The thread on “what personality is attracted to the military” was sidetracked by a discussion of which U.S. wars were justified.
My question is: why the difference between the Korean War and Vietnam? Is it simply that we “won” Korea and “lost” Vietnam? Did South Vietnam want to become communist?
Many in America felt we ‘lost’ both wars. Veterans of both were stigmatized upon their return home, in stark contrast to the vets that ‘won’ WWII. Vietnam was worse in that the whole ugly business was televised.
Korean War - Counter to a full conventional invasion, fought mostly conventionally. War relatively more brief ( 1950-53 ). Ended somewhat indecisively but with a stabilized border set more or less at square 1. Unequivocal U.S. battle defeats in the middle more than leavened out by dominance in the early and later stages of the war. Confined to a smallish theater.
The Korean War had comparatively neat corners and edges.
Vietnam War - Much longer ( U.S. direct combat involvement technically 1965-1973, but engagement began much earlier, ended later ). Much more heavily televised. Far, far murkier in its genesis ( stretching back to 1946 in some respects ). U.S. involvement was prolonged, gradual and slow-building, not a sudden response to an invasion, nor was there a clean and unambiguous end to the war. Politically more complicated, with deeper and more obvious divided loyalties on the ground. Slowly became a regional conflict involving multiple adjacent countries. Much less of a conventional war, with correspondingly less obvious successes. Heavier casualties. Bad outcome for the United States by just about any measure.
The Vietnam War was a partially translucent amoeba of a conflict. No sharp corners or edges.
Thanks Tamerlane for your analysis. I was born 3 years after the fall of Saigon, FWIW.
I suspect that part of the difference, too, was the difference in how the opposing side, and communism in general, was viewed in the two eras.
The Korean War was fought in the early days of the Cold War, and at the height of McCarthyism and the Red Scare. Many Americans saw communism as the biggest threat to the U.S., and it was felt to be important to stop the communist expansion in Korea, before it could spread elsewhere.
By the time of the Vietnam War, communism probably wasn’t nearly as big of a bogeyman, at least among younger Americans (and they were the ones being sent off to war). In addition, the tendency of those Baby Boomers to question authority, and try to remake American culture, made them a lot less likely to be in favor of the war, and a lot more likely to actively protest against it.
Yes, that was certainly a factor as well.
And another big propaganda boost I forgot to mention was the Soviet political “oopsy” ( boycotting the Security Council in a snit over the PRC/Taiwan U.N. representation fight ) that allowed the U.S. to get official United Nations backing for their side in the Korean conflict.
I think that’s part of it. The gov’t of S. Korea was elected, while the North resisted efforts at either Northern or Peninsula wide elections. Thus there was a decent argument that the Southern gov’t deserved our support and the Communists were “cheating” by avoiding elections they knew they’d loose, and instead just using the army to unify the country. (the Southern gov’t wasn’t exactly snow-white, but it was a lot better and had a better claim to democratic legitimacy then either the N. Korean gov’t or the later Diem gov’t of S. Vietnam)
In Vietnam, the situation was reversed. The Communists would likely win the planned referendum, so the South avoided having country-wide elections and blatantly rigged elections in the South to put the Diem gov’t in place.
Okay, serious question: weren’t they right in the '50s, being afraid of the communists? Maybe not in the worst McCarthyite or HUAC sense, but it was hardly just a “scare” or a “bogeyman.” I mean, look at how the communist-ruled half of the Korean peninsula turned out! Or just about any other communist-ruled country. Who was more naive in this regard, the '50s generation, or the '60s generation?
I’ve scratched my head about the differences between these two wars for a long time. Does South Korea’s success (and the simple fact that it was spared North Korea’s miseries) show the Korean War was worthwhile? If the US could have hung on in South Vietnam so that today it was as free and prosperous as South Korea, would that war have been worthwhile?
I was going to say something similar. South Viet Nam was so corrupt and inept as a government they could not maintain without our continued strong presence. South Korea has had its problems but their commitment to defense against the north has always been strong.
There’s two questions baked in there, with what are probably two very different answers: whether communism would turn out to be a bad thing in Korea (or Vietnam), and whether those conflicts had any real bearing on America.
From what I’ve read (I wasn’t around yet for Korea, and I was just a kid during Vietnam), both conflicts (but particularly Korea) were painted as being vital to U.S. interests, both abroad and at home. During the 1950s, many Americans weren’t just afraid of the Soviets and the “Red Chinese” increasing their influence in Asia, but there was a very real fear that the communists had their sights set on taking over America.
In retrospect, we can question how realistic those fears were, or how much they were fanned by McCarthy, etc., but it was a very different cultural environment in 1950, versus the late 1960s.
Wasn’t Western credibility on the line for Vietnam as well? If we stood by and let the commies get Vietnam, then we would have shown a lack of sincerity in denouncing the entire system. And as mentioned upthread, it sounds like the majority of the country would have been cool with it, but The West had to defend even a corrupt/inept democracy over admitting some potential merit in Communism.