>> next on american history tv, historian mark philip bradley from the university of chicago discusses the vietnam war. he explains why teaching the vietnam war has changed and reflects on u.s. vietnam relations today. we interviewed him at the american historical association in washington dc. this is about 15 minutes. >> mark bradley teaches history forhe university of chicago the history of vietnam and human rights. i want to talk about the unum. a good year to be a vietnam historian. how has america's understanding of the war change over 50 years? >> i think the crucial shift has been more recent in certain

ways. the reagan era brought a different way of thinking about the war. of notion thatd may be in fact it was a necessary war. there was a strategic point of being in vietnam. that set up a relatively contentious set of debates between historians who want to recover something out of vietnam , and then what has continued to be a mainstream historical then what has continued to be a mainstream historical perspective. a younger generation comes into all of this. the debate is about our generation.

the first set of kids was teaching, the parents may have been in the war. it's a long time ago. it is a blank slate. they are able to think about it. not emotional for them. >> afghanistan has that sort of moniker. that's the way the war has been exceptional lysed. now you have a generation of people who have gone to .fghanistan

>> it's a difference of course. all that they have experienced has been fought by people who don't know so well. talk to interns at our company, we try to convey how the draft impacted everybody in their life. >> i think that's a very hard thing to recover from students. is been controversial in its own right. one thing that series did exceptionally well is he's good on storage. he's got long narratives around people who drafted. , we see theirie

brothers and sisters. that something that can begin to help students understand. this is how it might have gone in one form or another. almost a different class of people. >> what are the big arguments for the war? if the unum cells in southeast asia, and the great influence of .hina and russia that theory been tested and proven that it actually was the big threat at the time? lessons --say the

it's all about an extension of the cold war. for reasons that get into the cold war, because the unum has a communist theory. wasthe fundamental war -- it doesn't signify johnson or nixon. you get out to the other side of it. one.the north had we have a market economy that looks much like it was in the wildest dreams. that's the reality of vietnamese society.

history has an odd way of moving in directions that people don't necessarily anticipate. >> i think we can overestimate the impact of the united states on small states and other places as well. a trade embargo against vietnam, which we did not let -- did not left until the 1990's. in the meantime everybody but us was trading. and most important a south korea had a huge presence in the -- in vietnam. in fact more to the development in asia.

as our redemption etc. rates a set of patterns -- >> how much freedom and individuals have. in the sensechina there is a one-party state in vietnam. the state is not particularly keen on people who play by those rules. that said, there is a way in which they are engaged in policy .

the governments had to back off. they are public. in --regime is interested there is a way they are making a huge impact on how government works. people protesting it was around a set of issues. there are these spaces. >> the large centers to be here in the united states.

>> it's interesting where vietnamese americans are now in the united states. we have people in the military. the first american ship that came back to vietnam to do -- momente that sort of .ith the vietnamese-american quite an extraordinary moment. and a whole variety of fields. it's been different from communities. it was not just vietnam. it was happening in all three places. for the cambodian american community, it has been a much more mixed situation and how people about economically, socially since the end of the war.

certainly with their communities, as well. susan: you are here did participate in a panel on the ken burns series. you referenced that earlier. i'm sure many people watching us saw that as well. one of the things i read, and you reference this, the reliance on the oral histories and not involving academic historians. what are the pluses and minuses of that in your estimation and -- estimation in telling the good on story? professor bradley i think as : much as we would like to think we can have that credit influence on the general public, i'm not sure we do. >> human academic historians -- you mean academic experience? -- you mean academic historians? [laughter] present bradley perhaps it's : more compelling of a way to tell up and we could do. they are just absolutely

brilliant interviews. one of the things with historians is you would not get a balanced. -- i think you get a sense it was particularly balanced in the end. it really did represent a very strong critique of american involvement in vietnam during that period of time. one way burns does it is using the presidential tapes. he does it for kennedy, nixon, and johnson. the american state eventually hangs itself. hand, public we saying all is well and privately , it was falling apart. how the actors themselves takes us out of how to make the

argument where the contention do when what do you that is what you are hearing? the tapes do it in a compelling way. susan: we had generation of journalists and numbers of congress, historians who are part of the experience and served and are now aging out. we always used to hear about the country absorbing the lessons of the amount -- of vietnam. as you watch more contemporary america, have lessons been successfully absorbed into our policy decisions? professor bradley i would say : no. the afghan war in the war in iraq does not show the lessons of vietnam have been learned. the notion we can intervene in a particular place and engineer a

transformation place after place after place -- it doesn't work. all you have to do is look backward in time. the british believed they could do that. the french believed they could do that as an imperial power. it did not work in the end for them as well. i think the whole notion that these kinds of interventions can achieve the policy goals that are imagined as possible, but that is fundamentally flawed. yet, we seem to do it over and over again. when i first started teaching, i did believe this could never happen again. people have seen this and learned a set of lessons. the last 10, 15 years would suggest almost the complete other way around. susan: history gives us the opportunity to revisit these questions. what are some of the significant ways your observing the next couple of years of anniversaries

are being observed and discussed? present bradley anniversaries : are good in putting people's attention and focus back on vietnam. other wars have become more compelling in front and center for people. it's an opportunity to go back and perhaps rethink some of these issues. this year, it is the te anniversary. tet is almost the perfect event to think in kaleidoscopic ways about the war. you and viewers will member at , the moment, tet looks like a major defeat for the united states. people were seeing pictures of the viet cong and the american embassy, etc. then, it turned out, in fact, within two weeks, the americans and south vietnamese had beat back the north vietnamese. it appeared as if it really was it the defeat it was. but then, it turned out the

north had a kind of bloody interparty battle about whether to do tet or not. that puts aside more moderate actors in vietnam, more hardline group of actors involved in the war. the war transformed into a much more conventional war after 1968. so, it is one of those things where so many happened thing -- happened as a result of it. it's a good way for people to understand the levels of complexity involved in thinking about what it was to be in vietnam. susan: it is a complex history and we had a brief time to thank you for talking about vietnam then and now. appreciate your time. present bradley: -- professor bradley thank -- professor bradley: thanks for having me. >> a north vietnamese soldier came to the ground. my guy saw him. it was too late. he threw a hand grenade at me. it hit a pole in a hut.

it went off. mypeppered my jacket, ripped -- and cut a handle off of my shovel. a piece of shrapnel hit my leg. >> watch our five-part history with war veterans on c-span3. this weekend, "american history tv is featuring selma, alabama. s staff -- the city was founded in 1820 and given its name by alabama's only u.s. vice president. learn more about some of all