As we send our troops into battle this hazy fog of dust and smoke rise up when they step into the unknown and it is scary. All of this emotion of why am I here, and am I here for the right reasons? The secretary of defense Robert McNamara should have been able to answer those questions before he shipped off anyone to Vietnam. Did Donald Rumsfeld ask the right questions before planning to ship soldiers to Iraq? I will be comparing these two men’s abilities to show emotion and my thoughts and emotions on it during two documentaries.
Identifying the many primary sources throughout the films is a task that caused me to pause the documentaries several times. Both of the documentaries shared important newspapers from the time periods. The big primary source integrated into both documentaries are videos of bombs being loaded into or being dropped from planes. Each documentary had short interview clips, pictures, memos, propaganda, and magazine articles as primary sources.
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A person was wearing a sign that read “bring our G.I.s home”. A picture or propaganda poster caught my attention during this documentary. This poster looked like McNamara in a tank. This struck strong emotions for me and kind of pissed me off. I was surprised that people would create such nasty things of a man trying to keep war out of our country. Than I thought of all the crap people talk about our president now for mistakes that have nothing to do with him. After I thought about this blame game it began to make sense. The American people have to blame someone when people are dying and or
“I survived, but it’s not a happy ending” (O’Brien 58). A veteran’s pain does not end when they are relieved of duty and sent home. Many veterans are unsure how to deal with the horrors they experience during and after the war, and negative coping mechanisms can arise from those struggles. The novel, The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, is an accurate representation of real life because the characters use negative coping mechanisms to overcome hardships during and after the Vietnam War.
The war in Vietnam to do this day has gone down as one of the influential and controversial wars in United States history. The war lasted from 1955 to 1975.The nation as a whole began to uproar over the war and the major consequences of the war. There were many reasons why so many Americans were against the war. Public opinion steadily turned against the war following 1967 and by 1970 only a third of Americans believed that the U.S. had not made a mistake by sending troops to fight in Vietnam (Wikipedia). Not to mention, many young people protested because they were the ones being drafted while others were against the war because the anti-war movement grew increasingly popular among the counterculture and drug culture in American society and
So, the movie was definitely beneficial in understanding the full story behind the war. Additionally, the lecture speaks on the entirety of the story, and mention the press just like the movie does. I remember reading in the lecture that, “Newspaper publishers like William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer worked up war fever among the public with reports of Spanish atrocities against Cuban rebels”. The movie also touches on this topic and gives further examples of the press and the headlines that encouraged Americans to demand war. This helped me understand the true power that the press had during this time.
General Macarthur's inspirational speech, Duty Honor Country, a speech he so eloquently delivered on May 12, 1962, proved to be one of the most powerful speeches in history. He praised the soldier's bravery, courage, and highlighted their tremendous impact on everyday life through various claims. He makes this assertion by characterizing the soldiers through his slogan Duty Honor Country. General Macarthur also uses pathos by mentioning religion to convey emotional feeling from the audience. MacArthur’s purpose is to paint the image of how an ideal soldier should be in order to shape their lives as military leaders.
