The War Of The Vietnam War

In April 1971 John Kerry gave his famous statement before the Senate of Foreign Relations Committee, “Vietnam Veterans Against the War”. He presented this speech as a plea from the veterans across the country to the government of the United States to bring an end to the war in Vietnam. Kerry’s speech was used to enlighten the committee about the true horrors going on in Vietnam and was effective in doing so. He used various examples of what had happened and what was still occurring. Kerry also explained the tragic effect of the many who did return home from the war. By doing so he was able to bring attention to the truth about the Vietnam War which so many americans had ignored.

“Whatever the motives for conflict, they are incorporated in individual attitudes and expressed in popular opinion.” (Albig 1939, 139) It has often been argued that Defence Secretary Robert McNamara “has done more to shape that conflict than anyone outside the Viet Cong” (Kennedy 1993, 93). This is an important illustration of the power of the media; through the media, “The domino theory [was] the dominant interpretation of events in Indochina” (Schulzinger 1998, 88).

The introductory attack began spectacularly during celebrations of the Vietnamese Lunar New Year and left global lungs breathless (Farber and Bailey 34-54). Widely seen as the turning point in the Vietnam War, the NLF and PAVN won an enormous psychological and propaganda-associated victory, which ultimately led to the loss of popular support for the War in the United States and the eventual withdrawal of American troops. Additionally, the events surrounding the Tet Offensive piloted American citizens to increased polarization. Attracting members from college campuses, middle-class suburbs, labor unions, and government institutions, the anti-war movement was swollen with aggrieved affiliates (Farber and Bailey 34-54). The observable pathos of the protesters delivered the distrust of a growing population to the White House doors; the budding doubt in governmental affairs was difficult to discard and impossible to ignore. Indisputably, the Tet Offensive of 1968 cleaved the fragile harmony of the public and birthed a political skepticism that continues to subsist in modern American minds.

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.

On January 30, 1968, during Vietnam’s Tet celebration, VC and NVA units launched a immense attack in all of South Vietnam's provinces. They had struck 30 provincial capitals along with major cities Saigon and Hue. The Tet Offensive shocked Americans at home who thought the war near victory and the homefront support for war effort grew. CBS news reporter Walter Cronkite returned to Vietnam to see what was happening; He had been a war correspondent during World War II and reported from Vietnam when America was early involved. There was even a poll In 1972 that determined he was “the most trusted man in America.” On February 27, 1968 a broadcast summed up what he found during his return to the war zone. He closed by saying:“To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. On the off chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next few months we must test the enemy’s intentions, in case this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations. But it is increasingly clear to this

Here Isserman and Kazin acknowledge that the military’s hands were tied, as they were, not only by popular discontent, but because Johnson did not want to risk making the Cold War hot. Insomuch as success in the conflict was measured by enemy body count in lieu of territorial gains, there would be no direct bombing of Hanoi. As much as the consummate Texan and his inherited Alamo mythology made him believe he was fighting for freedom, there was a line he would not cross, and the North Vietnamese took advantage of this. Americans who opposed the war by 1968 did so because they believed that it could not be won. Once the Pentagon Papers were released in 1971, this purloined collection of documents related to the escalation of American involvement in Southeast Asia, spanning presidencies from Eisenhower to Johnson, further deteriorated the credibility of the American government, and helped to lead the majority of Americans to believe that the war in Vietnam was wrong

On April 4th, 1967, at Riverside Church in New York, a speech was given and the silence was broken. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s speech was given to persuade everyone into believing that american involvement during the Vietnam War was wrong. Throughout Martin Luther King Jr’s speech he builds a very strong argument, against american involvement during the Vietnam War, by using different writing appeals and elements.

