Vietnam War myths
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Myths play a central role in the historiography of the Vietnam War, and so to the culture of the United States. Much like the general historiography of the war, discussion of myth has focused on US experiences; but, changing myths of war have also played a role in Vietnamese and Australian historiography.
Recent scholarship has focused on "myth-busting",[1] attacking the previous orthodox and revisionist schools of American historiography of the Vietnam War. This scholarship challenges myths about American society and soldiery in the Vietnam War.[2]
Kuzmarov in The Myth of the Addicted Army: Vietnam and the Modern War on Drugs challenges the popular and Hollywood narrative that US soldiers were heavy drug users, and in particular destroys the concept that the My Lai massacre was caused by drug use.[3] According to Kuzmarov, Richard Nixon is primarily responsible for creating the drug myth.[4]
Michael Allen in Until The Last Man Comes Home also accuses Nixon of myth making, by exploiting the plight of the League of Wives of American Prisoners in Vietnam and the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia to allow the government to appear caring as the war was increasingly considered lost.[5] Allen's analysis ties the position of potential missing or prisoner Americans into post-war politics and recent presidential elections, including the Swift boat controversy in US electoral politics.[6]
Footnotes
Bibliography
Ron Milam (2011). "Myths of the Vietnam War". Reviews in American History (Review Article). 39 (2): 372–378. doi:10.1353/rah.2011.0080. ISSN 1080-6628.
Further reading
- Allen, Michael J. Until the Last Man Comes Home: POWs, MIAs and the Unending Vietnam War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009. ISBN 0807832618 OCLC 301705717
- Franklin, Bruce. M.I.A.: Mythmaking in America. Brooklyn, NY: L. Hill Books, ©1992. ISBN 1556521189 OCLC 24501602
- Kuzmarov, Jeremy. The Myth of the Addicted Army: Vietnam and the Modern War on Drugs. Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2009. ISBN 1558497056 OCLC 286422656
- Turner, Robert F. Myths of the Vietnam War: The Pentagon Papers Reconsidered. New York: American Friends of Vietnam, 1972. OCLC 731275