Analysis of Philip Caputo's A Rumor of War Essay

The Vietnam War of 1954 - 1975 was the longest and one of the most unsuccessful wars in U.S history. It took place in countries such as South Vietnam, North Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. The war was a huge blow to the United States’ pride and military, so much that there were lotteries for soldiers. There were five presidents in office during the war, but the main presidents that had a big impact on being involved were Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon. Although the objectives of the U.S being involved were good intentioned, there are many reasons to support that it was an Unjustifiable war due to the casualties. While looking at present information about the war, it was not needed for America to step into the territorial

This war would keep Ho Chi Minh and the Vietnam Communist Party busy for the next 8 years. [N] At the beginning of the war, the U.S. was neutral in the conflict because of our opposition to imperialism and to avoid helping colonial empires regain their power and influence, because the Viet Minh had recently been our allies, and because most of our attention was focused on Europe where Winston Churchill argued that an iron curtain had fallen. This was the beginning of the Cold

In conclusion, America’s involvement in the Vietnam War was the right course to take we showed the world we will not stand for communism and will fight for what we believe. The Vietnam War stopped the domino theory and even more spread of communism, and show America’s war tactics should be changed. US may of lost the war but still sent a message to the

The Vietnam war was an absolutely brutal time in American history. The war lasted for the majority of the 1960s and left many young men dead. The short story “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien and the film Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam give us just a glance into the war by giving using the three themes of fear, pressures, and blame/guilt to embody the concept of war and how it absolutely changes a person. War not only destroys countries, but it destroys people.

The Vietnam War was the first major war American’s had suffered defeat. The Vietnam war was a war of confusion, competition and biasness. The outcome of the war was far greater than an upset American nation, but a severe breakdown of the Vietnamese culture, economy, environment and government. It also had a tremendous impact on American society even up to present day. It was unclear from the beginning of the war if the American’s should even be involved. It was a war between Northern and Southern Vietnam but the U.S saw it as an indirect way to challenge the USSR’s sphere of influence in Southern Asia and to prevent the domino effect and the further spread of communism. The Vietnam War completely changed the way the United States

The Vietnam War was a conflict, which the United States involved itself in unnecessarily and ultimately lost. The basis of the conflict was simple enough: Communism vs. Capitalism, yet the conduct of the Vietnam War was complex and strategic, and brought repercussions which had never been seen before. The struggle between North and South had an almost inevitable outcome, yet the Americans entered the War optimistic that they could aid the falling South and sustain democracy. The American intentions for entering the Vietnam conflict were good, yet when the conflict went horribly wrong, and the resilient North Vietnamese forces, or ‘Viet Cong' as they were known, refused to yield, the United States saw they were fighting a losing battle.

For many in the United States "Vietnam" is a term which conjures up visions of war, anarchy, and finally defeat and humiliation. It was a war that many felt the U.S. should never have gotten involved in, and was a waste of more than 50,000 American lives. And for many years after the war ended the prevailing wisdom remained that the U.S. had failed. But as years turn to decades, and Vietnam is fading into the recesses of history, one can begin to look at the war in an objective manner; as just one part of the larger "Cold War." When viewing Vietnam as part of the larger Cold War, one can see that the United States should not only have been there, but it was necessary as part of the overall strategy to defeat Communism world wide.

The Vietnam war brought many changes to the United States in the 1960’s and the 1970’s. Some of the changes were for the better of the country, take the rediscovered Women’s Rights movements and the ever growing Free Speech movements inspired by New Left, while most of the other changes brought on tensions between government and their people. The Domino Theory pushed our leaders to the edge. In order to stop the Domino Theory in Vietnam, the U.S. invaded. The war was useless for the American government to get involved with. Even Robert Kennedy described our presence in Vietnam as ‘... sending a lion to halt an epidemic of jungle rot.’ (Doc E) From new groups forming to rebel, to inflation and loss of trust in the Government, from 1960’s to

Over thirty years ago the Vietnam War ended, and the U.S. came back home with their tails between their legs and nothing to show for other than a high number of casualties, and a huge pile of debt. The U.S. underestimated the North Vietnamese army, and it was costly. Many believe that the Vietnam War was none of the U.S. business, but on the contrary, many believe we should have tried to stop the spread of communism. The long-lasting Vietnam War was unnecessary for the U.S. to be a part of; it put many people through unneeded stress and hard times.

