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发表于 2010-6-6 01:27 PM
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本帖最后由 AGA7d 于 2010-6-6 15:30 编辑
After World War II, America became the No. 1 super power in the world. From Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy to Johnson, all expressed the kind of grandiose talk on the U.S. leadership in the world. JFK: America would "pay any price ...support any friend, oppose any foe...". 大有“世界兴亡,美国之责”之意。It is not only the president, but also the common people generally share the sentiment.
Yet U.S. paid a hefty price for the ideology in Vietnam. After the war, Americans overwhelmingly repudiated the intervention (in Vietnam) as having been a blunder. The echo of Vietnam resonates through the surveys in the 80s. By a margin of 2 to 1 in 1982, the poll showed that people foresaw El Salvador becoming another Vietnam and opposed U.S. intervention. "We should not put troops on the line if we are not ready to back them 100%"; "It seems like we are always pulled in by other people's problems. We've got enough problems of our own to deal with." -- reflecting the sea-change in people's attitude toward U.S. role in the world.
The war also significantly weakened U.S. military. In 1980, army chief of staff General Edward Meyer warned congress that he was presiding over a "hollow" force - short of personnel, experience, and equipment.
The U.S. army in Vietnam was a shambles as the war draw to a close in the early 1970s. Antiwar protests at home had by now spread t the man in the field, many of whom wore peace symbols and refused to go into combat. Race relations, which were good when blacks and whites had earlier shared a sense of purposes, becoming increasingly brittle (blacks died disproportionally in Vietnam). The use of drugs was so widespread that, according to an official estimate in 1971, nearly 1/3 of the troops were addicted to opium or heroin. Soldiers not only disobeyed their superiors but, in an alarming number of incidents, actually murdered them with fragmentation grenades. Morale also deteriorated following revelations of a massacre in Mylai, in which 300 villagers were murdered in cold blood.
--Abridged from Chapter one, "The war nobody won" --
--Have to stop, a bit too much to key in--AGA7d-- |
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