The Problem With Vietnam
Wartime in the United States has always placed pressure on the government and the citizens of the country to provide support by whatever means to the situation. During World War II, that support was propagated by the government in the form of censorship and a strategic public relations plan to maintain the public opinion in favor of the cause. Glorification of America's involvement in the war helped America maintain the image of "a cause worth fighting for." Technology and de-censorship would later transform America and the world's image of war, which had been formed by such propaganda as seen during WWII, into the truth about war as seen in the media's coverage of the Vietnam War. During this period, uncensored media coverage helped to morph American views about military conflicts forever as well as changing the media's role in war.
World War II was a time in American history of patriotism. However, that patriotism came a price to the American public according to The Censored War, written by George Roeder. He discusses the impact that censorship had on the American public, and how lies and propaganda gave the citizens of America a false view of war. By portraying participation in the war as heroic, using such propaganda as posters depicting fallen GI's as Christ-like figures (Rodeder 33), the US government formed the perspective for the public, rather than allowing them to develop their own sense of reality. Photographs of dead or wounded soldiers were withheld from the public in order to keep public opinion on the side of the government. Pictures of dead or wounded American soldiers were kept in a file dubbed "the Chamber of Horrors", not to be released for public viewing until many yea...
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... Than the Sword. Ch.12 Vietnam War: Bringing the Battlefield Into the American Living Room Pg.187. (Colorado. UK. Westview Press)
Hallin, Daniel C. (1994). The Uncensored War: The Media and Vietnam.(New York, NY).
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Works Consulted
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Beginning in the early 1960's American journalists began taking a hard look at America's involvement in South Vietnam. This inevitably led to a conflict with the American and South Vietnamese governments, some fellow journalists, and their parent news organizations. This was the last hurrah of print journalism, as television began to grow in stature. William Prochnau's, Once Upon A Distant War, carefully details the struggles of these hardy journalists, led by David Halberstram, Malcolm Browne, and Neil Sheehan. The book contains stories, told in layers, chronicling America's growing involvement in South Vietnam from 1961 through 1963.
The Vietnam War has become a focal point of the Sixties. Known as the first televised war, American citizens quickly became consumed with every aspect of the war. In a sense, they could not simply “turn off” the war. A Rumor of War by Philip Caputo is a firsthand account of this horrific war that tore our nation apart. Throughout this autobiography, there were several sections that grabbed my attention. I found Caputo’s use of stark comparisons and vivid imagery, particularly captivating in that, those scenes forced me to reflect on my own feelings about the war. These scenes also caused me to look at the Vietnam War from the perspective of a soldier, which is not a perspective I had previously considered. In particular, Caputo’s account of
Michael C. C. Adams' book, The Best War Ever: America and World War II, attempts to dispel the numerous misconceptions of the Second World War. As the title suggests, Americans came out of the war with a positive view of the preceding five turbulent years. This myth was born from several factors. Due to the overseas setting of both theaters of the war, intense government propaganda, Hollywood's glamorization, and widespread economic prosperity, Americans were largely sheltered form the brutal truth of World War II. Even to this day, the generation of World War II is viewed as being superior in morality and unity. The popular illusion held that 'there were no ethnic or gender problems, families were happy and united, and children worked hard in school and read a great number of books.' (115)
Fussell, Paul. "Vietnam." The Bloody Game: An Anthology of Modern War. Ed. Paul Fussell. London: Scribners, 1991. 651-6.
Vietnam was a highly debated war among citizens of the United States. This war was like no other with regards to how it affected people on the home front. In past war’s, the population of the United States mainly supported the war and admired soldiers for their courage. During the Vietnam War, citizens of the U.S. had a contradictory view than in the past. This dilemma of not having the support of the people originates from the culture and the time period.
Robert S. McNamara's book, In Retrospect, tells the story of one man's journey throughout the trials and tribulations of what seems to be the United States utmost fatality; the Vietnam War. McNamara's personal encounters gives an inside perspective never before heard of, and exposes the truth behind the administration.
In every war, from the First World War to the present day in Iraq, military propaganda has been used intensely. Military propaganda is the most effective type of propaganda, because it touches the viewers emotionally. During the Second World War, many pictures of the Jewish concentration camps were shown as propaganda. The primary reason United States went to war was to strike down the dictatorship of Hitler. There were also many economic benefits of United States' involvement in the war. According to senior economist Richard Schumann, the jobs created to support the war itself was able to get United States out of the Great Depression (Schumann). In a propagandist's view, none of these reasons could fire up the citizens as much as documentaries and pictures of suffering people. The view of these gave them an urge to be liberators of these poor souls half way around the world. Even though the scenes of the propaganda were true, they were shown in a way that held its viewers liable if they did not respond.
on the Vietnam War, a 1990's Perspective on the Decisions, Combat, and Legacies. Ed. William Head and Lawrence E. Grinter. Westport, Connecticut, 1993. 229-240.
The Effect of Mass Media on Americans during the Vietnam War When the war initially began, Dean Rusk, US Secretary of State, pointed out that: "This was the first struggle fought on television in everybody's living room every day... whether ordinary people can sustain a war effort under that kind of daily hammering is a very large question. " The us administration, unlike most governments at war, made no official attempt to censure the reporting in the Vietnam war. Every night on the colour television people not only in America but across the planet saw pictures of dead and wounded marines. Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America--not on the battlefields of Vietnam."
During the Vietnam War the reality of warfare brought many soldiers back to a home that didn't want them. Their feelings torn by atrocities, the loss of friends, and the condition of loneliness only made the experience worse. Did the issues on the home front affect the issues on the frontline? The novel Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers is a perfect example of the conflict and diversity among other soldiers during the Vietnam War. It shows the reality many soldiers faced and how they dealt with conflicts back home while they were alone and afraid of death creeping up on them. With the reality of war taking its toll, soldiers coming home to a world they didn't know, a world that had changed and left them in Vietnam to fend for themselves. They slept with wives who didn't know even the smallest of their problems. From nightmares to remembering bad memories, Vietnam veterans suffered it all from extreme depression to the worst, suicide. The real world didn't know how to deal with them and just left them alone. The U.S. they left had changed on them. From people to the ways of life everything had changed and they didn't know how to deal with it.
Government had a hard time keeping up with censoring what any American could potentially see when they tuned into the evening news. With the fast-paced increase in television sets in American homes, came a lack of adequate government control. The multitude of graphic images and videos from Vietnam that were being broadcasted in the living rooms of so many families is what made the Vietnam war the “Living-Room War.” Hundreds of thousands of NBC viewers watched Col. Nguyen Ngoc Loan shoot his captive in a Saigon street. It was violence like this that heavily impacted America’s feelings toward the war. “Vietnam was a journalistic milestone: according to Daniel C. Hallin … it was the first war in which reporters were routinely accredited to accompany military forces, yet not subject to censorship”(Blumenthal Web). This lack of censorship is what caused America to see the truth of the vietnam
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Anderson, D. (2002). The Columbia guide to the Vietnam War. New York: Columbia University Press.
Ruane, Kevin. The Vietnam Wars. Documents in Contemporary History. Manchester: Manchester University Press ;, 2000.
Vietnam was a struggle which, in all honesty, the United States should never have been involved in. North Vietnam was battling for ownership of South Vietnam, so that they would be a unified communist nation. To prevent the domino effect and the further spread of communism, the U.S. held on to the Truman Doctrine and stood behind the South Vietnamese leader, Diem.