In a stark contrast with the film We Were Soldiers, Apocalypse Now embraces the darkness, fear, and hypocrisy that is the Vietnam War. If you were to watch these two movies about the Vietnam War, you would think that the US military forces were two separate entities. As Randall Wallace showcases the strength of American values and honor associated with the Vietnam War in We Were Soldiers, Francis Ford Coppola, director of Apocalypse Now, tears down the substance of these American values and unveils the hypocritical nature of the United States’ involvement in Vietnam through an interesting plot. This film follows Army Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) as he returns to Vietnam for a second tour of duty, but this time on a classified mission unlike …show more content…
Author Tom Engelhardt describes the gradual withdrawal associated with many Americans and their support of the United States military activities during the Vietnam War in his book The End of Victory Culture. In his book, he tracks the changes in American military history from 1945 to the post-Vietnam War period and what he describes as the end of “Victory Culture” in the United States. Throughout the book he clearly highlights how the attitude that America always defeats their enemies was an unquestioned myth since 1945. In the first part of his book, Engelhardt writes “Between 1945 and 1975, victory culture ended in America. Its decomposition through those years of generational loss and societal disillusionment to Vietnam, which was its graveyard for all to see”(Engelhardt, 10). Engelhardt goes on to show how the generation of Americans that grew up during the triumphant times of military victory in World War I and II created a “triumphalist” culture that set the stage for American failure in Vietnam. As Engelhardt shows, the Vietnam War was a turning point in many American opinions. Engelhardt adds how “The answers of 1945 dissolved so quickly into the questions of 1965”(Engelhardt, 10). He uncovers the doubt that ran through the hearts and minds of so many American soldiers and citizens back home. The questions that arose that Engelhardt mentions became too numerous for thousands of Americans back home. As the number of casualties rose, along with US commanders ordering more troops the American public become more disillusioned with the Vietnam War. As the 1960’s wore on, the triumphalist nature faded away as Americans began to realize that the US involvement in Vietnam was a mistake, and hoped for an
The Vietnam War was like no war before. America got involved in Vietnam to preserve a non-communist South Vietnam, but in the end, the government and the country fell to communist North Vietnam. The US had never experienced such a military defeat in its history. The causes of this monumental defeat may not have been clear at first, but through memoirs such as Philip Caputo 's Rumor of War and other historical accounts of the war, we now have a better sense of what truly led to America 's loss. As a combat soldier in Vietnam, Caputo 's memoir helps us to better understand why America lost the war because it shows how the conditions of this war caused mayhem within the minds of these soldiers, undermining the American war effort.
The growing perceived ineffectiveness and illegitimacy of America’s role in Vietnam was the product of what was viewed as little more than an anti-communist crusade in which neither logistical concerns nor the nationalist motivations of a people who had yearned for sovereignty over centuries carried significant weight. Less and less Americans were willing to bankroll, much less have their sons paying “any price” or bearing “any burden” for what was becoming a quagmire. Bodybag after bodybag was being filled with American boys on a daily basis, not to mention that every dollar of damage incurred by the Communist enemy in Hanoi cost the United States ten dollars , helping to quickly bring an end to an era of unprecedented American prosperity.
Vietnam was an entirely new type of war for the United States. It still remains morally and historically problematic in today’s society. The Vietnam War had a tremendous impact on American society and culture, primarily because it was the first war to be televised. The American press played a significant
Throughout America’s history, few things have left the nation in such controversial turmoil as the Vietnam War. With an American death toll of almost 60,000 troops, the Vietnam War has gone down in infamy as one of the most tremendous struggles Americans have faced both overseas and on the home front. Because of the tumultuous controversies caused by the war, Americans split into two social factions – those against the war and those who supported it. During the years of 1961-1975 - the era in which the war had its greatest effect on Americans - the population of citizens from 18-35 years old and the Presidency were both affected irreversibly.
The war in Vietnam was a war against communism that tore apart the US. The United States of America plunged together with its allies and played a tremendous role as far as fight against communism is concerned. A huge number of American soldiers were deployed in Vietnam a practice that coupled with much unpreparedness. The soldiers were not aware what exactly they were up to in Vietnam. Most Americans at the time were very much against the act. It was one of the most deliberating wars America plunged herself into and the only one to have been lost. Most intriguing is the amount of publicity and media buzz created by the film industry. Vietnam War was the topic of many television networks, music and Hollywood. Journalist and veterans and scholar were never left behind and went ahead to produce tones of literature on the legacies and lessons to be learnt from the war (Hochgesang, Lawyer, and Stevenson). The exploitation of the soldiers and rejection of the veterans created just as much interest as the war had created. One such commentary came from George Kennan, who depicted the war as one of the most disastrous mission The United States has ever undertaken (Westheider 155-159).. This essay will establish the effects the war had to the US soldiers.
