April 30th, 1975, after twenty years of vicious fighting, the United States is forced to abandon the Vietnam War and accept its first loss in a major conflict. The US had been in nearly one hundred major conflicts — most resounding victories — so how did the Vietnam War become America’s kryptonite? Although the retreat from Vietnam can be attributed to many causes, from the guerilla warfare tactics of the Vietnamese to the larger battle over communism, or even the scandals of American politics at the time, the most notable cause is the invention of the camera. Most don’t think of the camera as a weapon of war, however this device had a greater impact than any bomb, gun, or plane. Never before in history had the American public seen war like this at its epicenter, and many didn’t like what they saw. Tim O’Brien’s short story collection The Things They Carried provides evidence through fiction that the US failed to win the war in Vietnam because of the spotlight cast on the realities of war by photography.
In O’Brien’s The Things They Carried the theme of distaste for the war among the American public is ever present. In the story entitled “On the Rainy River,” this theme is particularly apparent. The short story describes a young man’s struggle to cope with the fact that he is being drafted to fight the war in Vietnam. Its setting is June of 1968, well into the war and at a point where mistrust in the government had almost reached its tipping point. The protagonist — whose name is also Tim O’Brien — receives a draft notice in the summer following his graduation from Macalester College at the age of 20. The story chronicles his internal conflict over whether he can fight a war he doesn’t believe in, or live with the shame of abandoning his life and running to safety in Canada. O’Brien says, “I was drafted to fight a war I hated,” and goes on to discuss how many Americans agreed with his beliefs. The US government had said the Vietnamese were bad people and that the war was winnable and necessary, but as photography began to show people, this was far from the truth. O’Brien never specifically references where he came to hate the war or how he came to see its flaws, but studying how the public was influenced in real life, it becomes clear that photography had a deep impact.
Cameras had been around since the Civil War, and through their lens thousands of battles had been viewed by millions of people. The camera was invented sometime in the first half of the 19th century by Louis Daguerre. Its invention was revolutionary, giving humans the ability to capture a specific moment in time and share it with the world; it began as a tool of science but soon spread to all aspects of human life. In 1861 the Civil War would march its way into the viewfinder. The battle for the American homeland left politicians and civilians alike wondering what was happening to their country, and photographers took it upon themselves to seek out the war and share it with the world. The pictures were, for many, the first glimpse into combat, and became the earliest form of photojournalism. Yet the technology was primitive — cameras were heavy, and photos were time-consuming, taking minutes, with the slightest motion ruining the frame. Photographers were forced to follow the soldiers’ footsteps, stopping at battlefields hours or even days after battles had commenced. Photography had begun its relationship with war, and as the weapons became faster and more powerful, so did the camera.
Half a century would pass, and with it, great leaps in both the machines of war and photography. America’s enemies would rise and fall as more convenient ways of spreading photos to the world emerged — cameras would become faster, smaller, and cheaper to use. World War II would introduce the world to propaganda; photos of Hitler and the Nazis would grace the cover of newspapers across the country, inspiring the country to take up arms and fight evil at its heart. Cameras had become a weapon of war, influencing the minds of millions. Photography and war would once again define the course of history as pictures and videos were sent by the boatload to the American public, who would come to know who they were fighting and wanted nothing but to see American ideals spread across the globe. Everything seemed great for America, but the perfect storm loomed just on the horizon, and it was the Vietnam War.
