Vietnam War Research Paper

The Vietnam war is such a controversial topic in America’s history. Some veterans that served in the war won’t even talk about it still to this day. The Vietnam war was a war that started in 1954, and lasted for about 20 years until 1975. America decided to join this war because they did not like the spread of communism and wanted to stop it at all cost. During this war, America had 4 different Presidents, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. Many people believe that the United States should have gotten involved in the war, while other people believe that the United States should not have involved themselves in the war. The three topics this essay will discuss are the problems that the United States created in Vietnam and also the

negative effects they had, such as the booby traps, the napalm droppings, and the Operation Rolling Thunder.

During class we looked at a lot of artifacts that had to deal with the Vietnam war and a lot of those artifacts had a negative vibe about them.

In one of the pictures we looked at, it portrayed a group of American troops carrying a body through a swamp in the jungle. The Americans look scared and frightened to be there and looked like they were not equipped to be fighting in this war because of the jungle conditions, and the hidden booby traps. If one of your kids was fighting in this war would you be happy to see them like this, not knowing if they were going to die in the jungle? Another piece of evidence we looked at was a video of when the Americans dropped the napalm bomb on South Vietnam. Napalm is a flammable substance that burns anything it touches immediately. In the video we watched a village of innocent people being burned to death because of this substance that we, Americans had dropped on their country. Can you even imagine the pain, suffering, and hardships that the people of South Vietnam had to face. The South Vietnamese survivors still deal with emotional and physical issues today. Last but not least, we looked at a video of Operation Rolling Thunder. This operation was negative towards the war because when the United States dropped a ton of bombs on North Vietnam, it left many Vietnamese people homeless and many innocent people

dead.

Personally, I believe that the United States shouldn’t have gone to war because this was not our business or our fight. I look at the Vietnam war as a negative effect. I feel America tends to get involved in other countries’ business, but they do not need to because the issues are not America’s issues. If Vietnam and all of China wants to become communists then that is their decision, and not ours to worry about. At that time, we had many other problems in our country to deal with such as, discrimination, and women’s rights. African Americans were still not being treated right, and they were still fighting for their country. I feel like if we hadn’t have gotten involved, then other countries wouldn’t view us as the bad guys in every war, or conflict that we have.

During this time, our country was not in a good place. People were dodging the draft and African Americans and women were still being treated poorly. The war should have been the last thing on our minds. We should have been trying to fix our country instead of going to war to fight other countries fight. We should have devoted our resources to deal with problems in our own country. We need to keep America strong and powerful, therefore we need to spend and use our energy and finances to making America the greatest country in the world.

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