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.The Americans attemptedto fill the post-colonial power vacuum left by the French and pledged to defendthe integrity of the southern state of a Vietnam divided at the seventeenth parallel.Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the US became increasingly bogged down in thepolitics of first Vietnam, then the Indochinese Peninsula, and finally Southeast Asia ingeneral.When Eisenhower left office and handed power over to the new DemocraticPresident, John F Kennedy, in early 1961, the strategic context for a much greaterentanglement had been established.The escalating US commitment from 1960 led to the final and ignominiousCommunist victory over America and its Vietnamese allies in 1975.Some ofthe same errors that led to that defeat have been made by the neo-conservativeinfluenced Bush administration in Iraq early in the new century, with another ill-fated intervention based on Wilsonian idealism landing them in the middle of a civilwar  in Iraq essentially between Shi ite and Sunni forces by 2007.It is especiallyironic that the Bush administration is still obsessed with dominoes falling, only thistime the dominoes are in the Middle East, and beginning with Iraq, are supposedto fall smoothly in the other direction after democracy has been established as anattractive model in Iraq.At the end of 2007, this result seems most unlikely.Kennedy narrowly won the 1960 election over the Republican Richard Nixonand pledged to bridge the alleged missile gap with the Soviet Union.The Kennedyfamily, headed by the family patriarch, Cold Warrior and extreme right sympathizerin the 1930s, Joseph P Kennedy, had always been hawkish on the bi-polar conflict60 The American Challengewith the Soviet Union.The new President, with his equally hawkish brother Robertin the cabinet as Attorney General, both the new heroes of Democratic liberalism,was not about to back down to the forces of Communism in Asia, Europe or in Cuba.Out of this historical dynamic of Cold War ideology and confrontation, Kennedydeepened the military engagement in Vietnam in order to prevent the  dominoesfalling from the Chinese border with Vietnam to the south and embracing Laos,Cambodia, Thailand and Malaysia in the orbit of Communism.In his inaugurationaddress he pledged to pay any price to defend freedom anywhere in the world thatit was threatened.This was a Wilsonian blank cheque.Kennedy s assassinationin 1963 enabled sympathetic historians to disguise his responsibility for the UScommitment in Vietnam.Nonetheless, it was his war.His successor, Vice Presidentand then President, elected in his own right in 1964, Lyndon Johnson, paid hispolitical price.This was the logic and historical circumstances that led to the great Vietnamfiasco, which would force Johnson to retire in 1968 rather than seek a second fullterm.The Vietnam War also contributed greatly to the downfall of his Republicansuccessor, Richard Nixon, brought on by illegal activities to suppress oppositionto his Vietnam policies.These were revealed especially after the publication of thePentagon Papers, leaked by Daniel Ellsberg, in June 1971, by the New York Times,that were confirmed in the Watergate scandal and Congressional investigationsleading to Nixon s ignominious resignation in August 1974.As well as contributingto the downfall of two Presidents, the Vietnam War greatly destabilised the Americanand world economies which resulted in the global pattern of debilitating stagflationin the mid-1970s.11 The US was able to hold the line in Korea, with United Nationsauthorisation, clear war aims, superior air power and domestic support.It lost inIndo-China with the international community divided, its war aims confused, theVietnamese communists able to hold on with foreign support, and with US domesticsupport collapsing.There should have been a lesson there for the GWOT.The polarisation of American society during the Cold War led to a dramatic shiftin the body politic of America after twenty years (1933 1953) of Democrat controlof the White House and domestic policy in America.In the heat of the Cold War theopposition to the New Deal coalesced with anti-Communism to form a syncretisticmix with a potent and long-lasting effect as a cohesive ideology for Americans.With the enormous pressure of McCarthyism on the Left in the universities, unions,public entertainment, the arts and all essential institutions in the political arena, agiant pall descended on the exchange of views in American culture.This essentiallyemasculated the Left in American society and permanently shifted the centralfulcrum of the media and public discourse to the right [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]