino Theory. Except for Cambodia, which Nixon had converted from paradise to hell on Earth with his “secret” bombing. It took the invasion of the Vietnamese to end the atrocities of the killing fields that Nixon helped to create.

However, those who supported the U.S. War in Vietnam also claimed a different sort of victory. They created a narrative that the anti-war protesters had insulted and attacked the U.S. troops. Notably, stories emerged long after the war that protesters spat upon returning veterans.

The 1998 book The Spitting Image researched the evidence for such attacks and found little or none. Is a hippie at an airport really going to spit on a returning Green Beret? On the other hand, there is real evidence that pro-war protesters did spit on anti-war protesters.

More importantly, anti-war protests almost always included returning veterans speaking on stage. To make the point that the protests were not against the troops, but against the war, a common chant and sign was, “Support the Troops: Bring them Home!”

Which brings me to Ukraine. Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine has brought unusual unanimity across the U.S. political spectrum to support the people of Ukraine in resisting this invasion. That means sending weapons and intelligence information, but not combat troops.

Americans mostly seem to understand that the Russian soldiers have been forced to fight and that they are not evil. But Americans almost universally see the evil of Putin’s invasion. I wish people could hold onto that thought. And transfer it finally to understand what the protests against the U.S. War in Vietnam were all about. That the U.S. actions were truly evil. Based on lies and disinformation. And that no one is blaming the soldiers for what they were forced to do.

Vietnam was fighting for its survival and independence against years of invasions and colonial occupations. Just as the people of Ukraine are doing now.

Putin has the support of millions of Russians regarding Ukraine based on the same kinds of lies being told to the American people about Vietnam.

Putin claims that Ukraine is full of “Nazis” and that they were brutalizing Russian-speaking Ukrainians. He claims that the U.S. and NATO are on a mission to encircle and strangle Russia. His version of the Domino Theory. In this case, it has become self-fulfilling as ever more of Russia’s neighbors have rushed to join NATO.

One notable difference between Vietnam and Ukraine: It is much more credible for Putin to claim national security interests with a neighbor than it was for the U.S. to do so with faraway Vietnam.

If we can see how Putin has manipulated the Russian people for international and domestic gain, can we finally see how the American people were manipulated during the U.S. War in Vietnam? Can we finally end the War at Home?