The Looking Glass

Clem Stone  March 8th, 1965: Lyndon B. Johnson, president of the USA, has just sent troops into Vietnam. March 29th, 1973: President Nixon has just withdrawn his last military unit from Vietnam. What have the Americans achieved? Going into the Vietnam War, America's main goal was to eradicate communism in North Vietnam. Since the end of World War II, the whole word had been divided into communist and capitalist blocs; this rivalry was known as the Cold War. The Americans and the Soviets never went to war directly. It was more a case of proxy wars, especially in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. However, the superpowers (the USA and the Soviet Union) would occasionally launch smaller wars of their own. For example, the invasion of Afghanistan, launched by the Soviet Union in 1979, and, most importantly, the American War in Vietnam. In a school today, it is not uncommon to assess the success of a piece of work by first asking “what went well?”, then asking what could have gone better ...