Was Central America about vanquishing the ghosts of Vietnam? [View All]

[Josh]

Just want to get opinions, though feel free to send me links.

The topic is something I had to give a class presentation on a couple of weeks ago. It's from William M. LeoGrande's book "Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America 1977-1992"

He writes;

"In the end, Central America proved not to be another Vietnam, at least not in the way that people feared in 1981 ... the US went to war in Central America to exorcise the ghosts of Vietnam and to renew the national will to use force abroad. These imperatives, more than the Soviet threat, Fidel Castro's menace, nor the Nicaraguan and Salvadoran revolutions shaped US policy - how it was conceived, struggled over, and executed. Central America's misfortune lay in being the stage upon which this American drama was played out."

What do you all think?