The Vietnam War

Chapter 18 portrayed the gruesome Vietnam War as the greatest antiwar movement the nation has faced. North Vietnam, led by Communist Ho Chi Minh, fought against South Vietnam, a democratic nation, for the expansion of land. Ho Chi Minh took control of Indochina from Japan. England occupied the southern part of Indochina and gave it to the French. Nationalist China controlled northern part of Indochina and neglected to return the land to the French due to its immense wealth in rubber and coal. As a result, the United States was involved in the Vietnam War and paid $1 billion to safeguard the French from China. Ultimately, the Unites States desired to prevent the domino theory, the spreading of Communism in Asia. Even with the immense support from the United States, the French were unable to win the Vietnamese popular support. Therefore, the United Sates supported the leader, Ngo Dinh Diem, the leader of South Vietnam, against the Communist nation. The United States involvement was a turning point in history and had a huge impact on society.

The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War was a clash between communist forces who are allied with the Viet Cong and South Vietnam allied with the United States of America. The “roots” of the war started during the 1940’s when Japan “invaded and occupied Vietnam” which has been under French rule for more than 50 years. It all started with Ho Chi Minh, a communist revolutionary who established the Viet Minh, an organization “whose goal was to get rid Vietnam of the French and Japanese occupiers” .

In the month of December of 1967, near Tam Quan in Vietnam, troops on a foot patrol from D-1-12 were on their way back to camp. While crossing a vulnerable spot in a rice paddy, the wood-line suddenly opened up with intense small arms fire in an all-out ambush on their position. Low on ammo, and with almost no cover, they radioed for assistance. The small infantry platoon hunkered as low to the ground as possible in what appeared to be the final moments of their lives, when suddenly the wood-line erupted into a cacophony of explosions, and out of nowhere a Chinook appeared. "At first, I thought it was our Admin/Log Bird who 'd tragically picked the wrong time to do re-supply, but that worry vanished when I realized it was coming to a

The Vietnam War, lasting almost twenty years and deploying 2.7 million troops to the front lines, was one of the largest wars in United States history. Beginning August 2nd, 1964, the war killed 58,000 American soldiers and disabled twice that number. The war brought humiliation to our great nation, and created very overwhelming tensions, in a quote by President Nixon, “Let us be united against defeat. Because let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that” (Doc G). These tensions grew immensely over the course of the war. In terms of political tensions, the trust and credibility of the war and government began to seem very questionable. Socially, the public began to acknowledge

The Vietnam War was a 21-year conflict that originated in 1954 surrounding Vietnam in several wars. This instigated two specific engagements with two countries: France and China. The altercation between France and Vietnam was called the Indo-China which led to the U.S.’s involvement after France left Vietnam. Meanwhile, China commenced its interest in Vietnam after the defeat of the U.S. and South Vietnamese government. It hoped to demonstrate its influence as the top nation in Southeast Asia. This conflict inspired the U.S. fear of a domino effect of communism spreading throughout Southeast Asia when Vietnam fell; furthermore, the U.S. decided to assist the South Vietnamese to avert this event. North Vietnam had the support of Russia because many Russians hoped communism to expand throughout the world and they saw Vietnam as an opportunity to achieve their goal. Thus, many citizens needed to escape into South Vietnam from these communists. From a documentary,

The Vietnam War was, and still is a difficult topic to discuss, not because of the battle itself, but because of the unfamiliarity of the subject most present-day students have. Five years after World War II, the war for Vietnamese independency began, which is also when textbooks for some reason strayed away from world history and lingered toward United States history instead – the economic boom and "race war" is far more recognizable to modern day students and the fear of Communist tendencies assisted in altering the curriculum to avoid the problems outside of the United States. However, soldiers continued to fight on unfamiliar grounds during the time, many have lost their lives, and George Crumb’s composition Black Angels represents the true, raw emotion of what it felt like away from home. “In Black Angels, Crumb fulfilled the command to reinvent music, not by writing a piece that reflected on the war, but by making music as the embodiment of war and thus assume…mythic qualities” (Ho). Although the music can be audibly heard as a battle within itself, the titles of each number in the three-movement program can assist the surfacing discomfort of what “war” should bring.

The Vietnam war was probably one of the most, if not the most unpopular war in US history. Civil disobedience began before the war was even in full swing. Men would refused to register for the military draft. And when they actually had registered for the draft the men began to publicly burn their draft cards. As if that wasn’t enough of a sap in the face to the government they began to not just burn their draft cards but actually sent them back to the government. In response to these refuses the government began to prosecute the men who refused; by the end there were over thirty-three thousand imprisoned for refusing the draft. When their pleads for peace were not heard, citizens then turned to the use of horrific actions. United States citizens began to commit suicide in order to be heard. In Washington when pentagon workers finished their day and were leaving, they were met by Norman Morrison. Morrison was so fed up with the war that he drenched him self in gasoline, lit himself on fire, and proceeded to burn to death in public to protest the war. Sadly, enough this was not the only suicide case, a year later Alice Herz fallowed in Morrison’s footsteps and also set fire to herself. Then when bombings in North Vietnam began to take place, US citizens gathered in Boston to protest. But this wasn’t just any normal protest, during this particular protest over one hundred thousand (some think the number was actually closer to two million) citizens attended and peace rallies

The Vietnam War “The war on colour television screens in American living rooms has made Americans far more anti-war than anything else. The full brutality of the combat will be there in close-up and in colour, and blood looks very red on the colour television screen”. The USA declared war on Vietnam at a time of evident mass media involvement. The technological progress that was made allowed the full ruthlessness war to be broadcast the people of America.