The soldiers of the Vietnam War were mostly innocent young men that were forced to face overwhelming emotional distress like the fear of their own deaths, guilt associated with taking the life of another soldier, and sorrow after witnessing their fellow comrades’ deaths. In The Things They Carried, author, Tim O’Brien, uses fictional stories to display the immense emotional burdens that the soldier Tim and his fellow members of Alpha Company experienced before, during, and after their unforgettably haunting time in Vietnam, and how each handled this “baggage” they carried. O’Brien’s sympathy belongs to the soldiers in the novel, knowing full and well that none of them belonged in the middle of the unjust war. Whether it was by the use of
Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is a collection of essays, all centered on anecdotes of American soldiers during the Vietnam War. The seemingly straightforward recollections slowly reveal dense layers of personal and metaphorical meanings upon closer inspection, with the exploration of the characters’ emotions and the underlying motif of love creating the opportunity to trace how war changes a person in the realm of his emotions. The Vietnam warfare acts as a catalyst for all of the unsettling changes in the soldiers’ minds, raising the question whether the battlefield is actively responsible for this result or merely accelerating the inevitable manifestation of these personal issues, inherent in every person. In the collection of essays
“Beyond Vietnam-A Time to Break Silence” Rhetorical Analysis Over the years there have been many great speeches said by very good orators, but few of them had the effect that Martin Luther King, Jr. had on his audience, and none were as famous as his “I Have A Dream” speech. What made Dr. King’s speech so compelling was the fact that he was preacher and was very good at capturing the audience’s attention. The way he presented his arguments to captivate the audience and to get them to agree with whatever he was saying was a technique called the Aristoliean rhetoric, a device that helped him persuade his audience to accomplish his goals. But when he made the “Beyond Vietnam-A Time to Break Silence” speech on April 4, 1967, it was not recognized
Prior, to the emergence of America entering World War I the era of Industrialization had finished and continuous conflicts between the ideals of the United States remaining in isolation were brought amongst by President Woodrow Wilson. However, this idea of Isolationism was challenged by the idea of expanding the nation 's borders, also known as Imperialism these two ideas conflicted greatly with each other. Towards the early 1900’s President Wilson was in office when Germany sank The Lusitania in which the United States had a decision to make by choosing to go into the war, around this time film was making an introduction into the world whether it being in the newly built film palaces or somewhere else. When the United States had announced
The Vietnam War The war in Vietnam was an enduring struggle for independence that lasted twenty years. After being colonized and controlled by Japan, France, and China, Vietnam was ready to revolutionize and gain their independence. Once Ho Chi Minh, the new leader of Vietnam, adopted communism the United States became more worried about Soviet aggression. A communist Vietnam meant that neighboring countries could fall to communism through a theory called the domino theory. As the war began the United States soon found themselves in a state of social, economic, and political turmoil.
With the initiation of World War One governments on both sides of the Atlantic began to exhibit control over war correspondents, keeping tabs on where and who they were with, often through incentives. Good public opinion abounded for the wars and the war correspondents (Smith, 2012). By the second world war people would flood into movie theaters to receive news of the previous week’s events on the war front, idolizing reporters (Siegel, 2003). Unsurprisingly, such reports often biased and focused on the heroisms of the allies, any atrocities were assumed better left unsaid (Smith,
“That’s what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future ... Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story” (36). The Things They Carried is a captivating novel that gives an inside look at the life of a soldier in the Vietnam War through the personal stories of the author, Tim O’Brien . Having been in the middle of war, O’Brien has personal experiences to back up his opinion about the war.
O’Brien writes, “You can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil” (76). Regardless of the changes within the narrations, the fact remains, that these soldiers are in the middle of battle and the emotion that follows differ for each person. As Kaplan states in his writing, “the most important thing is to be able to recognize and accept that events have no fixed and final meaning and that the only meaning that events can have is one that emerges momentarily and then shifts and changes each time that the events come alive as they are remembered or portrayed”
One of the most controversial wars in history and a turning point in American foreign policy, the emotions and events surrounding the Vietnam War capture the essence of the era. The rise of rebellious youth culture and anti-war and anti-draft movements were key social aspects of American life leading up to and during the fighting. (Doc 2, 3) On the political side, Congress aimed to control the Chief-Executive with legislation such as the War Powers Act of 1973, requiring the president to remove all unreported troops in Vietnam and report any further sent. (Doc 7) To say the country was divided would be a massive understatement.
Martin Luther King Jr. was a social activist that led the Civil Rights Movement, and other movements until his assassination in 1968. On April 4, 1967 Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a speech named, “Beyond Vietnam- A Time to Break Silence” addressing the Vietnam War. The United States got involved in the Vietnam War because they wanted to stop the spread of communism. Due to the Vietnam War is that plenty of individuals, both Americans and Vietnamese were killed.
This essay will investigate to what extent did the Strategies and Tactics used by the United States, North and South Vietnam, and the Soviet Union influence the outcome of the Vietnam war? The Vietnam War was one of the most significant war in American History. It was a war that will not be forgotten in a long time due to its surprising outcome and length of the war. One of the key roles in the war that had affected the outcome of the war were the tactics and strategies that were used by different countries. To investigate this question you will need to know about the strategies and tactics that were used by different countries.