The End Of Vietnam Syndrome?

Although Johnson's announcement on that night in March 1968 signaled the end of his Presidency, it did not signal the end of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. American troops continued to fight – and die – there for another five years before a cease-fire was finally negotiated that enabled them to come home.

In the years that followed, it was often said that America suffered from "Vietnam Syndrome," a malady diagnosed as a severe reluctance to become engaged in another major war for fear of repeating the tragedy of our ordeal in Southeast Asia.

This was the political atmosphere that still prevailed in the fall of 1990 when President George Bush committed American forces to another war on foreign battlefields. This time the terrain was not the jungles of Vietnam but the deserts of the Persian Gulf.

Bush took elaborate steps on a number of fronts to build a broad consensus for the mission to drive Saddam Hussein's invading army out of Kuwait. Thus, by the time U.S. forces were ready to launch the assault in January 1991, the action had the solid support of Congress, our major allies, most of Iraq's Arab neighbors and the vast majority of the American people.

Moreover, the U.S. victory in that conflict was so swift and decisive that it only strengthened public approval of Bush's decision to go to war against Iraq. The American military had regained its pride and then some, and in the aftermath of the Desert Storm triumph, it was generally agreed that "Vietnam Syndrome" had also been conquered, once and for all.