KIMBALL : To reason why (előszó)
More than a decade after its end, the Vietnam war refuses to lie quiet in its historical grave.
–Jonathan Schell, The Real War
This book is about the past and continuing debate over the causes of United States involvement in the Vietnam War. It brings together readings that best exemplify the widely varying answers that historians, political scientists, social scientists, policymakers, journalists, and novelists have given to the essential question of American involvernent: why did the U.S. intervene diplomatically and militarily in Vietnam between 1945 and 1975? The documents, essays, and excerpts included were in many cases written by people who played key parts in shaping the debate. In order to provide a sense of both the history of the war and the evolution of ideas explaining it, I have chosen readings covering different chronological periods of American involvement and written both during and after the war. I have also made every effort to represent points of view fairly, but inevitably the anthology reflects this editor's vision of American involvement in Vietnam.
The literature on all aspects of the American role in the Vietnam War is large, rich, and growing. It has already become an integral part of the grand body of American nonfiction and fiction writing. When I began to work on this volume, however, I could not find a book that systematically described the past and continuing debate about the causes of American involvement. Nor was there an anthology of representative readings on the subject, which curious readers might use to sample the range of opinions. Postwar compilations of writings on the conflict had attempted through documents and essays to tell the story of the war in several of its facets, but none dealt directly or fully with the debate about the war's causes. This gap was particularly unfortunate, because the question of why the United States intervened in Vietnam was in many respects the most basic one about the conflict. It was also the question that most vexed many Americans at the time their country was deepening its involvement, especially those young men who went off to fight but did not really understand why. Today's students, having been born during the war, grew up with the political tumult, family conversations, and television images of the Vietnam era, so that many regard these events as significant to themselves and earnestly want to understand them. As one anonymous professor observed: "My students have expressed the . . . feelings that they never understood the war, but that it troubles them and that it is related in some way to what we and our society have become today. . . . It is as if they are curious about some mysterious family scandal that was important to their lives but which nobody would ever explain to them."
To Reason Why helps students, teachers, and general readers make sense of the multiple explanations about the causes of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War in several ways. First, it calls attention to the fact and importance of the intense controversy about this issue. Second, it organizes the conflicting theories under seven comprehensible major themes: (1) the U.S. government's public explanation; (2) the causal role of abstract ideas and states of mind; (3) the quagmire and stalemate machine theories about the process of involvement; (4) the role of the President; (5) the role of the President's advisers and national security managers; (6) the role of political and economic systerns, pressures, and aims; and (7) American misunderstanding of Vietnamese culture. These categories reflect the actual clash of ideas and are consistent with approaches used by scholars of international relations; on the other hand, they avoid the risk of confusing non-professional readers with the esoteric, sometimes sterile terms employed by historiographers, terms such as "realist," "revisionist," and "postrevisionist." The readings illustrate all seven major themes as well as their minor variations. Third, an introduction defines the meaning of the phrase "U.S. 'involvernent' in the Vietnam War" and provides an analytical overview of the seven explanatory themes; headnotes to the individual readings then place them in their chronological and conceptual contexts. Fourth, for the convenience of those preferring a chronological rather than a thematic approach, a "Chronological Chart of Readings" identifies the periods or phases of U.S. involvement covered by the readings. Finally, a glossary of abbreviations and a map of Indochina are provided for reference.
Readers of To Reason Why can sample the literature of the causal debate; gain an understanding of its structure, texture, and variety; become acquainted with the idioms of Vietnam War discourse; follow the evolution of U.S. involvement; and be encouraged to ponder the reasons for disagreement. Teachers of history, political science, American studies, and Southeast Asian studies courses can use the text in at least three ways: (1) they can build a whole unit around it about the explanations of U.S. involvement in Vietnam; (2) they can assign readings on periods of the war as they proceed chronologically through the war's history; or (3) they can select readings on the basis of topical content, assigning selections randomly to suit their courses.
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