They said that communism had to be stopped. They said the communists were hell-bent on world domination, and that The Free World had to stop them. If we didn’t stop them in Việt Nam, the countries of Southeast Asia would topple like an upended row of “falling dominos”–one after another into communist hands. That’s what they said. That was their theory–The Domino Theory.
Their theory did not much include the Vietnamese people or the reality of their country. So the Vietnam War was based more on a theory about communism than on the dilemma of Việt Nam. Save South Vietnam from conquest by North Vietnam, they said, because the northerners were the communists.
The Vietnamese called it The American War, to distinguish it from the previous French War. Those who were called the communists called themselves the nationalists. America threw itself against them, and massive American firepower destroyed them massively. But they would not give in. Die for cause and country.
THE DOMINO WAR spans the four peak years of the American war in Việt Nam. Written with fictionalized names, the true story is replete with historical snippets and authentic 1966-1970 photos taken by the author. The narrative delves into the conflict from two angles by alternating between Jesse Parsten’s odyssey in that tortured tropical land, and the Parsten family saga back home in an America convulsed by upheaval over the moral quandary and the morass of an escalating war.
The U.S. Army drafted Jesse in early 1966, and soon cast him into the maelstrom. Yet despite all the destruction and disruption around him, the strange new country and culture captured Jesse’s fancy, and struck a chord in his heart. He would eventually range over the entirety of South Vietnam, his eyes glimpsing the immense suffering of a lovely but star-crossed land, from the northern border to the far southern tip, and from the lengthy seacoast to the interior highland plateaus and forbidding mountain ranges.
The unorthodox Parsten family and the realities of Jesse’s corner of the war are revealed in their exchange of letters from 9000 miles apart. But it is the scenes from within the theater of conflict that bring to life the challenges Jesse faced, trying to do his best while holding to his principles in a war he detested, all the while striving to find the innate goodness in people uprooted by a cyclone of inhumanity.
Jesse Parsten finally bid goodbye to that primevally beautiful but violently disfigured land of strife and death, after experiencing it from top to bottom for most of four years. He had witnessed a lethal mayhem that had put a million lives to an early end—a flood tide of coffins that brought grief and misery to countless families in both countries. But his own life had tacked in a new direction, a course that had launched him on a trajectory not of despair, but of love, renewal and family.
The United States fought a limited war in Southeast Asia– strategically limited, tactically limited and geographically limited. Then the U.S. withdrew when its limited credibility was exhausted and the nation reached its political limit, leaving the battle once again to the Vietnamese.
The struggle between reunification versus permanent partition into two countries finally ended with Northern victory, and reunification between North and South.
The Domino had toppled.
