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Howard Zinn 's The Vietnam War

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Howard Zinn says it best when he writes that “from 1964 to 1972, the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the history of the world made a maximum military effort, with everything short of atomic bombs, to defeat a nationalist revolutionary movement in a tiny peasant country – and failed” (Zinn, 460). Zinn does not mince words when expressing his thoughts about the Vietnam War, because as Zinn says, Vietnam was basically a modern portrayal of David vs. Goliath. One could even go as far as to say that Vietnam was in essence a case of mass genocide in Vietnam. Thousands and thousands of Vietnamese and America soldiers were killed along with thousands upon thousands of innocent, Vietnamese citizens. War is an infectious disease and the Vietnam War is a perfect example of how deadly of a disease war can be. Everybody involved in the Vietnam War was affected, whether it was Vietnamese citizens, Vietnamese soldiers, American soldiers, or even American citizens back home. The disease that was the Vietnam War infected the hearts and minds of two countries half way across the world from each other.
To get some context the Vietnam War was part of a series of wars known as the Indochina Wars. The Vietnam War was preceded by the first Indochina War around fifteen years earlier. The first Indochina War was a fight for freedom between the Vietnamese (Viet Minh) and the Japanese/French. France had previously occupied Vietnam and Vietnam was known as French Indochina. The Viet Minh were

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