Forever Vietnam
Subtitle: how a divisive war changed American public memory
By: David Kieran
Series: Culture, politics, and the Cold War; Culture, politics, and the cold war
Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
Published: 2014
Language: eng
Number of pages: 305
ISBN-13: 9781625341006; 9781625340993
Subjects: Collective memory; Vietnam War, 1961-1975; Psychological aspects; Influence; Memory
Description: "Four decades after its end, the American war in Vietnam still haunts the nation's collective memory. Its lessons, real and imagined, continue to shape government policies and military strategies, while the divisions it spawned infect domestic politics and fuel the so-called culture wars. In Forever Vietnam, David Kieran shows how the contested memory of the Vietnam War has affected the commemoration of other events, and how those acts of remembrance have influenced postwar debates over the conduct and consequences of American foriegn policy.

"Kieran focuses his analysis on the recent remembrance of six events, three of which occurred before the Vietnam War and three after. The first group includes the siege of the Alamo in 1836, the incarceration of Union troops at Andersonville during the Civil War, and the experience of American combat troops during World War II. The second comprises the 1993 U.S. intervention in Somalia, the crash of United Airlines Flight 93 on September 11, 2001, and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars." --
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction: "I know what it's like"; title: "How far is Andersonville from Vietnam?": Vietnam revisionism and Andersonville National Historic Site; title: "We veterans of mass murder and stupidity": older veterans' PTSD and the narration of combat in post-Vietnam memoirs of the Second World War; title: "We see a lot of parallels between the men at the Alamo and ourselves": recovering from Vietnam at the Alamo; title: "We should have said no": Vietnam's legacy, the remembrance of Somalia, and debates over humanitarian intervention in the 1990s; title: "It's almost like the Vietnam wall": the legacy of Vietnam and remembrance of Flight 93; title: "The lessons of history": Vietnam's legacy during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; title: Afterword: "the task of telling your story continues".