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The Vietnam War was arguably the most traumatic experience for the United States in the twentieth century. That is indeed a grim distinction in a span that included two world wars, the assassinations of two presidents and the resignation of another, the Great Depression, the Cold War, racial unrest, and the drug and crime waves.
DONALD M. GOLDSTEIN, intro, The Vietnam War
The war against Vietnam is only the ghastliest manifestation of what I’d call imperial provincialism, which afflicts America’s whole culture -- aware only of its own history, insensible to everything which isn’t part of the local atmosphere.
STEPHEN VIZINCZEY, London Times, Sep. 21, 1968
This war in Vietnam is, I believe, a war for civilization. Certainly it is not a war of our seeking. It is a war thrust upon us and we cannot yield to tyranny.
FRANCIS CARDINAL SPELLMAN, speech, 1966
North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.
RICHARD NIXON, speech, Nov. 3, 1969
It is a key fact about American policy in Vietnam that the withdrawel of American troops was built into it from the start. None of the presidents who waged war in Vietnam contemplated an open-ended campaign; all promised the public that American troops would be able to leave in the not-too-remote future. The promise of withdrawel precluded a policy of occupation of the traditional colonial sort, in which a great power simply imposes its will on a small one indefinitely.
JONATHAN SCHELL, The Real War
The Vietnam War required us to emphasize the national interest rather than abstract principles.
HENRY KISSINGER, Wall Street Journal, Mar. 11, 1985
Vietnam was the first war ever fought without any censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.
WILLIAM WESTMORELAND, Time magazine, Apr. 5, 1982
Our resistance will be long and painful, but whatever the sacrifices, however long the struggle, we shall fight to the end, until Vietnam is fully independent and reunified.
HO CHI MINH, statement, Dec. 19, 1946
It has been said that the United States was deceived into entering and expanding the Vietnam War by its own overoptimistic propaganda. The record suggests, however, that the policy-makers stayed in Vietnam not so much because of overly optimistic hopes of winning ... as because of overly pessimistic assessments of the consequences of losing.
JONATHAN SCHELL, The Real War
No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now.
RICHARD NIXON, New York Times, Mar. 28, 1985
Although both popular imagination and academic research on the Vietnam War continue to flourish, there is no consensus in sight. Only the U.S. Civil War rivals the power of the Vietnam War to divide and inflame generations upon generations of Americans.
ANDREAS W. DAUM, America, the Vietnam War, and the World
In revealing the workings of government that led to the Vietnam War, the newspapers nobly did precisely that which the Founders hoped and trusted they would do.
HUGO L. BLACK, judicial opinion, Jun. 30, 1971
Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America -- not on the battlefields of Vietnam.
MARSHALL MCLUHAN, Montreal Gazette, May 16, 1975
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