<br >70<br >PREFACE<br > Although the Vietnam war concluded ten years ago， with the<br >fall of Saigon in 1975， there is a sense in which it never ended.<br >The experience continues to be felt by millions of Americans: by<br >the families of those who died in Vietnam， by those who served<br >in the war and returned home to be as much shunned as honored，<br >and by those who resisted the draft or demonstrated against the<br >war until the nation became an ideological battlefield. At the high-<br >est levels of government the defeat suffered in Indochina continues<br >to have a traumatic impact. The self-doubt and self-questioning<br >that followed Vietnam has not been fully dispelled. The notion of<br >an invincible United States was called into question， and policy<br >makers no longer assume tha~ American troops can intervene ef-<br >fectively against Communist; expansionism anywhere in the<br > Since the end of the war a debate has been taking place about<br >its meaning and implications. A Vietnam literature has grown up<br >in novels， plays， films， and television documentaries; and in the<br >forum of magazines and journals many aspects of the war are dis-<br >cussed， often passionately and with wide differences of opinion<br >and viewpoint. It can be seen more clearly today that the Marxist<br >utopia envisioned by the North Vietnamese in their "liberation"<br >of the South has not been realized. The regime in Vietnam is<br >markedly repressive， with "reeducation camps" for thousands sus-<br >pected of ideological deviation. A steady stream of refugees， in-<br >eluding a vast number of "boat people，" have fled from Vietnam<br >since the war， creating a new immigrant population in the United<br >States and other countries. The economy of Vietnam has been<br >crippled by a complicated and archaic bureaucracy and by the mo-<br >bilization of a huge standing army--the fourth largest in the<br >world--which has invaded and taken over the territory of its<br >neighbors， Laos and Cambodia. At the same time， the United<br >States has begun to honor its Vietnam veterans belatedly and to<br >reassess its role in world affairs.<br ><br >