Daniel S. Papp
Published: 1981
Total Pages: 270
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Even today Americans often react to the word 'Vietnam' with mixed feelings of failure, frustration, and guilt. For 25 years, from the time when the first U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group arrived in Vietnam in August 1950 to the time when the last Marines were lifted by helicopter from the soon-to-be-captured U.S. Embassy in Saigon in April 1975, the United States attempted to create a viable noncommunist state in the Southeast Asian nation. For 25 years, that effort achieved less than desired results, finally ending ignominiously with the rout of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam and the collapse of the South Vietnamese state. During the years immediately after the fall of South Vietnam, Americans in general preferred to ignore and to forget the American experience there. Recently, however, new interest has developed about what lessons the U.S. should learn from its Vietnamese experience and to understand how American policy-makers perceived the situation in Vietnam as they made the critical decisions which led to involvement. This book compares American, Soviet, and Chinese perceptions of the Vietnamese War and contrasts the lessons each country learned, and continues to learn, from the U.S. involvement in it. -- from Preface.