Though the American press did not delve with great insight into the struggle between the Vietminh and the French, it did not accept the assumptions of the French that this was a great Western crusade against Communist hordes. The war was, in fact, viewed as a colonial war.
Two events would change the American perceptions, and equally important in this case, the disposition to perceive nuances. (Many things, after all, were perceptible, if one wanted to see them, but the seeing involved increasing risk. It became better not to see the shades of difference--the fact, for instance, that Ho, although a Communist, might also be primarily Vietnamese and under no orders from Moscow.) The first event was the hardening of the Cold War astensions in Europe grew; the second was the fall of China, which sent deep psychic shock waves into the American political structure. These events, coupled with the Korean War and the coming of Senator Joseph McCarthy, would markedly change the American perception of international Communism, and more important, change the disposition of high political figures to discern subtleties within the Communist world. The spectrum of American political attitudes would sharply narrow, and there would be an enormous two-party consensus of anti-Communism. The only main difference was on how to implement it, one centrist group believing in subtle anti-Communism, using economic aid as a weapon; the other believing more in sheer military force. A major party would find itself on the defensive on the charge of having lost a major country to the Communists; and most remarkable of all, the key architect of an entire era of militant anti-Communism, Dean Acheson, would find himself the center of a national political campaign, the charge being not that he was too harsh in his anti-Communism, but that he had been too soft.
It was an unreal time.
A kind of demonology about a vast part of the world would become enshrined as accepted gospel. One major political party would be too frightened to challenge it, the other delighted to reap the benefits from it.
