Oppression Of Individual Soldiers During The Vietnam War

In his essay “The Moral Equivalent of War”, William James discusses the presence of war and militarism in society. It argues that in order for military feelings to be abdicated, a substitute must be introduced. The author supports this central point through historical evidence and reasoning.

The Vietnam War is in no doubt, one of the most controversial conflicts that the United States has been involved in. “The fear of Communism sparked the United States to take major foreign initiatives after World War II” (Document 6). As stated previously in that quote, the Vietnam War as well as many other conflicts of the Cold War era all stemmed from one thing: the United State’s perhaps “irrational” fear of Communism. This paper will discuss the legality of the Vietnam war through moral and legal perspectives. The Vietnam war was illegal by; violating moral standards, the United State’s Constitution, and multiple United Nations agreements.

The Vietnam war was one of the most disliked wars that forced many young men to report for duty and fight for their country. The war called for men all around the US to head out to war to fight in Vietnam. This war was very disliked by US citizens all over the state. When the Vietnam soldiers returned back to their country after about a year of fighting everyone was giving them shame and despising them. Adding on to that these soldiers didn’t even want to go to war they were forced to. Even though these soldiers risked their lives for our country, the vietnam soldiers were treated unfairly when they returned home from war.

The impact of the Vietnam War upon the soldiers who fought there was huge. The experience forever changed how they would think and act for the rest of their lives. One of the main reasons for this was there was little to no understanding by the soldiers as to why they were fighting this war. They felt they were killing innocent people, farmers, poor hard working people, women, and children were among their victims. Many of the returning soldiers could not fall back in to their old life styles. First they felt guilt for surviving many of their brothers in arms. Second they were haunted by the atrocities of war. Some soldiers could not go back to the mental state of peacetime. Then there were soldiers Tim O’Brien meant while in

Many acts have been committed throughout history during times of war. There many more committed even after. However, there are few that were quite as blatant as what happened during and after to the veteran soldiers who fought in the Vietnam War. Truly what was done to them was a crime.

After the Vietnam War, soldiers suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder in countless numbers. The trauma they saw, endured, and witnessed forever changed and scared their lives. Men, like Tim O'Brien the author of the novel The Things They Carried, suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder and it took them years to regain their lives after their return home. In the excerpt from his novel, O'Brien shows the reader how the men endured this mind-altering experience in the jungles of Vietnam through the details of all the items the men carry.

The notion of an American way of war informs how scholars, policymakers, and strategists understand how Americans fight. A way of war—defined as a society’s cultural preferences for waging war—is not static. Change can occur as a result of important cultural events, often in the form of traumatic experiences or major social transformations. A way of war is therefore the malleable product of culturally significant past experiences. Reflecting several underlying cultural ideals, the current American way of war consists of three primary tenets—the desire for moral clarity, the primacy of technology, and the centrality of scientific management systems—which combine to create a preference for decisive, large-scale conventional wars with clear objectives and an aversion to morally ambiguous low-intensity conflicts that is relevant to planners because it helps them address American strategic vulnerabilities.

In 1967, 64 percent of all eligible African-Americans were drafted versus only 31 percent of eligible whites (Black 2009). This fact testifies to only a small portion of why nearly all African-Americans found themselves protesting against the Vietnam War. The lack of civil rights in the U.S deterred many blacks from supporting Vietnam, a conflict aimed at liberating the rights of another people. African Americans were frustrated with a country who fought for other citizens and saw no purpose in fighting for a peoples’ freedom but their own. Although African-Americans were specifically discriminated against both in Vietnam and America, they were not alone in their anti-war position. The majority of the American public opposed the Vietnam War. As the war dragged on, people found no reason to fight in Vietnam and believed that the United States should prioritize their own citizens first. Many public figures, such as Martin Luther King, Jr., and Muhammad Ali, held similar claims. Their opinions aligned with the public’s concern and suggested that the U.S withdraw troops and focus resources on the civil rights issues at home. These public figures fought for a specific minority, but, in light of the entire American population, the majority of people opposed the war.

