direct U.S. military participation in The Vietnam War, the nation's
             longest, cost fifty-eight thousand American lives. Only the Civil War
             and the two world wars were deadlier for Americans. During the decade
             of Vietnam beginning in 1964, the U.S Treasury spent over $140 billion
             on the war, enough money to fund urban renewal projects in every major
             American city. Despite these enormous costs and their accompanying
             public and private trauma for the American people, the United States
             failed, for the first time in its history, to achieve its stated war
             aims. The goal was to preserve a separate, independent, noncommunist
             government in South Vietnam, but after April 1975, the communist
             Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) ruled the entire nation.
             The initial reasons for U.S. involvement in Vietnam seemed logical and
             compelling to American leaders. Following its success in World War II,
             the United States faced the future with a sense of moral rectitude and
             material confidence. From Washington's perspective, the principal
             threat to U.S. security and world peace was monolithic, dictatorial
             communism emanating from he Soviet Union. Any communist anywhere, at
             home or abroad, was, by definition, and enemy of the United States.
             Drawing an analogy with the unsuccessful appeasement of fascist
             dictators before World War II, the Truman administration believed that
             any sign of communist aggression must be met quickly and forcefully by
             the United States and its allies. This reactive policy was known as
             In Vietnam the target of containment was Ho Chi Minh and the Vietminh
             front he had created in 1941. Ho and his chief lieutenants were
             communists with long-standing connections to the Soviet Union. They
             were also ardent Vietnamese nationalists who fought first to rid their
             country of the Japanese and then, after 1945, to prevent France from
             reestablishing its form...