Forever Vietnam: How a Divisive War Changed American Public Memory by David Kieran (review)

Abstract

FOREVER VIETNAM: How a Divisive War Changed American Public Memory. By David Kieran. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. 2014.Forever Vietnam is a work of memory studies, a meta-analysis that traces how the legacy of the Vietnam War shaped American remembrances of the Alamo; World War II and the belated acknowledgement of post-traumatic syndrome (PTSD); the infamous Andersonville prison camp of the Civil War; the Black Hawk Down incident in Somalia; Flight 93; and the War on Terror. In all of these case studies, author David Kieran demonstrates how the experience of the Vietnam War provided an interpretive construct. This book was written call attention the use/misuse of Vietnam War history in order to delineate more fully the contours of many Americans' enduring embrace of militarism, often uncritical acquiescence the use of military force abroad, and continued failure acknowledge the crises that those interventions prompted in the lives of veterans, their families, and the civilians who experience them (13).In certain respects, Kieran is following the trail that was blazed by Richard Slotkin in Gunfighter Nation, where it was shown how myths of the American frontier continued shape American sensibilities, including how the Vietnam War was fought and perceived. Now the latter is material for myths in its own right. The research material for this volume includes newspaper articles, documents from archives, government publi cations, and primary and secondary works, including war memoirs. The work includes endnotes and an index as well as illustrations. Forever Vietnam is a fascinating study in that it unveils the shifting and often odd lessons that Americans have made about the war, but none of this is surprising since the war, televised and shown in everyone's living room, was long, bloody, and expensive, ending tragically with the Fall of Saigon.One of the problems with any such study is distinguishing the representative from the idiosyncratic. American society, as the poet Walt Whitman long ago noted, is large and teeming with multitudes and is thereby discordant. Not all voices speak for the general public, however. A politician's remark, an old Vietnam veteran's gesture (such as leaving a Purple Heart medal at the Flight 93 Memorial), a veteran group's pseudo-event (to gain media attention in order generate more interest in bolstering veterans' benefits), or any author's retelling of a war may or may not symbolize something larger or significant. …