Argumentative Essay: The War In Vietnam

Separated by society from experience. Leaving as a boy, changing into a soldier, returning as a man, who has seen and experienced more than words can explain or understand. Some by force, others by choice, yet all who were there understand and relate to one another through a bond that not one else can begin to comprehend. The war in Vietnam is one of the most controversial wars in American history, because the morals and purpose for American intervention will always be questioned, left to interpretation or assumption. Every person has the right to their own thoughts but the only ones who have the truth on what happened in Vietnam were those who experienced it, fought in it, and served in it. People often forget how young and innocent
“It was like running a race without knowing its length” (178). The soldiers in the lowest level of the military hierarchy dealt with the most anxieties for they never had clarity on what the objective or larger picture of their missions were. Because “even when American unites outkilled the enemy or drive him back into the jungle, there was no clear sense of triumph or completion” (187). The war then turned to a fight for survival. Each soldier simply wanted to stay alive to return home. “Some soldiers began to believe the only way to survive in Vietnam was simply to treat all Vietnamese as outright enemies and make no pretense of favoring some over others.” (215). The change in psychological view on the war can be attributed to the lack of seen progress during the war, since progress was never physically
“Faced with society’s indifference, uneasiness, and outright rejection and gripped by their own troubled memories of the war, thousands of veterans lapsed into the sort of silence…(307). Like any veteran, there is pain associated with the war they served in. For just as they lost friends, fellow soldiers, and brothers, they often times lost parts of themselves on the battlefield. “Veterans, too wanted to bury the war, to put it behind them…Like most Americans they, too, were trying to forget the war” (308). These men who left America as boys came back changed and estranged. Understanding or not, for or against the war, there was a constant separation from the Veterans and the rest of America. While they were trained for combat, they were not prepared to deal with the aftermath that the war would cause, because no one knows how to train for