Isaacs Competing Memories: The Vietnam War

“The war in vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit.” Martin Luther King, Jr. once said. The Vietnam War was considered one of America’s greatest defeats of all time. Not only did the US failed to stop the spread of communism, but they also embarrassed this country as a whole with the outcome of this war. The overall outcome from this war will be remembered for years to come. In this essay, I will be talking about how the United States would have won the Vietnam war if the home front was for the war, if the the US was more familiar with the land, and the U.S.’s goal was not successful.

The Vietnam War was, and still is highly controversial. Whether or not the United States should have entered the war is still up for debate. However, when considering the war’s impact, it seems quite clear that the nation shouldn’t have. 1967 was a time when many Americans were heavily divided not just over America’s involvement and action in Vietnam but also about their values and morals. It was in this year that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his speech “Beyond Vietnam” in which he provides exceptional reasoning for ending the war, and a call to action for Americans to fix not only the damages of war in Vietnam, but also in their own country. After reading his speech, it is very clear why the United States should have stayed out of

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

In the past years the discussion of Vietnam War, is one that still is every more common among scholars of American Society, common not without controversy. The controversy surrounding the Vietnam War often is centered in U.S. mentality of playing “savior “ and appearing to be only great, while not owning up or recognizing their faults. There is a common belief among many people that the remembering the vietnam war is no longer important. Those who hold this belief, also believe that the there is no reason to harp on a war that doesn’t matter to the united states and its people. This paper strives to challenge this belief that the war is no longer important and demonstrate why it is vital we remember the Vietnam war. First, this paper will examine a document from Modern History Sourcebook, entitled, Program of the People’s Revolutionary Party of Vietnam, dating back to January 1962. We will examine to see how this document from the Vietnamese still provides value or information to our understanding of what is happening in today’s society. Then the paper will examine a Speech delivered in April 1967, by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., entitled Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam.

During the Vietnam War, between 1955 and 1984, fifty-eight thousand Americans lost their lives, as well as over three-million Vietnamese lost theirs. The financial cost to the United States comes to over one hundred-fifty-billion dollars. The causes of the Vietnam War were derived from the symptoms, components and consequences of the Cold War. The Vietnam War revolved around America’s belief that communism was a threat to expand all over South East Asia. With this being said the Vietnam War was both a nationalist and communist movement, unsuccessful in America’s regards, comparable to the war in Iraq, a poor man’s war, led to the downfall of Lyndon B. Johnson, and overall stood as an unpopular war. Let’s take a look at what damage the

The Vietnam War was one of U.S. history’s darkest times. It lasted roughly 20 years, from the autumn of 1955 until the spring of 1975. Because it recently became a new country, the North Vietnamese wanted Vietnam to have a social order that was based on Marxist ideas. The South Vietnamese disliked this dreadful idea, and enlisted the U.S.’s help to fight the North. As the years passed by, however, the U.S. slowly withdrew their soldiers due

It was in my hometown, when the disaster happened; the smoke has yet to leave my nightmares. Since I was a little boy, my family fought with each other. It was not uncommon, though, for families to fight, I mean at that time the country was completely divided. We were in a troubled time; families were depressed by conflicts in Vietnam. The Vietnam War was just starting and nobody knew how big the issue would become.

Stanley Karnow describes the Vietnam War era of American history as “…a tragedy of epic dimensions…”1 and it is fair to postulate that this is no understatement. One of the more pertinent ramifications of the Vietnam War was the deconstruction of fundamental, if somewhat illusory, American conceptions and ideals. The war shattered America’s hitherto unshakeable “confidence”2 in its political hegemony, military prowess and assumed authority in world order, i.e. “…its moral exclusivity, its military invincibility and manifest destiny…”3 The war that was never officially declared is one that American society and culture would rather unofficially forget. Karnow argues: “…in human terms…the war in Vietnam was a war that nobody won - a struggle between victims…”4, moreover to augment this standpoint, I would argue that another significant and concurrent victim of the Vietnam War was, and still is, the truth.

The Vietnam War was a violent and turbulent time in America. Generally hated from its beginning, many still perceive it as a loss. When one looks over the causalities in the war, it is noticeable that 58,000 members of our military lost their lives tragically in a ten year period.(cite) However, Communist Vietnam reported losses in numbers close to a million. Although many people see Vietnam as horrific stain in the legacy of America and its military, the war and its repercussions had a significant effect on America and its future.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the true reason or reasons why the United States felt the need to fight in the The Vietnam War and to express whether the reason/s justify the consequences. This paper will explain how the U.S. struggled during this time of war, and furthermore, to inform the reader of the devastating tragedies that the Vietnam War left on the American people. This war was one of the least needed wars that the United States should have partaken in. In this research paper, I will walk you through several interesting facts that make this statement true. Starting with the primary reason, the fear of communism, this paper will give some actual events that took place during the war and how it impacted our country. And lastly,

“No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War.” –Richard Nixon, 1985. Since the Vietnam War, there has been almost fifty years of remembrance, various readings, and the publication of military documents. However, Richard Nixon’s quote still has a certain veracity. The United States has fought in many wars, but none have compelled Americans to question our motives like the Vietnam War. The United States should not have gotten involved in Vietnam, because it was illegal, unjustified, and unethical.

For a lack of a better word, The Vietnam War, one of the longest wars to be fought in the history of the United States, lasting between 1955 to 1973, also happened to be a war that would go on to single handedly tarnished the self-image of the United States. The war itself also had major effects on the American people as a whole, sparking what would become the infamous Anti-War Movement, a battlefield in itself that would put the American people and their government on opposite sides of the same question. The Anti-War Movement brought out a divide not seen since the Civil War, leaving lasting marks on wars and government outturns in the future to come.

Initially, the war in Vietnam was in many ways, trivial – involving only limited action by a world superpower on distant battlefields of the Third World. However, US commitment in Southeast Asia persisted across fifteen years, marking it as the longest war in American History. The conflict took place during and thus became intertwined with the turbulent cultural and social uprisings of the 1960s, ultimately shifting the country’s course over the latter half of the 20th century. A flashpoint in the Cold War, the Vietnam War was essentially a contest of diplomatic and ideological hostility and an extension of the US’s policy of containment, which later exposed a myriad of other geopolitical, social and military ideas. It was also, however,

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

In 1954, Northern and Southern Vietnam entered a war that led to the death of nearly 3 million people including civilians, Vietnamese troops, and ally soldiers. Though the number of lives lost during the war is atrocious, so are some of the other lasting effects of the “poor man’s fight”. Throughout this essay, I will explain my opinion regarding what I believe were the costs and the benefits of U.S interaction in the war in Vietnam.