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Vietnam war
Vietnam war
Analyze the United States policy of Containment in Vietnam
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The Vietnam War would end up splitting the United States in half. The tension between anti-war groups and the people for the war were building more and more each day because this war was dragging on. Many people thought that the war was only going to take less than a year. However, what we didn’t know is that we were fighting a war that could not be acquired. The Vietnam War events from 1964 to 1975 created tensions in politics, economics, and social aspects of American life.
President Johnson believed in containment and the domino theory. Containment was to stop the spread of communism. Domino Theory was that if one country falls then more and more will start to fall as well, they were most worried about Southeast Asia. To stop the spread of communism President Johnson told Congress that North Vietnam attacked one of the American ships first. We would later find out that is was a lie to get get Congress to pass the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. This document states that “ Resolved by the Senate and House if Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Congress approves and supports the determination of the President, to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.(Document A)” This document then threw off the check and balance because now it was giving the president to much power. Once we went to war we thought it was going to be fast, at least thats what Johnson wanted America to believe. Bill Crawford saw what was going on and published a political cartoon. This showed that Johnson’s foreign policies were pulling the what Johnson wanted the Great Society to be down. After that was released in 1967 the tensions...
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...thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in South Asia which they had not found in Southwest Georgia and East Harlem.(Document C)”, said Martin. How could the government send minorities at high rates to a country to fight for other people rights when they had none? Many people saw that as a problem and the tension rose.
Tension was building up in America because of political, economical, and social problems and events during the Vietnam War. To most people now and then see that Vietnam was a war that was not winnable. Also that the draft was unfair and we should not have sent those young men to dying for a belief. Tension in these event were the direct result of the Anti-War movement and protests in America. We look back at the War and see all the mistakes from it and hopefully we have learned from those and we will never have to be in the same boat as they were.
The Vietnam War was the most publicized war during its era; moreover, this was the most unpopular war to hit the United States. All over the country riots began to rise, anti-war movement spread all over the states begging to stop the war and chaos overseas. This truly was a failure on the political side of things. For the public, all they saw was a failed attempt in a far away country. Events such as the Tet Offensive where the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong established an all out attack on key locations around Vietnam, and although the Viet Cong was virtually wiped out, this still had a large affect psychologically on the troops as well as the populist back in the United States.
The Vietnam War took place in between 1947- 1975. It consisted of North Vietnam trying to make South Vietnam a communism government. The United States later joined this conflict because of the stress North Vietnam was putting to South Vietnam to become a government that America did not want. The main reason why America joined was because of a theory called the Domino Effect. America and Russia were going through what has been dubbed the Cold War. The Domino Effect is the theory that communism will spread form one country to another. United states does not want this because our government is a democracy and communism opposes everything we stand for. America fearing communism was growing, stepped into Vietnam with America’s interest in mind, instead of Vietnam’s. There are several reason why American should have not gotten involved with this war. The most important reason was that America government officials made to much of a big deal about communism. This might sound cynical, but America to a certain degree did over react. Let it be said that it is much easier to say this after the fact. By looking back at McCarthyism, we can see the silliness of this fear. There is a serious side though. Thousands of people dies for a government that has no impact of their daily life. What regime Vietnam was going to change over to had no effect on the every day cycle of the United States. So truly, one can say, this can not one thing to do with America, its government and people.
1968, the year of the Tet Offensive, was the peak of US involvement in the war. The Tet Offensive was a series of battles between the Communist and Anti-Communist forces in South Vietnam. Although it was a victory for the United States, public support decreased due to the number of casualties and struggle to win the offensive. President Johnson, in his comments on the Tet Offensive, bashed the public opinion (doc 4). He pointed out that in terms of numbers, the US and South Vietnamese had a huge victory. His point of view was simply from a statistical standpoint. But the public saw that many Vietnamese civilians were harmed and affected by the war. The Tet Offensive was the beginning of the decline of public support for the war, as well as decline in US involvement in the war due to the public opinion. In addition, President Johnson was losing support because of his stubborn foreign policy outlook. Robert Kennedy, the Senator of New York, was contemplating a presidential run to oppose the President 's Vietnam policy. In addition, Johnson was losing democratic primaries to Senator Eugene McCarthy, who also opposed Johnson’s Vietnam policy. The public support for McCarthy showed that the American people were now against participation in the Vietnam War. Soon after the Tet Offensive, President Johnson announced a slow decrease in bombings of North Vietnam, started to
Vietnam War (1954-1975) is considered as one of those big wars of the modern world that has been acknowledged and studied by countries in the world. Especially, in regard to the United States, starting and ending war in Vietnam was an unforgettable experience that has left a priceless lesson in its foreign policy, and of course a lot of loss, physically, mentally, and property. “The Legacy of Vietnam” article of George Herring basically summarizes how the Vietnam War led to an end in failure of America and what consequences it left behind.
