Pros And Cons Of The Vietnam War

During the United States crisis against the Soviet Union; The Vietnam War in that era

was one of the worst, war case, scenarios fueled by the Cold War. With it being one of the most hated and leading the most negative opinions, taking the people’s lives into account and how it did not have any real beneficial gain; it was a war not worth fighting. It was overall unnecessary because of its loss of life and how it made the U.S seem weak against communism. In theory, the Vietnam War was unwinnable, people despised all the actions taken during the war, and it was not worth the lives that were sent to fight it. With all this in knowledge, I believe the war was something the U.S could not win.

The United States has always gone back to look

at its past mistakes, so they won’t be able to repeat them. Not only does the United States have the tendency of asking itself how it got itself into moments of crisis, but more like why it starts them. A question that Congress and all types of powerful people should be asking is; why out of all their right minds enter the Vietnam War? There were many facts proven to the U.S that Vietnam was something challenging and difficult to win. For instance, President John F. Kennedy, before being assassinated, had sent a team in Vietnam in order for them to scout the area and “build-up of American military, economic and technical aid in order to help Diem confront the Viet Cong threat” (History.com Staff). He also sent another 8,000 troops, pushing to over nine thousand which to the extent was a normal amount of troops sent to help and show a strong presence of U.S support in South Vietnam. Then, Congress in 1965 had requested President Lyndon Johnson to send another 175,000 at their request, later that year he sent 200,000. Even Johnson's advisors were telling him not to send the troops because of how America wanted to be seen as an anti-war nation during that era. By mid-1966 there were about 282,000 troops stationed in Vietnam; if they were to be added all together. That’s quite a big number of troops sent for something that was meant to be controlling communism, which meant it had escalated to a point where a fight for ground would determine who controlled Vietnam. It's strategy of trying to clear out communism was not helping with North Vietnam receiving more and more help from the Soviet Union. Not only was its effort of trying to send more troops worse, but the attempts of sending more troops was a wasteless effort because a lot of men died every day there. Another point to show that the war was already in its sense a loss, the United States had spent more than “423 billion dollars before 2003” (Gazel). That is worth about, in today's dollar, a maximum of 1 trillion dollars if added correctly.This is barely some factors demonstrating that the U.S should have never entered this War.
Already being shown a few facts that the Vietnam War was getting out of the U.S’ hands was a known fact, though somehow they could still not sense the outcome for the Nation.

In order for the U.S to see that the Vietnam War was unwinnable, they had to witness the people protest and see that the violence provided by it was something the American people would not tolerate. Since television was now a common luxury in most houses when families were shown imagery of the kind of war that was happening everyone was outraged and disgusted. They were disgusted by the horrific images shown by the war and its media. Once Americans were “bombarded by horrific images of the war on their television...turned against the war as well”. People found it hard to believe that after all attempts and decisions of past Presidents to not to go to war after WW2, they somehow manage to cause another crisis because of overwhelming communism and troops. The war is unwinnable because now they have the U.S’s people against it and want a peaceful resolution compared to when the war wasn't common knowledge to the people. If it was kept more of a small scale battle it wouldn't be attacked by multiple enemies at the same time and this is what mostly caused failure in winning the Vietnam War. Another way the people were one of the reasons the U.S would lose the war would be because once people heard of the My Lai Massacre everyone one went berserk and started sprouting hatred towards the War. The My Lai Massacre was 400 Vietnamese families killed by U.S soldiers during a false call, where there were supposedly Viet Cong’s hiding in the village. Just following orders, the soldiers decided to murder all 400 plus villagers living there without thinking twice. This led to one of the “largest anti-war demonstration”, where more than 250,000 Americans peacefully protested for the withdrawal of all troops from Vietnam. This showed that all actions taken to win the war were wrong and that it’s main

priority of protecting American citizens caused an erratic impulse of hatred towards the Vietnam War.
With all protests, troops, and money spent on the war, the lives lost is nowhere near the same to the other past wars. An additional example of how the Vietnam War was unwinnable was because during that war the United States had lost about 60,000 lives to Vietnam. The casualties were immense during that time; it also leads to another 300,000 soldiers who were wounded during combat, illness, and etc. It was one of the deadliest wars by far and it ranked “The Fourth most deadliest War” (MarketWatch). Besides that, it had an estimated 8 million soldiers ready to serve and be deployed while having those 500,000 soldiers stationed in Vietnam. The President could not see from past mistakes that having many soldiers at hand would make everything seem that the U.S had already been prepared for war. As David Halberstam explained it in his book, The Best and The Brightest, he said, “... they had been swept forward by their belief in the importance of anti-Communism”. This explains that the importance of getting rid of communism became a greater deal to the nation that they had forgotten about their importance of keeping their soldiers strategically alive. Which leads to the U.S being prepared to sacrifice the cost of protecting the nation from communism and winning a war which was far from close.
Taking everything the war had accumulated, from it being hated by the American people and having to cope with the money spent on it. Yes, during that time there was the conflict with the Soviet Union, for example, the “Space Race”; it should have been a priority to avoid another war with communism and try to just make it a quiet operation without the people's knowledge. It should also have been something where there would be minimal damage to citizens and be hidden from strong powerful leaders where they could leak information to the public causing a panic in society. In addition to having citizen casualties and veterans seeing their comrades pass onto the next life because of the War, the U.S should have never had any sort of contact with it from the start.