Noble Tragedy: Understanding Vietnam in the 21st Century

By J. Edward Lee

America's Longest War (1945 to 1975) may seem like Ancient History to people born after the evacuation of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City). This book examines the conflict, its key events, the presidents who were consumed by it, mistakes which were made, its lessons for the 21st century, and places it squarely into the context of the Cold War.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Book Vine Press
• Release date: Nov 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9781959450658

J. Edward Lee

Dr. J. Edward Lee is a professor of history and director of graduate studies at Winthrop University. He is a thirty-eight-year veteran of the university classroom. He has won several teaching awards during his career including the 2015 Faculty-Student Award at Winthrop. He frequently lectures internationally on a wide range of topics, such As American Foreign Policy. His commentary has appeared on Fox News, CNN, NBC News, and National Public Radio. A former president of the South Carolina Historical Association, Dr. Lee served as an elected official for twenty-two years, earning the State Historic Preservation Award in 2016 for his successful efforts to save the York County Courthouse. He is the author of nineteen books, including four on America's Vietnam experience. He and his wife, Ann, live in a historic home in York, South Carolina.

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Acknowledgements

It became necessary to destroy the town to save it. Associated Press correspondent Peter Arnett, quoting an American major about the bombing of the South Vietnamese village of Ben Tre, February 7, 1968.

This book is written in an attempt to explain America’s longest war to people who because of their chronological age missed Vietnam. At the conclusion, I offer ten lessons which might be useful to them and to us. Today’s university students escaped the turbulence of the world of the 1960’s and 1970’s, the global tensions of the Cold War, battles which occurred 10,000 miles from our shores, and domestic upheavals such as numerous anti-war protests. To modern students, the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy, the Diem brothers, and Martin Luther King, Jr. took place eons ago, not in the modern era of devices such as tablets, I Phones, and the Internet, Coronavirus and its variants, economic anxiety, and a myriad of current international conflicts. Vietnam may seem like Ancient History to those born in the 21st century. But, as George Wasenko, Jr., a twenty year old American private fighting for his life in 1965 at Ia Drang and I discussed, there is an urgency to make sense of America’s Southeast Asia experience for our grandchildren. I appreciate George’s contribution to this task. He reminds us of how war affects the young.

Educator and photographer My Vy of Ben Tre (notice the quotation at the top of this page) has enriched my life with her photographs of her beautiful homeland. Her Mekong Delta village was the one which in 1968 an American officer explained had to be destroyed in order to save it from the communists. One of My Vy’s tranquil 2022 photographs graces this study’s cover. She is thanked for her teaching skills, her love of animals and nature, her patience with the author, and her lovely photography. My Vy and the dozens of other Vietnamese friends that I have made during my research have introduced me to the timeless loveliness of their country. These are gracious, determined, and generous people. The Third Indochina War is over but cannot be erased.

Retired United States Air Force colonel Frank Titus, master of a treasure chest of military and diplomatic wisdom, is appreciated. He understands the importance of sifting through the debris of war and grasping essential truths. Similarly, the late United Press International journalist Joseph Galloway, who was with George Wasenko at Ia Drang in 1965 and won the Bronze Star for his courage under fire even though he was a civilian, is acknowledged. His assistance with my previous book, The First Mistake: America In Vietnam, 1945–1954 was invaluable, and he continues even in death to inspire us with the stories he shared in We Were Soldiers Once, written with the late Lieutenant General Hal Moore. Soldiers, and civilians, pay a very personal price in wars, and the wounds never heal.

Earlier, my research took me into the presence of heroes who met regularly as the Saigon Mission Association (SMA), men and women who were in country in April 1975 as the final act occurred in America’s longest war, Operation Frequent Wind. I became an associate member of that organization and participated in several SMA reunions. They helped me immeasurably with my two first books, White Christmas In April: The Collapse of South Vietnam 1975 and Nixon, Ford and the Abandonment of South Vietnam. Among this organization’s membership were Generals Homer Smith, John Murray, Ben Register, and Jim Piner. But not just people with stars on their lapels helped shape my viewpoint. There was housing officer Sally Vinyard, financial officer Ann Hazzard, civilian employee John Guffey, Major Stuart Herrington, and many others who witnessed the evacuation of Saigon firsthand. Active participants in a major historical event. I thank the Saigon Mission Association for their friendship and frankness.

My Winthrop University colleagues, many of them who have now faded away from campus, are acknowledged. CBS news’ Saigon bureau chief Haney Howell, who taught at Winthrop after a stellar television and radio career, shared his impressions of telling the war’s story via film and newscast. I interviewed him for White Christmas In April. As Haney told me, No one wanted to be the last American killed in Vietnam.

Certainly, my late friend, Winthrop colleague, and co-author Commander Toby Haynsworth, professor of business, deserves mention. His naval career on the USS Midway in the spring of 1975 opened many doors for me. Because of his naval career, he unlocked doors for this academic and helped introduce me to dozens of military personnel. Toby, like Haney, no longer mesmerizes students, but Dr. Haynsworth, even in death, continues to remind me that this story needs to be told. This time its audience is a young audience which needs the wisdom that comes from gray hair.

Images of the war and the culture of South Vietnam were provided by My Vy, Alejandro Villalva, Vietnam War historian and author, and Vietnamese artist Le Cu Thuan. They shared their photographs and artwork for this book.

No acknowledgments’ page would be complete without applauding my nurse wife: Ann-Franklin Hardy Lee, who has patiently encouraged me for forty years. Her sensitivity to those in pain has influenced me profoundly as I have written about war. And our daughter, Elizabeth Lee Walen, a loving mother and talented fourth generation educator, and her financial advisor husband, Corey, are a joy to me as are the pleasant memories of my parents, Tyre Douglas Lee and Ola Bankhead Lee, members of former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw’s greatest generation. My father wading ashore in France during the summer of 1944 and fighting his way across Nazi-held Europe while my mother taught her own students and rallied those anxious Americans on the Home Front, praying for a swift end to World War II. My parents were giants.

I applaud the military service of my older brother, Captain Tyre Douglas Lee, Jr. who served in Kontum from 1970 to 1971, winning the Bronze Star for valor and returning home to become an attorney. Heroes among a nation of heroes. Noble people. Every one of them, witnesses to war and its effects. I end with my grandchildren, Madeline Ann and Connor Robert. Born in the 21st century, these two vibrant young people and their friends are my audience. May they and their contemporaries become wise from contemplating the meaning of America’s noble tragedy.

Introduction

All men are created equal, they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Vietnamese Declaration of Independence, September 2, 1945.

Serving red meat to the hungry Vietnam veterans in the heat of his 1980 presidential campaign against incumbent president Jimmy Carter and taking aim at the war, Ronald Reagan sliced through the gristle and scars and told the Veterans of Foreign Wars Convention assembled in Chicago that, It is time that we recognized that ours was in truth a noble cause.

More than four decades since Reagan’s rousing revisionist October 1980 speech before a