Post war reflections by those who were there.
Nearly a quarter-century after the fall of Saigon, the memory of
America's defeat in Vietnam continues to haunt the national psyche. In
Vietnam Shadows, former war correspondent Arnold Isaacs turns his
reportorial eye to the conflict since Vietnam, covering the skirmishes
and firefights of a cultural battle--some would say stalemate--that
refuses to end.
Isaacs takes on the popular myths and misconceptions about
Vietnam--among them the mistaken belief that the U.S. military lacked
clear goals. ("In many conversations with U.S. officers in Vietnam, I do
not recall discovering any who were in doubt about what they were
supposed to do there.") He exposes the myth of the MIAs--a myth
sustained not only by grieving relatives but also by professional con
men of breathtaking cynicism--and shows how the many false MIA stories
may nonetheless reveal a deeper truth: "We lost something in Vietnam and
we want it back." Isaacs talks to the veterans unable to forget the war
no one wanted to talk to them about. He explores the class divisions
deepened by a conflict in which the privileged avoided service that an
earlier generation had embraced as a duty. (691 Harvard alumni died in
World War II, Isaacs points out; in Vietnam, nineteen.) And he shows how
the "Vietnam Syndrome" continues to affect nearly every major U.S.
foreign policy decision, from the Persian Gulf to Somalia, Bosnia, and
Haiti.
Capturing the ironic legacies of a war that abounds in them, Isaacs
introduces the "new Americans"--the Vietnamese, Thais, and
Cambodians--who fled Indochina to settle in the U.S., where fashion
spreads in the New York Times Magazine feature models photographed in
Vietnamese settings wearing "Indo-chic clothes" that sell for four to
five years' income for the average Vietnamese. ("Farm girl's jacket in
'periwinkle blue' raw silk: $1,460 by Richard Tyler.") And he recounts
the experiences of Americans who have returned to Vietnam, only to find
their former enemies turned entrepreneurs--such as the operators of a
popular Saigon bar called Apocalypse Now.
Isaacs reports and writes for those whose lives were changed by the war
and also for a generation that has come of age without memory of Vietnam
but who nonetheless feels its shadow in the country they soon will lead.