The Vietnam War made sense in some ways, but not in others. If we had not fought in the Vietnam War, and slowed down the spread of communism to Southern Vietnam, then communism would have spread faster throughout countries near by. Although Southern Vietnam eventually was taken over and turned into a communist nation, it took many years to do so. If the United States did not intervene, then communism would spread like wildfire throughout countries, and that would've resulted in many communist nations. Since the war lasted years, it

The Vietnam war did not even have to happen. Vietnam was all the way across the world and it did not even matter if it was a communist country, at least then we would have it for a ally. When we started to fight with them we became not on the same side anymore. The TV’s showed us being the good guys down at Vietnam. John Kerry wrote an article explaining Vietnam’s war. “We saw America lose her sense of morality as she accepted very coooly a My Lai and refused to give up the image of American soldiers who hand out chocolate bars and chewing gum” (p.3). The idea of what we were doing in Vietnam was twisted to make it seem as gentle as possible.

Bao Ninh’s The Sorrow of War is a novel that is a personal view of the Vietnam War from the perspective of a Vietnamese soldier. Like the American novel “The things they carried”, this novel brings about the effects of war on people, and especially how it defeats the human capacity for things such as love and hope. Bao Ninh offers this realistic picture of the Vietnam War’s impact on the individual Vietnamese soldier through use of a series of reminiscences or flashbacks, jumping backwards and forwards in time between the events most salient in memory, events which take on a different theme each time they are examined. His main protagonist Kien, who is basically Bao himself, looks back not just at his ten years at

It can be hard to fully comprehend the effects the Vietnam War had on not just the veterans, but the nation as a whole. The violent battles and acts of war became all too common during the long years of the conflict. The war warped the soldiers and civilians characters and desensitized their mentalities to the cruelty seen on the battlefield. Bao Ninh and Tim O’Brien, both veterans of the war, narrate their experiences of the war and use the loss of love as a metaphor for the detrimental effects of the years of fighting.

“The failure of the United States against North Vietnam was due to their inefficient use of military machines” (Gibbons, 2014:107). These tactics used by the US soldiers included bombs that the soldiers did not use efficiently, because if they used the military advantage that they had, this would have been a victorious war for the US. However, due to their use of these military machines inefficiently, they were left in humiliation. “The US threw bombs on Vietnam and was equipped with every existing kind of weapon, engaged in the longest and most brutal war” (Buttinger, 1977:169). The US army should not have bombed strategic routes of the Viet Cong because they wanted to get back at them, but they should have attacked with bombs and weapons on the battle once the Viet Cong had started attacking. Their lack when to use their tactics led to their failure. “One of the US’s mistakes which led to their defeat was the bombing of Laos when they launched the defoliant Agent Orange which destroyed homes” (Kaiser, 1973:412). Due to this action, the US lost not only the support of Laos citizens but also the rest of the Vietnamese people, because this was evidence that the only important factor for the US soldiers was to win the war against the Viet Cong and not the lives of the Vietnamese

The United States intervention in Vietnam is seen by the world as America’s greatest loss and longest war. Before the start of the war in Vietnam, the thought of the United States losing this war was unheard of because America was technologically superior, no country in south East Asia could contend with them. Lyndon B. Johnson announced that he would not be the president to allow South East Asia to go Communist . Why the United States lost the war has been a huge debate since the end of the war, because there were so many factors affecting why they lost; the war was a loss politically, after losing support from not only the American public but also the South Vietnamese and losing a political mandate for the war by 1973, when the last