The Vietnam War was the longest war in America's history of involvement. Twenty years of hell, land mines, cross-fire, and death. Vietnam was divided by the Geneva Accord. The north being communist run by Ho Chi Minh. The south being anti-Communist run by Ngo Dinh Diem. Before Vietnam was separated, it was run by France. France had ruled most of Indochina since the late 1800s. The Vietnamese were unhappy with the way the French were controlling, therefore, many of them took refuge in China. When in China, they began to follow the lead of Ho Chi Minh, who wanted to model the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence as that of the U.S. version. In the 1940s, Japan had taken over Vietnam which upset Ho Chi Minh and his revolutionaries when they had returned a year later.
It has been known that the Vietnam War affected many American soldiers who were involved in the war physically and psychologically. The Vietnam War was one of the most memorable wars in history. Many Americans’ lives lost for no objective at all. Chapter 10 informed us about how the Vietnam War started and what really happened during that time. It also gave us background information about Vietnam Veterans and nurses who were involved in the war and what they went through during the war. I had the opportunity to interview a Vietnam Veteran also.
Engaging in the war in Vietnam brought a whole different set of "American Views" to the topic of war. This time the country did not support the war like we've seen in the past. Mostly by young people, the war effort was criticized and Americans staged massive protests. The Vietnam War's controversy spurred a great many sources of protest, against our government's use of power, how far we could stretch the rights of free expression, and primarily against the violence of the war itself.
Vietnam is a time in American history that most of us would like to forget, but really, we must learn from it. Vietnam is a time where we didn't look at the whole picture, it was 'perceived through the lens of Cold War politics.' (MP:420) With the new ?domino theory,? Americans feared for their safety and the safety of the 'free world.' If they didn't step in, they would inevitably lose the world to communism.
The Vietnam War changed the course of American History forever. The war showed the American people they had a voice and with protest they could make a difference. Vietnam was an area that many believed we had no business being in. It was a civil war and American sons were being sent there to die for something that did not affect them. This angered people all over the United States. Some took matters into their own hands and used their first amendment right to protest.
While the Vietnam battles began in the 1950’s, America did not become involved until 1965, under the command of President Lyndon Johnson. Right away the decision was met with mixed reactions. World War II had ended about 20 years prior to the deployment of U.S. troops in Vietnam, and many were not exactly excited to jump into another war. Right away protest groups formed across the nation, and many people began to let ...
There were many events that lead up the Vietnam War, it started in 1945 with the hostilities between the French and Vietminh. “Geopolitical Strategy, economics, domestic US politics, and cultural arrogance shaped the growing American involvement in Vietnam” (Anderson 1). As a matter of fact, the Vietnam War was several wars, but it was not until 1962 that America had their first combat mission, however, Americans were killed during ambushes by the Vietnamese before the first combat mission. There is much controversy over the reasons for the Vietnam War, supported by the several different books and articles written about the war. “The most famous atrocity occurred in a tiny hamlet called My Lai in March 1968” (Detzer 127). History shows that the reaction of many Americans to the attack by US soldiers on the village of My Lai during the Vietnam War was opposition, and the actions of the US soldiers during the My Lai Massacre will be forever remembered as a significant part of the Vietnam War and American History.
The Vietnam War started earlier than the United Sates and Communist contribution in the 1960's and 70's. The accounts of Vietnam date back to the early 20th Century, this is how many Vietnamese viewed Vietnam in the 20th Century. However, for Americans Vietnam is a cold period in the 1960's, and 70's in which the nation was more occupied with the threat of the Communist giant than with the well-being of its people. The American account of the war is not only in the form of body bags of the thousands of soldiers returning home. Also, mothers crying faces and a nation divided at home. One million Vietnamese citizens were slaughtered, and the country began to grow as soon as many questioned the government’s activities.
“Involvement in two world wars and the Cold War transformed America into a “crusader state” convinced of the superiority of its institutions and way of life and intent on imposing them on the outside world. ” Whether fought at home or abroad every war is to impact all parties involved.
The Vietnam War “The war on colour television screens in American living rooms has made Americans far more anti-war than anything else. The full brutality of the combat will be there in close-up and in colour, and blood looks very red on the colour television screen”. The USA declared war on Vietnam at a time of evident mass media involvement. The technological progress that was made allowed the full ruthlessness war to be broadcast the people of America. As a result, the entire course of the war was dramatically changed.
The Vietnam War took action after the First Indochina War, in fact the Vietnam War is also known as the Second Indochina War. This war included the communist North Vietnam and its allies of the Viet Cong, the Soviet Union, China and other communist allies going against South Vietnam and its allies, the Unites States, Philippines and other anti-communist allies. It was a very long and conflicting war that actually started in 1954 and ended in 1975. The war began after the rise to power of Ho Chi Minh and his communist party in North Vietnam. More than three million people were killed during the war, this included approximately 58,000 Americans and more than half of the killed were actually Vietnamese civilians. The Vietnam War ended by the communist forces giving up control of Saigon and the next year the country was then unified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Many people, including both men and women were directly and indirectly involved within the war itself. Women worked many different roles in the Vietnam War, and they are most definitely not credited enough for all that they actually did.