The Vietnam War was another United States attempt in containing Communism in southeastern Asia. To this point in the Cold War, containment dominated U.S. foreign policy and already led the U.S. into a war, Korea. In 1964, The North Vietnamese attacked the U.S.S. Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin. Soon after the attack, the U.S. Senate crafted the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave President Johnson the ability to engage in the Vietnam War (Phillips). President Johnson immediately sent thousands of troops directly into Vietnam. The highest amount of American troops committed to Vietnam was 542,000 (Phillips). In January 1968, both sides agreed to a truce during the Tet holidays, which celebrated Vietnam’s new year. However, the Viet Cong organized a massive surprise attack in many cities in South Vietnam. This attacked has been named the Tet Offensive and shocked the U.S.. Even though the Viet Cong suffered many causalities, it showed the inability for the U.S. forces to adequately fight a war on foreign soil. This attack dismissed the fact that the U.S. was winning the war and changed the outlook on the war. Bringing the television into middle class family’s homes changed the way people got their news. This sparked outrage in the U.S. and caused the increased effectiveness of the anti-war movement. The Presidents policies began to change was the war dragged on and this ultimately led to the unification of Vietnam under a Communist government, which was the fear of many because

As President John F. Kennedy had once said, “Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind.” Recorded as one of America’s most gruesome military excursions, the Vietnam War claimed approximately 2.1 million Vietnamese and American soldiers’ lives. The natural demography of Vietnam changed forever as American forces, in a rabid hunt for North Vietnamese guerilla fighters, sprayed approximately 3.5 million acres of bucolic forests with chemical weapons and dropped nearly 6.8 million tons of bombs on the rural landscape, most of which hit small villages filled with innocent civilians (“The American Involvement…”). Regarding the crimes American soldiers carried out against the Vietnamese population as the ultimate threat to

To this day, the Vietnam War remains as one of the most controversial subjects in modern American history. The main question that revolves around the Vietnam War, or any conflict that took place during the Cold War for that matter, was whether or not American efforts did actually help prevent the spread of Communism not just in Europe, but throughout the world. While other controversies around this time heavily revolved on whether or not the Americans were acting for the sake of others, or to fulfill their own intentions on preventing the spread of Communist rule on the other side of the world. This period in American history proved to be an interesting one given how you had men fighting abroad, yet at the same time you had your own set of

During 1968, the Vietnam War was a major moment in American history. The Vietnam War was the most publicized war during its era; moreover, this was the most unpopular war to hit the United States. All over the country, riots began to raise, anti-war movement spread all over the states begging to stop the war and chaos overseas. During this time, fear and doubt were widespread due to the decisions of the government, and battles occurring in Vietnam.

Before television was created, people received their news from different sources. The progression from sending mail by horse to getting news by paper and then television transformed how instant people understood what was going. However, not everything back then was factual. America back then liked to feel patriotic, they wanted to be the superpower in all circumstances, that included handling news. This alternation of information was specifically seen during the Vietnam War. The fact that the Vietnam War was the first televised war was the primary reason that public opinion turned against the war, and ultimately led to the United States’ withdrawal from Vietnam.

The wars in Indochina and Vietnam ravaged the landscape for decades. The strive for Vietnamese independence was fought for years by men and women across the country. Who were these people and why did they fight? Two of the more interesting men who fought for Vietnamese independence were Truong Nhu Tang, and Lam Quang Thi. Truong was a member of the southern Vietnamese intelligentsia who would later become a key member of the National Liberation Front(NLF), that would be instrumental in fighting against the Saigon government and American presence in Vietnam. Lam on the other hand couldn’t have had a much different goal in fighting for a sovereign Vietnam. Lam decided that his best course of action was to enlist into what would eventually be the Army of the Republic of Vietnam(ARVN), the army of southern Vietnam, eventually rising to the rank of general. I’ve had the pleasure of reading their memoirs (along with several others), and an interesting question came into my mind. Why would these two men, who had comparable backgrounds, choose such strikingly different ways of attempting to foster Vietnamese independence. I’ll attempt to answer this question by examining in more detail their comparable backgrounds, educations, early lives, families, etc, and striving to find an answer. As a further comparison Le Ly Hayslip, a woman from central Vietnam who also got involved in the fighting, will also be examined, but in much less detail, and more as a comparison to the

The early 1960’s marks a time when the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War is increased. On August of 1964, North Vietnamese patrol boats fired upon American vessels and Lyndon Johnson declared this as an act of open aggression against the United States and Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which gave the president full power to make any decisions he thought to be necessary. President LBJ decided to increase the United States involvement in war and his reasons included: credibility of the United States, threat posed by China, and he feared that if he did not get the United States involved it would make him seem soft on communism. This war had many effects on Americans and the people that seen the effects of the war up close and personal were the soldiers. Full Metal Jacket is a movie that showcases the hardships and terrors undergone by soldiers in the Vietnam War. In this film it is evident that a war will change a person not only on a physical aspects but also on a psychological one.