It often came down to hand to hand contact and quick thinking. This war scared almost all the soldiers for life, the ones who lived through it all at least. The total number of US casualties in the Vietnam War was 58,220. The ones who did live didn’t get a welcome home either. When the Vietnam Veterans returned back home they were treated worse than some of the terrorists now a days.
This centralised objective of assisting the state in the overall pursuit of unification and independence, meant villagers in the North were devoted in every aspect of their lives to the war effort. • America’s many overt war strategies had detrimental effects on both North and South Vietnamese civilians: • The Search and Destroy methods meant many villages were completely obliterated, which created a sizeable rural-urban drift problem. These thousands of refugees were forced into overcrowded city areas in the South. - The operations had huge civilian casualty rates, which General Westmoreland who was the military architect of such missions later denied; “There’s never been a war in the history of our country that gave more careful attention to avoiding civilian casualties.” However as was released in the controversial Pentagon Papers in America in 1967 Secretary of Defence McNamara was quoted, “[the Viet Cong] apparently lose one-sixth as many weapons as people, suggesting… many of the killed are bystanders, or unarmed porters.” - Therefore the missions assisted in denouncing American troops to the Vietnamese people, as one American soldier asserted of the ‘Search and Destroy’ tactic, “If they weren’t pro-Vietnam Cong before we got there, they sure as hell were by the time we left.” – Karnow
Blacks were most likely to be killed in war. This created a rupture that would last well past the end of the war. Many soldiers showed their frustration, and the war fed the feelings of disaffection. People in Vietnam wanted to end foreign world dominance while US government press released glorious victories and extolled gratitude of Vietnamese civilians. Veterans came
Even though the troops who die volunteer and fight with pride, the United States should end the war on terror because it is causing damage to the economy and too many troops’ lives have been lost. Our death toll since the war started in Iraq and Afghanistan has damage us as Americans, because our death toll
Towards the end of the war, Martin becomes very spiteful towards the government’s treatment of him and his former comrades. Overall, Martin does a respectable job of informing the public on how the Revolutionary soldier’s life during the war was and how difficult their life was. Even though Martin was not the most decorated soldier, his efforts should be valued. Martin participated in very prominent battles (the Battle of Bunker Hill, Siege of Yorktown, and the Battle of Red Bank), and describes the Battle of Red Bank. Martin declares, “Five Hundred men defeated two thousand of the enemy, killed and wounded a large number, and mortally wounded and took prisoner their
It would seem it moved a lot of people and swayed their opinion on the war with every passing day. What we would call a military victory during the Tet offensive in Vietnam would only seal the coffin on the president Lyndon brown Johnson leaving a massive credibility gap between the people and the government causing him to no run for
The Vietnam War was one of America’s longest and most controversial conflicts in history and exacted more than three million fatalities, both civilian and military. The United States government was involved in the war as a means to prevent a communist takeover of not only South Vietnam, but to stop the influence from reaching other nations and thus causing a “domino effect” throughout the world. The Vietnam War also garnered one of the biggest anti-war movements in history; despite the best laid intentions of the U.S. government many people protested U.S. involvement and asked for peace between all countries. The political outcries to stop the war could not contain the military’s strategies to defeat the opponent; this led to a war that spanned almost twenty years, from 1959 to 1977 and went through four different presidents and the assassination of one of them. General
The Vietnam War affected both the social and political views of this nation. This war took one great nation and completely divided it in two. As shown by examples in this paper, the political and social changes were drastic enough and demonstrated by enough people that it was able to move an entire generation. Even today, the different views of the Vietnam War are seen in the way the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is viewed by many today: “ A somber reminder of the loss of too many young Americans, and of what the war did to the United States and its messianic belief in its own overweening virtue.” [ (Sitikoff, 1999)
Abstract: The Effect of the Vietnam war on American Politics and Foreign Policy Tasha Hudson History 365 Professor Larry Menna April 22, 2013 The Vietnam War is regarded as the nation's longest and most debilitating war. Some may even say that it has had such an impact on the United States that no other event in history has had since the Civil war and before the events of hurricane Katrina and 9/11. The Vietnam War was one filled with great lost, sadness, economic hardship, and unanswered questions. The hardcore facts are that the Vietnam War produced wrenching effects on the American people. The war also had a profound effect on American politics and foreign policy.
McPherson said that "…many Civil War soldiers felt a profound and passionate commitment to the ideological purposes for which they fought." Almost near the end of the Civil War, Americans began to look for answers on why did the soldiers fought for. It is hard to separate individual causes of the war because the years preparing the way to the war were described by raising warfare over a set of economic and political disputes between the Northern and Southern states. Because the result of the war made dramatic changes to the southern way of living, it is simple to think that the main cause of the war was disagreement over slavery. Actually, disagreement between the North and South over states' rights and taxes was a more important cause of the Civil War than were differing views about slavery.