Vietnam War Debate (eBook)

This book explores how America's national leadership, mesmerized by the mythology of monolithic communism, failed the American people. It demonstrates with detailed archival sources how three administrations refused to consider the arguments of the central critic of the war who proved that the war should never have been fought because Vietnam was never a vital American security interest. That critic, Hans J. Morgenthau, is the centerpiece of this study who participated in the teach-in movement, wrote articles, engaged in public debate in the attempt to prevent the impending tragedy in Vietnam.

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This book tells the story of how Americas national leadership failed the nation and produced the greatest foreign policy disaster in American history to that time. It is foremost, however, the story of a great man who tried to halt his nations drift into what became an American tragedy. It is also a story that has never before been told. As the war escalated, a variety of critics emerged to challenge the war policy and thus my book is about the national debate in which University of Chicago Professor Hans J. Morgenthau emerged as the chief opponent of the war. Morgenthau argued relentlessly in teach-ins around the country, in public debates and in hundreds of articles that Vietnam was never a threat to Americas security and that the war should never have been fought. In the history of the national debate on Vietnam, it is Morgenthau who is the hero of the anti-war movement and the centerpiece of my study. Morgenthau had written the basic text on foreign policy, Politics Among Nations, and had established the field of international relations as an independent discipline of study. His arguments against the war derive from these earliest writings and are elaborated in this book, the principles of which remain valid today. The war ended in 1975 as North Vietnamese troops marched into Saigon after over 58,000 American servicemen and millions of Vietnamese had died in the fighting. The war could have been averted, Morgenthau was ignored, American policy-makers misunderstood the nature of the civil conflict in Vietnam. As Morgenthau told an interviewer in July, 1965, What I have said recently I have been saying for years, without anybody paying any attention.