The Vietnam War ended nearly a half century ago, and yet there is still debate over whether the war was a success. Unfortunately, for every American who wishes to say the US is undefeated in battle, the US lost in Vietnam. In order to fully understand how the US failed, one must first understand the United States’ goals. September 2nd, 1945 marked the official end of WWII; the world celebrated as an even bigger war brewed behind the scenes. WWII was a resounding victory for the US — the armed forces managed to fight and win a war on two fronts, leaving many American leaders and citizens feeling invincible. As the next decade progressed, the US and the Soviet Union entered a war of ideologies, fighting not with weapons but with political influence. By the early 1950s, the clash between democracy and communism had intensified, and combat between the superpowers became imminent as both sides looked for an excuse to prove they were the better nation. With almost perfectly coincidental timing, a skirmish in Vietnam erupted into a civil war. The US quickly backed the democratic south, hoping to spread democracy and discourage the USSR, while the Chinese and Soviets supported the communist north in overtaking the south and dealing a blow to democracy. The Cold War had brought the world’s attention to Vietnam, a war the US was initially confident would be an easy victory.
The war may have been in Vietnam, but many significant battles occurred in the US. The twenty-year conflict began slowly, with widespread support from the public, who had no reason not to trust the government in defending freedom at home and on foreign territories. From what they had seen, the US was doing what it had always done: fighting the bad guys and delivering freedom worldwide. The US was vastly superior but couldn’t seem to grasp the victory it sought; the lopsided war grew longer and longer as more and more US lives were sacrificed to eliminate a resilient enemy. For a decade the battles raged, and Americans died with full support from the public, until they began to question why the US had become so involved in a conflict with very little importance to the well-being of the US, and what exactly the US was fighting for. Just as before, cameras would come to influence the world, only this time it was different — images of Vietnam flooded the US, and its citizens saw first-hand the horrors of war. By the 1960s cameras were lightweight, fast, and could be taken anywhere, and the camera had gained an ally: the television. The world now refers to the Vietnam War as the first televised war, because by the 1960s nearly every home had a television, and when battles broke out, the images could be seen within hours. Americans soon began to realize the war was only bringing an untimely end to thousands of innocent lives; it became what Arthur Schlesinger Jr. referred to as “a tragedy without villains.” The American public became nearly as conflicted as the Vietnamese — O’Brien describes how the morally confused US “… didn’t understand the war and didn’t want to.” The Vietnam War would drag on for years, until one image would finally push the US to its breaking point.
On February 1st, 1968, the South Vietnamese police chief, Nguyễn Ngọc Loan, executed a Vietcong prisoner in front of photographer Eddie Adams. The photo went on to be known as the Saigon Execution. Thousands of pictures had been taken of the war, but this photo turned the hearts of many Americans sour — its significance was that a US ally, meant to be innocent and in need of defending, was brutally murdering a man in the street. By 1968 the US had been fighting the Vietcong for thirteen years, a war of attrition, meaning the US goal was to kill as many Vietnamese as possible until they were forced to surrender. What had begun as a war to bring peace and freedom to a foreign nation had become a struggle to end as much life as possible to win back the spirit of the US. The American public was already tired of this war, and Adams’ picture was the last straw — no longer could the government say this war was good for the country. No argument could be made for why innocent American lives would be struck down to defend a man and a nation that could commit such an act, one that went against everything Americans were raised to believe. This photo would come mere months before Tim O’Brien would be drafted into the war, and no doubt would affect his decision-making process.
The Vietnam War lasted for eighteen long years. It would chronicle the transformation of the US public from the government’s blind supporters to its harshest critics, and see America find its mortal weakness: itself. The Vietnamese military was not stronger than the US military, but it was resilient, and proved to the world that battles are not just fought on battlefields but at home, in the hearts and minds of the militaries’ families and friends. Though the US failure to dispel communism and liberate the Vietnamese nation could be equated to any number of factors, the camera had the greatest influence on the American public. Photography allowed the public to view the government’s actions in a new context, and most were unhappy with what they saw. Without the public being ready and willing to sacrifice everything to win the war, the US was forced to abandon the Vietnam War and walk away with its tail between its legs. Throughout Tim O’Brien’s short story collection, The Things They Carried, characters and narrators alike voice their distaste for the war with the Vietcong, which serves as a reference to the fact that the divide between the government’s goals and those of the public — caused by photography — lost the war.