Three decades of American policy in Vietnam had failed. According to Michael Lind, he concludes in his book, Vietnam: The Necessary War, “the United States may have won tactically in the Tet Offensive, but the excessive costs of winning badly by means of an ill-conceived attrition strategy in South Vietnam made a U.S. withdrawal as a result of domestic pressure inevitable.” The threat of Tet helped define and limit America’s international behavior. Clearly, control over the historical recollection of Vietnam had become a foreign policy strategy as well, for, as George Orwell had cautioned, those who define the past can control the present and thus the future. The legacy of Vietnam is much more complex than the revisionists would have
R. McMaster is an American soldier and a career officer in the U.S army. The purpose of McMaster’s book is to analyze how and why the United States becomes involved in the Vietnam War. During this, the author also explains on what he thinks why the president decided to keep the war going instead and escalate it. McMaster came to a conclusion that Johnson made the mess himself and he chose to escalate the war. The author presents the war as a consequence of specific decisions made by specific men, Lyndon B. Johnson.
In a “Vietnam Veterans against the war”, John Kerry’s comment on President Nixon not wanting to become, “the first President to lose a war,” illustrates just how insistent Nixon was on maintaining a superior Presidential image of power. Ironically, Nixon has one of the more, if not the most, tarnished Presidential image due to the Watergate scandal. Kerry’s speech drove the idea that the Veterans fighting in Vietnam did not believe that they were there to do good and did not feel that they were the “heroes” liberalizing the Vietnamese from the dangers of communism. As he notes, most people there did not understand the difference between communism and democracy. The freedom the Vietnamese sought was liberation from the helicopters, the bombs,
The book The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien tells a thrilling stories of the vietnam war. The Things They Carried is a non linear book so it is a mix bag of stories at different times of O’brien’s life but they all relate back to the war in some way. O’ Brien used social obligation and shame and guilt to tell these stories.
More often than not, soldiers and people in a war zone will be affected by the war one way or another. Either that being during or after the war, one could have a negative or positive outlook on the war, but one single event could automatically change that person's behavior. During 1957-1973, the longest war in the United States history took place, the Vietnam War. Many soldiers have lost their lives in this battle, but the ones that survived have significantly changed from this event.
In A Viet Cong Memoir, we receive excellent first hands accounts of events that unfolded in Vietnam during the Vietnam War from the author of this autobiography: Truong Nhu Tang. Truong was Vietnamese at heart, growing up in Saigon, but he studied in Paris for a time where he met and learned from the future leader Ho Chi Minh. Truong was able to learn from Ho Chi Minh’s revolutionary ideas and gain a great political perspective of the conflicts arising in Vietnam during the war. His autobiography shows the readers the perspective of the average Vietnamese citizen (especially those involved with the NLF) and the attitudes towards war with the United States. In the book, Truong exclaims that although many people may say the Americans never lost on the battlefield in Vietnam — it is irrelevant.
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
Did you know during the Vietnam War a process known as the draft lottery was used to draft soldiers into the Vietnam War? Birthdays were randomly drawn and randomly assigned a number between 1 and 365. Men, ages 19 to 25, were drafted into the Vietnam War if their birthday fell within the 1 to 195 bracket. Tim O'Brien, the author of the novel "The Things They Carried" , illustrates his story about being drafted into the Vietnam Wart and his personal experience. The important themes O'Brien uses to help readers understand his personal experience fighting in the Vietnam War is the felling of guilt and love.
“I thought the Vietnam war was an utter, unmitigated disaster, so it was very hard for me to say anything good about it” - George McGovern. There are numerous controversial topics dispersed among the subject of American history due to the amount of unethical decisions that have been made in order to improve the lives of the people or keep America out of the clutches of war. Throughout American history, historians have debated the ethical impact that the Vietnam war had on the United States. Although some people may believe that the Vietnam War achieved the goal of avoiding communism and protecting the people, the overarching idea is that it was an unjust war because of the countless lives that were lost from the participating countries, the
The Vietnam War was a long battle of seventeen long years. There were many causes leading up to this traumatic event. The U.S. got involved because of the spread of communism throughout Asia. The novel, The Things They Carried is about how morality can change both how a soldier thinks and feels. In Tim O’Brien’s historical fiction novel, The Things They Carried, both the physical and geographical surroundings shape the psychological traits of the characters during the following events: Mary Anne’s disappearance, the death of Curt Lemon and Mitchell Sander’s unbelievable story.
As president Johnson gradually said, “since 1954 every American President offered support to the people South Viet-Nam. We have helped to build, and we have helped to defend. Thus, over many years, we have made a national pledge to help South Viet-Nam defend its independence. And I intend to keep it ( Doc 3 A).” According to the statistics in was America’s stance to fight in the Vietnam War because of the promise to help South Vietnam defend its independence.
The Vietnam War is considered one of the most controversial wars in United States history. The United States is one of the greatest superpowers at the time and were seen as the helping hand for doing the right thing. The United States were dragged into this war in order to stop the spread of communism throughout the Democratic South Korea. Many Americans saw this as the United States intervening in another country’s civil war which is not our duty. Americans also used the draft in a poor way affecting the young and African American population.
“American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and our National Identity” is a book that takes us through 20 years of the War in Vietnam from about 1955 to 1975. The Vietnam War is the second longest war in US history encompassing 5 presidents which include Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Gerald Ford. Appy’s book gives a unique American perspective on incredible, horrifying, and inspiring stories in Vietnam as well as American. Through Apps book readers learn about different communism containment methods that America used. Readers also learn about different methods of attack on Vietnam from an American standpoint and how the different failures of the US army and US politicians turned many heads into hard truths about the war.
Book Review #2 My book “No More Vietnams” is an extremely valuable nonfiction text to acquire more knowledge on the Tet Offensive. This book is special because it portrays the history of the Vietnamese War through the eyes of Richard Milhous Nixon. Nixon is the 37th President of the United States who served from 1969 to 1974, the last years of the Vietnam War.
The big failure America in the Vietnam War is the shameful history of tragic scene for arrogant American, whose pain is still difficult to ease. The crucial event also had a profound impact on today 's international situation. It is believed that the failure included political, economic, military and cultural background and other aspects, which are that common. When it comes to the controversial subject, I hope to put forward some fresh views from where I stand. 1.
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.