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Vietnam war and its impact on society
Effect of the vietnam war on vietnamese society
Social impacts of the vietnam war in vietnam
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4. The Vietnam War saw the use of many controversial military tactics used by both the United States and their allies, as well as the Viet Cong and NVA. On the American side, one of the most prevalent and well known missions was Operation Ranch Hand, a decade long herbicidal warfare campaign that is still causing terrible birth defects to this day. The herbicides used in Agent Orange were contaminated with an even worse chemical, known as TCDD, which is a heavy carcinogen and teratogen. In the period that it was used, agricultural lands were sprayed with Agent Orange in an attempt to starve the enemy by destroying the main crop in the region, rice.
My original topic was the conscientious objectors in the Vietnam War, but I decided to broaden my topic to include the Selective Service System and conscientious objectors from World War I, World War II, the Vietnam War, Korean War, and the Cold War. I decided to broaden the topic, because I felt that there was not enough information during the just the Vietnam War alone. If I had tried to stretch the information out, it would have not of been a quality paper. My paper will be based around; how the Selective Service System and the contentious objector laws have changed and why they have changed. I became interested in this topic when I decided to do something related to the Vietnam War.
On November 1st, 1955, a country divided into two, North and South Vietnam will soon have a war known to many countries around the world. The Vietnam War, or the Second Indochina War occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. At the time, Vietnam had a dispute on what the country should be, Communistic or Republic, which had led war breaking out. North as the Viet Cong group while the Republic Of Vietnam group was South; eventually unexpected events started to unfold, leading towards the end of the war. To this very day, The Vietnam War has changed the ways how many civilians live their lives, especially my family.
Stickoff has very strong points. The vietnam war overall caused many deaths. For some, a war is very scary especially for the ones in it, but at the end of the day soldiers from both sides of the battlefield are affected. Just like any other traumati situation in life, like losing a loved one, will cause psychological damage. At the end of the day, every soldier is seen as a heroe by their own country.
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.
For young people, the Vietnam War is a thing of the past that they can only learn about it from second hand sources. In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, it becomes very apparent that the Vietnam conflict has proved to be one that many of the participants have not been able move away from. Throughout the 60s people were constantly fighting for their rights as citizens to protest war. It was more common than not for soldiers to never return home and many tried to keep the youth from going. The 60s was a time for change, a time for people to stand up for what they believe.
These strikes led to new kinds of protest music. While all these protests were going on the more radical protesters were trying to change to whole American society. These strikers were members of the counterculture and wanted to change American society. This counterculture were hippies and the hippies smoked weed and wanted more personal freedoms.
Please get out of the new one If you can 't lend your hand For the times they are a-changin” As the Vietnam War progressed, the American public was divided. Young people questioned the validity of American intervention, and those older, particularly veterans of previous foreign wars and their spouses, held to their belief that if the government said this was a just war, it was, and the U.S. needed to be in the fight. A confluence of events changed the latter perception, among them, the Chicago 7, the My Lai massacre, and the Kent State Shootings.
The Vietnam war took a major death toll in Vietnam, United States, South Korea, Thailand, New Zealand, and Australia. Just in the U.S., “more than 58,000 American soldiers were killed while more than 150,000 others wounded”. On both sides, there were almost 2 million civilians dead and 1.1 simply on the Vietnamese side. The My Lai Massacre, where soldiers brutally killed Vietnamese children and mothers, presents an example where the war mentally changed the soldiers in the war in a very horrendous way. On the other hand, the United States took brutal losses in the Tet Offensive, where the Vietcong slaughtered over 100 towns and twelve United States air bases.
There was rock, folk music, and many more. But, in the late sixties Rock n Roll, commonly reckoned as the golden age of rock and roll when it attained a maturity unimaginable for the delinquent rebellion of the fifties, there are numerous references to the Vietnam War. The criticism of the war is submerged in or displaced by the politics of sexuality, lifestyle, and drugs. Rock music of that time period celebrated anti-materialism, spiritual awakening and social disengagement (James pg 133). Like the social movement it made possible, hippie music was ideologically and economically assimilable.
The American counterculture is not just a movement, it is an entire generation’s attempt to rebel against the cultural ideas that had previously taken root in America. Many members of the counterculture were raised in just after World War II, which also means that they grew up at a time when the economy was booming. This affluence led to many counterculture supports losing interest in the material necessities of life, unlike their parents who would have grown up in or around the time of the Great Depression. Members of the counterculture preferred to live a life that was not chained down by responsibilities. They abandoned the idea of settling down with a home and a nine to five job; instead, members drifted from place to place, experimented
The Vietnam War was a war the United States should have never been involved in. The “Domino Theory” was a direct cause of the war. The war resulted in much death; innocent civilians and young Americans were killed. The Vietnam war also resulted in rioting, distrust for the United States government, and the loss of many lives. 58,000 Americans were killed and 300,000 were wounded.
Psychologist Irving Janis explained some alarmingly bad decisions made by governments and businesses coined the term "groupthink”, which he called "fiascoes.” He was particularly drawn to situations where group pressure seemed to result in a fundamental failure to think. Therefore, Janis further analyzed that it is a quick and easy way to refer to a mode of thinking people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members ' striving for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action. According to Janis, groupthink is referred as the psychological drive for consensus at any cost that suppresses disagreement and prevents the appraisal of alternatives in cohesive decision-making groups.
The Hippies was a term that described the individuals who had deviated from society
Each of these impacts played a large role in the formation of this subculture protest movement, whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, often in opposition to mainstream cultural mores allowed for them to grow as a union by promoting exactly what hippies resisted. One of the most prominent stimulants for the Hippie Counterculture Movement was America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. Generally, Hippies were anti-war, as they preached peace. There was no single event or aspect of the Vietnam War that would spark the beginning of this movement, rather than it representing violence.
