a public service by american table --. television companies. today, we continue to bring you unfiltered coverage of progress, congress, the white house, and other events in washington dc and around the country. c-span is bought to you -- brought to you by your satellite or cable provider. tv, aon american history historian of the university of --cago discusses the viacom vietnam war and reflects on how u.s. vietnam relations are today. we interviewed him at the annual meeting in washington dc. this is about 15 minutes. mark sturgis history at the university of chicago and as a specialty, studies the a nominal human rights.

anniversary is the year, so it is probably a good year to be a vietnam historian. 'sw high is america understanding of the vietnam war and over 50 years? >> i think the crucial shift was more recent. >> that set up a relatively contentious set of debates between historians who want to recover something out of vietnam , perhaps on the more positive, and what has continued to be the mainstream historical perspective when the war was

fundamentally so wrong and ineffective. what you're seeing is a not -- a younger generation and debates were about our generation or a generation behind us, but the younger people are coming to it very different perspective. the first set of kids i talked maybe their parents served in the war, or they had some sort of connection. now, it is a long time ago. i think that is helpful in teaching in some ways. it is a blank slate, that creates its own challenges and trying to fill that slate in four students. they are able to think about it in ways that were less charged than in the past. >> it is not emotional for them. >> it is not. in the war in afghanistan now has that moniker on it. it was also the way the war was

exceptional eyes, there had never been a war that long, never a war like that, amerco winds wars, not loses war - -america wins awards -- wars, not loses. it starts to seem normal and i think that adds to the younger generation seeing this. and heree difference comes the emotional part of it, is that all of the wars they have experienced have been fought by probably people they do not know as well. and war was the draft was a much more personal thing. when we talked to interns that our country, we conveyed to them how much of the draft impacted everyone's life at that time. what is your students understanding of the importance of the draft? >> i think that is a very hard thing to push with students. it has been controversial in its

own right. one of the things that the usees did and i'm hoping to those points as he has long narratives around people who either signed up or were directed. we see them move through time. some of whom we then see families, mothers, brothers and the sisters, that's kind of thing, is something that can help students begin to if it had been me, this is how it would have been desk on. >> one of the big arguments for the war was the domino theory. fell, andetnam southeast asia, and the great influence of china and russia on this, with our greater

understanding of those two major has that there even tested and proven that it really was the biggest threat that policymakers understood at the time? >> i would say the lessons of the war, the domino. and make a difference at all in the long run. the domino theory was that the war was an extension of the cold war. and we were fighting part of the cold war in vietnam. the vietnamese were fighting a war for independence, for that get linked to the cold war because north vietnam has a communist association and the chinese are supportive. the fundamental war for the vietnamese was about independence. domino theories, and that's way, don't signify the ways in which they did for johnson or nixon. the extent around it, you get to the other side of it, and in

1975, the communists were victorious and today, we have a market economy that looks much like it was in their wildest in hopes of what the vietnam war would become and it never did. a wayu know, history has and moving directions people to understand. how important was normalization? >> we can sometimes overestimate the impact of the united states on places like vietnam and others as well. duringa trade embargoed the vietnam war which we did not lift until the 1990's and once we did, that is what moved toward diplomatic relations. in the meantime, everybody what was successful there.

in talking about why the vietnamese economy has been successful of this market economy, one has to look toward europe and more toward developments in asia and the united states. our recognition accelerated a set of patterns that were already going on and i think that is a more helpful way of seeing it than suggesting that recognition said something in motion. >> if modern vietnam has a market economy, how much freedom to individuals have? >> it is like china. there is a one party state that governs vietnam and running a market economy at the same time. the constraints on freedom of expression are there in the same way they are in china. the state is not particularly keen on people who don't play by those rules. human rights activists, people

speaking out against problems in society they have been , celebrated trials in the last couple of years where people are locked up for 10 or 15 years. that said, there is a way in which society is engaged in how policies work. there have been peasant uprisings in places in rural areas where the government was essentially trying to take land away. the government had to back off. . these are not public. often not what the press is covering. there are sort of press blackout because the regime is interested -- isn't interested in being a lot of -- not being a lot of attention on it. it is making an impact on how government works. a lot of nationalism comes back against the government, people protesting the government was too close to china around a set of issues. that meant the government had to push back in some ways there. in general the room for open conversation about politics is

not wide, but there are spaces. the same is true for china as well. of the vietnamcy war is the large centers in the united states. how has our country changed as a result of this immigration? >> it was 1975 when people are coming over. you have people in government, people in the military, the first american ship that came to vietnam to do some joint naval exercises two or three years ago was captained by a vietnamese american. you have that sort of moment of this american coming back and working with the military in vietnam, which was quite an extraordinary moment. the impact of vietnamese americans in the united states in a whole variety of fields has been really large.

it has been different for other refugee communities coming from cambodia and laos. 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 -- to 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 in telling the good on story? -- telling the vietnam 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. >> 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 balance. i didn't get a sense that 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 ways burns does it is using the presidential tapes. he does it for kennedy, nixon, and johnson.

essencially, the american state eventually hangs itself. on the one hand, public we saying all is well and privately, it was falling apart. to have that in the words of the actors themselves takes us out , of how to make the argument where the contention often comes, but what do you do when that is what you are hearing? the interviews and tapes together 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 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 and the war in iraq does not show the lessons of vietnam have been learned. the notion that we can intervene in a particular place and engineer a transformation place after place after place -- it doesn't work. but 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 tet anniversary. tet is almost the perfect event to think in kaleidoscopic ways about the war. you and viewers will remember, at the moment, tet looks like a major defeat for the united states. people were seeing pictures of

the vietcong 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 wasn't 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 put to the side 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 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. professor bradley: thanks for having me. american history

tv, we are also taking our questions and comments, your vote i should say, at c-span history and the question is, which party changed the most since 1968? the vote right now with more than 24,000 testing their vote, says the democrats changed the most. 56%. the republicans is 44%. >> thanks to everyone who voted in our twitter polls on 1968 america and turmoil. more than 100,000 votes were posted on issues ranging from the vietnam war to the presidential election, to women's rights and race relations. you can tweet us questions and seeents during live events, video previews of upcoming programs and look back to what happened on this day in american history. history.r, at c-span >> this weekend, american history tv is featuring selma, alabama.

c-span city tour's staff recently visited many sites showcasing its history. the city was founded in 1820 and given its name by alabama's only vice president, william rufus king. learn more about selma all weekend here on american history tv. >> during the civil war, selma became the second largest manufacturing and distribution point of war material within the confederate states of america. in the latter part of the year, the last year and a half of the war, it is estimated that selma supplied a half to two-thirds of all the munitions and supplies used in the western portion of the confederacy. at the time of selma's capture, the inventory of the arsenal was cataloged and made a matter of record and at that time within the arsenal was over a million small arm cartridges, over 60,000 artillery shells on, and on and on so selma was not insignificant.