ABSTRACT
American interest in Vietnam and the rest of Southeast Asia has been burgeoning in recent years because of war and international emphasis. Before the advent of World War II, Americans knew very little about Indochina, as the French called their colonial possession of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The Vietnam War was a very expensive war to the United States. From the period from 1965 to 1968, for example, the Johnson administration was sapped by the US$80 million-a-day cost. The war cost US$60,000 for the United States to kill a North Vietnamese/Viet Cong soldier during the fiscal 1969 in a main-force operation. The war cost 58,000 American soldiers, 129 billion dollars, and American sense of omnipotence. America has won the Cold War, but it has lost a skirmish in Vietnam. Instead of folding, the Vietnamese Communists prevailed against tremendous odds, leaving American historians, theorists, strategists and veterans to wonder what went wrong.