In past wars, once POW 's were captured they were for all intents and purposes out of the war. They could no longer fight the enemy and resistance was limited to defying camp regulations. Vietnam would be different. Instead of being out of the fight, the men in captivity found themselves on the front lines of North Vietnam 's war of propaganda. They would be beaten, tortured, and isolated on a daily basis for years on in, but they would continue to do everything in their power to resist the North Vietnamese. They understood that they still had a role to play in the war and that in order to survive and return home with honor, they had to stand together and support one another. Throughout the eight years in which American POW 's were held in Hanoi and surrounding areas would fight on as if they were still actively engaged in the war. They did this for their country in spite of the atrocious living conditions, mental agony, physical suffering, and a great deal of homesickness.

War is a human endeavor. Humanity continually pursues solutions to counter evolving threats with the end of preserving power while also enabling peace. Civilizations resort to war to maintain their perception of this equilibrium. Defined threats and adversaries have changed throughout history, however, the essence of human nature and the base concept of conflict itself have not. Carl von Clausewitz’s theories on warfare capture the relationship between humanity and its application of war, remaining relevant in today’s era through their pensive explanations of timeless philosophical principles regarding the concept of war. These theories regarding war in politics, the key factors affecting war, and the extent that war is applied are inherently interconnected, providing insight on the relationships between humanity and its application of war.

This paper reviews America’s paradoxical love-hate relationship with war and how this relationship influences American warfare through the research and study of the interpretation and analyzation of American military models, policy and goal changes, the use of military technology, “American way of war,” and the relationship with, preparation for, and application of war.

One Weasel recalled Lyndon Johnson pronouncing, “them boys over there can’t bomb an outhouse without my say-so.” Sentiments like these fostered the notion that America fought the war in Vietnam only half-heartedly — and ignored the broader global political context in which the war was fought.

Introduction: It is usually the assumption that superior military power gain victory in war. But this is incorrect in asymmetric warfare when a weaker power gains victory over the powerful sate. And that is the case in the Vietnam War, which becomes a stain in the US history. How and why can big nations lose small war? In the first part of this essay, I will give explanation for American defeat in Vietnam on two main reasons: firstly, two sides engaged in the conflict with different modes: a limited war on the US side and a total war on the Vietnam side. The second point is, US lost because they used wrong strategy which their enemy took advantage to counter them. There is one less significant point but I believed it leaded to such an end: right from the start, the American should not have taken part in the civil war in Vietnam, because they had no business to be here. A war without good reason then would receive a bad outcome. In the second part of this paper, I would provide lessons learned from the Vietnam War for asymmetric conflicts. Asymmetric conflicts are not an easy wars to fight because they do not follow conventional rules. The insurgent would adopt various strategies to gain their political purpose because they apparently lose on the battlefield due to their inferior military power.

War has been a part of the United States for over one hundred year’s beginning with World War I. The United States citizens have been engrossed in the thought, “Is war justified?” The two war that are being focused on in this paper are The Afghanistan War and the Vietnam War. It both wars could have had a peaceful protest to overcome the conflict at hand or have a meeting to talk about communism in the Vietnam War or Terrorism in the Afghan War. The right time for war is a fine line between a just war and an immoral act of mass murder. The Afghanistan war was a just war according to the "The Just War Theory" because on September 11, 2001 the US was attacked by the terrorist group al-Qaeda, but the Vietnam War was not truly justified because there was no direct attack on the United States, the U.S. only went to help stop communism. There might have been a different way to resolve the conflict.

The three major sociological perspectives have conflicting viewpoints about warfare. The three sociological perspectives provide different interpretations of war. The Structural Functionalists focus on how war unites different peoples as they must work together to survive, as well as how war in general protect the freedom of the masses. Conflict Theorists focus on how militarism runs the world, from creating war to create capital to eliminating population through war. Symbolic Interactionists prefer to focus on how symbols( ex. the flag) play such an important role in supporting a war. With these overviews in mind, one can see how conflict theory is