To start with responding to the widespread protests, Nixon outlined his new Vietnam War policy in this speech; Called “Vietnamization”, Nixon’s war policy called for contraction in American troops but continued fighting. Nixon contrasted his international strategy of political realism with the idealism of a vocal minority. He ended his speech with the famous words that his speech became known by: “So tonight, to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans, I ask for your support;”

Deploying a propaganda technique that would be honed to perfection during the Gulf War thirty years later, Nixon began to redefine the war. From the spring of 1969 on, the war was going to be first and foremost about the men who were being sent to fight it (and not, mind you, about the people who sent them there). In the first instance, this meant prisoners of war. The administration’s clever campaign to muster public opinion around the POW issue was launched on May 19 at a press conference held by Defense Secretary Melvin Laird. Enthusiastically promoted by the media, the POW issue soon dominate war news to such an extent that the writer Jonathan Schell observed that many people were persuaded that the United States was fighting in Vietnam in order to get its prisoners back.

The 1960s was a period of immense change in America. The decade brought about various social changes such as the Civil Rights Movement and the Women’s Liberation Movement. These movements would forever change the landscape of America. However, the discussion of the Vietnam War was never far from people’s minds. This war would serve as an introduction to what war was to the home front. It was in the homes of America where so many had been previously sheltered from the realities of war. During previous conflicts, there had been a military censorship on all media that pertained to war. This would not be the case in Vietnam, it would be completely uncensored. The ability for reporters to provide a commentary on the war without censorship would change the all-American, Captain America view that Americans had in previous wars. The lack of censorship would be a major factor in the overall soldier experience in the Vietnam war.

Due to the fact that Americans were exposed to these disturbing footages, many Americans started to think twice about the war and its cause. One of the responsible for showing these footages to the American public was American journalist Walter Leland Cronkite. He was the anchorman for CBS news during the years of the Vietnam War. To many american he became what many called, “the most trusted man in America” because of the transparency of the reports. Due to the huge amount of controversy, the was this so called,” Credibility Gap”, which consisted of various levels of credibility among the American public. People started doubting the cause of the war. Many Americans believed that their troops were fighting for a lost cause. As a result, many college students started protesting against the draft and the war in general because they believed that it was just going to keep costing the lives of many Americans. With the anti-war movement came the Students for Democratic Society (SDS). the SDS helped in many protests going throughout the United States in order to promote awareness against this lost cause we were fighting in Vietnam. In the years to come, many Americans continued to protest and tried to get the government to end the war in Vietnam. Richard M. Nixon

December 1, 1969 marks the beginning of turmoil and uncertainty for those men born between the years 1944 and 1950. For many it would be the reason to flee the country for others pressured into hiding or mutilating themselves to appear unfit for service while some took their with the draft. While the Vietnam War was heavily publicized in the media still many people were unsure of the why the United States was involved, and being forced to fight for a cause without merit is understandably is unsettling. In the land of the free how could it be that such fundamental rights were being stripped away? Richard Nixon the president during the end of the Vietnam War in his address to the nation in 1969 had this to say “Let us be united for peace. Let

In my paper I will be able to analyze how the war changed the thoughts of many women. The paper will look in-depth on how women were able to help in the war effort or how they expressed their patronage in a different way: protests. I will be able to draw information from many different sources including letters, magazines, polls, and books about women during this time frame. The sources I have provided above are a few of the primary sources that I will draw my information

The most important question I feel was asked in this film was the one that Peter Davis asked in one of his interviews to Walt Rostow the Aide to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. The question was "why did they need us there?" In other words why did we have to join into this war in Vietnam, what sort of gain was in it for our country getting into another time and economic consuming war. An answer was given through a short clip of Lyndon Johnson stating "the answer is simple there is none else who can do

During the war, American journalism reporters were believed to only give facts which were only relevant and official. According to Daniel Miller(2004) this believe stirred doomed objectivity giving way to official influence which hindered success of Kennedy’s policies in Vietnam. As picture about the war appeared in the media criticizing the manner in which the war was being carried out in South Vietnamese, people become pessimistic about the success of the Saigon government. While other picture appearing in the media supported the Americans who had advised the Saigon Government