Although two decades have passed since U.S. combat soldiers left Indochina, Americans are still telling lies about Vietnam. The ink was hardly dry on the 1973 peace accords when President Richard Nixon, with the help of Ross Perot, exploited the national furor that they had created over alleged prisoners of war remaining in Vietnam to justify their violations of the recently signed treaty and their refusal to make peace with the North Vietnamese. Shortly thereafter, the United States rejected normalizing relations with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam because, as America's “human rights” president, Jimmy Carter, explained, “the destruction was mutual.” By 1980, Ronald Reagan and the “New Right” were making huge electoral gains by pledging to “make America strong again” and, toward that end, set out to convince the country that the U.S. war against Indochina had been a “noble cause.”

Since then, the lies of Vietnam have created a great deal of political capital for politicians of all stripes, soldiers trying to vindicate themselves, and opportunist scholars.