TWENTY-FIVE years later and the Vietnam war lives on. Now, however, it is fought with words. The controversy initiated by United States Senator John McCain's declaration that 'the wrong guys' won the war demonstrates how sensitive the conflict's legacy remains for both sides.
To many of those who fought - American and Vietnamese - the war will perhaps always be alive, through private memories of horror and disillusionment.
It is also a war that has been re-fought on Hollywood screens countless times, producing depictions ranging from the poignant and profound, to those that are nothing more than fantasy. For many years Vietnam encapsulated the image of a politically misguided, tragically wasteful conflict. Recent re-appraisals have been more forgiving. The American writer Michael Lind calls it a 'necessary war'. Maybe so.
But the darkness cast by Vietnam has haunted the American psyche. The conflict spent the lives of 58,000 US soldiers as well as three million Vietnamese. It also exploded the myth of American invincibility. In the US a whole generation was forced to rethink assumptions about the country's role in the world. What was learned militarily was the danger of overestimating the strength of superior technology pitched against a will to fight and to win. Politically there was a realisation of the power of negative television images to sap morale.
Twenty-five years on and the self-confidence of the US, so pummelled by the war, has returned. Displays of awesome US military might in the Gulf War and in Kosovo have clearly established the country's ability to project its power and to play the role of global superpower policeman.
Nowadays, Americans - and from their example other Western countries - expect wars to be fought with few or no casualties on their side; until recently this was a ridiculous proposition.