1. STATEMENT OF RESEARCH QUESTION Throughout the years, the Vietnam War has lived up its name as “one of the most obscure episodes and, at the same time, one of the most serious conflicts not only of the Cold war period but also of the whole modern history” (Hodboďová, 2008). It was apparently the most long-lasting conflict in American history and most disfavored war that broke out after World War II and ended in 1975. The peculiarity of this war lies not only in its prolonged duration but also in an overriding number of war casualties, or in other words, the death and destruction to the country’s people. Averagely in the struggle, more than one million Vietnamese soldiers and over 58,000 Americans were killed, not to mention the massacre
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.
This paper will be discussing the two movies The Green Berets (1968) and Apocalypse Now (1978), and argue how The Green Berets is a propagandist pro-war film depicting the unrealities of the Vietnam War while Apocalypse Now is an ambiguous anti-war film that shows the social and political absurdities of the Vietnam War.
The Vietnam War birthed the majority of the problems that Americans faced during the decade, and was itself a product of America’s intense abhorrence of Communism coupled with the nation’s desire to impose its will on countries that it thought needed help. The war, simply put, was a disaster. Those who insist that America has never lost a war are putting too much faith in the fact that we didn’t technically surrender, instead choosing to abandon the war effort and leave the South Vietnamese to their fate. Their fate was the Communism that America went to war to prevent in the first place. Needless to say, the Vietnam War left a bad taste in the mouth of the American majority. “America’s failed war in Vietnam,” Farber writes, “had, obviously, done much to break the ideological spell of anti-communism (16).” The loss in Vietnam was humiliating; citizens who had grown used to America being a world superpower watched in abject horror as the U.S. was sent running home by a third world country. America’s sense of superiority vanished, and the “victory culture” that emerged due to World War II was “largely discredited (16).” A fear that was born out of the Vietnam War came to life during the hostage crisis—the United States was no longer a formidable opponent in the eyes of many nations. The Iranian hostage crisis was “an obvious symbol, an easily understood example of the nation’s inability to control its own fate,
The Vietnam War was the most controversial war in American history. Costing more than 47,000 U.S. lives and $140,000,000, the war had momentous impact on the country, politically, economically, and socially. More significantly, the United States failed to achieve its stated war aims, for the first time in history. The goal was to preserve an independent, noncommunist government in South Vietnam, but by the war’s end in 1975, all of Vietnam was under the communist rule of Ho Chi Minh’s Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The U.S. emerged from the war disgraced: a global superpower had been bested by the nearly third-world nation of North Vietnam. But how? Antiwar sentiment among the civilian population contributed to the American defeat, but
“No event in the past half-century of American history has commanded a morep rominent place in the public consciousness than the Vietnam War” (Hall xi), a rightfully said statement. Lasting from 1960-1975, it is America’s longest war and changed the United States politically, socially, and culturally during that period. In the early 1970s, the voting age was lowered to 18, largely because of the war. Also, Vietnam was one of the first wars in which African Americans largely participated. Lastly, Vietnam changed America culturally by causing mistrust in government. In the 1960s through early ‘70s, the Vietnam War changed America in ways that nothing had ever done before.
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
A quarter of a century after the Fall of Saigon, Vietnam continues to exercise a powerful hold of the American psyche. No deployment of American troops abroad is considered without the infusion of the Vietnam question. No formulation of strategic policy can be completed without weighing the possibility of Vietnanization. Even the politics of a person cannot be discussed without taking into account his opinion on the Vietnam Ware. This national obsession with Vietnam is perfectly national when viewed from a far. It was the only war that the United States has ever lost. It defined an era of American history that must rank with the depression as one of this nation’s most traumatic. It concluded with Watergate and led many to believe that the
For the sake of conciseness, and in order to focus the bulk of the content on the main topic, this essay will make certain assumptions. Most importantly, the essay assumes that the conflict in Vietnam was, indeed, lost by the US. It also presupposes that � due to the political climate in the US � the war itself was unavoidable. Finally, the essay takes for granted
“Defeat in Vietnam has left the United States deeply divided” (Hallin, 1986:3). The Vietnam War became a major Cold War conflict in the 1960s period. This essay will evaluate the following question; what are the main reasons for the United States (US) defeat in the Vietnam War? The research was done through the qualitative research method which included books, journals and articles. This essay will argue that the main reasons for the US defeat in the Vietnam War was because of their inefficient tactics, inexperienced soldiers, and both international and home pressure. This research is important because the question has not been answered to its fullest extent. Additionally, it provides evidence that countries with powerful nuclear weapons and