The book I read was titled Here There are Tigers, The Secret Air War in Laos, 1968-69. It was written by Reginald Hawthorn and is his personal experience as a Major in the Air Force. I wanted to know an Air Force pilot’s perspective since I read about so much bombing going on during the Vietnam War. He was an FAC (Forward Air Controller) and flew an O-2 single prop airplane during Vietnam from 1968-1969. Major Reginald Hathorn was an instructor at Laughlin Air Force Base when he got the call on Friday of January 1968 that he would have to leave his wife and two daughters to fight in Vietnam.…
After the public discovered what happened in My Lai, the people no longer knew what to think of the military efforts, they just knew they were sick of the war and constant bloodshed. When news of the massacre came out “Demands for withdrawal from Vietnam continued to grow, while others questioned the idea of blind loyalty to military leadership” (Experience). The people were already not happy with the war, but knowing that hundreds of innocents had been slaughtered completely destroyed their trust; more people began asking for a withdrawal from Vietnam and questioning the ideal of blindly following orders. These pictures didn’t just impact the Americans at home however, after the implementation of “Vietnamisation” many of the ground troops began to lose morale. The morale was so low among the ground troops that “many of them were annoyed, frustrated and addicted to drugs as a result”(Rohn). The My Lai massacre served as a huge turning point in the public opinion of the war; people no longer supported the war and soldiers could not handle such low morale, to the point where many soldiers turned to drugs. A mix of all these things coming together brought forth the idea of Vietnamisation, a system to equip and expand South Vietnamese soldiers and pull out American…
The Vietnam War was a place of death, destruction, and confusion. Not only was the war a failure, but many soldiers were forced to fight. This lead to many negative effects that I must bring to your attention in this paper. The negative effects on soldiers during and after the war were depression, regret, desensitization, insanity, and the loss of friends.…
The dissipating war of Vietnam still continues to affect America today. The only thing that keeps Vietnam alive is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The memorial covers more than 58,000 American men and women who died in Vietnam fighting for our county. Lacking the glory and heroism the war memorial shows, there is a silent reminder of the losses of the American soldiers. What the war did to the United States was unspeakable and it still has an overwhelming morality.…
The war officially began in 1939. Americans were not searching out to become involved in the war, but were brought into it by the attacks of other countries. Perhaps men were more honored to die for their country because they were defending it, and they were trying to avenge the lives of the people who were killed in the Pearl Harbor bombing. They had a deep rooted, intrinsic motivation to fight for the country. Their country and their people were wronged, and so the soldiers who went to fight were determined to make it right for their fellow countrymen and women. Now, in the Vietnam War, O’Brien writes that “The war, I thought, was wrongly conceived and poorly justified” (18). In the case of the Vietnam war, no one had that intrinsic motivation. They were not defending their country, they were attacking another one. People were more motivated by fear than honor. Erik, a friend of O’Brien says early in the memoir, “All this not because of conviction, not for ideology; rather it’s from fear of our society’s censure […] Fear of weakness. Fear that to avoid war is to avoid manhood” (38). For O’Brien and many other men, this war was a pressure, not an…
However, these Vietnamese have never been given the credit of that suffering. Instead, later presidents such as Bill Clinton renewed the sanctions against Vietnam, further fuelling hatred against the Vietnamese. Ironically, the US continued to rebuild Germany and Japan after World War II; countries that committed heinous atrocities on an enormous scale. In the case of the Vietnam conflict, the US has somehow lost its compassion and ability to make amends, pardon, reach out and shake the hand of an enemy and befriend them again (Riordan, p. 244). If all these actions were done to befriend Vietnam again, the USA would become a better country. Although some would treat Stone’s statements and thesis on the Vietnam conflict as political speeches, there could be truth in his stance on the…
The war had left Vietnam in ruins, the state of both the north and the south were miserable and almost uninhabitable. Those who chose to stay in the country where…
“Vietnam: A Necessary War” is a summary of a book of a similar name by author Michael Lind. The book addresses the viewpoint that the Vietnam War was both moral and necessary for eventual victory in the Cold War. Michael Lind graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with honors in English and History, received an MA in International Relations from Yale University, and a JD from the University of Texas Law School. In 1990-1991 he worked as Assistant to the Director of the U.S. State Department’s Center for the study of Foreign Affairs. From 1991-1994 he was Executive Editor of The National Interest, and from 1994-1998 he worked for Harper’s Magazine,…
Vietnam War came to an end for decades, but the hearts of Americans concerned about humanity and the world situation is difficult to shake off a shadow, one and a Vietnam War movies, we come back to the Killing Fields, reproduction that beyond outside the normal human experience trauma, but also a more than a broader perspective and a deeper reflection.…
In her article, “The Vietnam War in American Memory,” Marilyn Young discusses that the Vietnam War “happened among Americans.” What Young is saying is that there was a war going on in Vietnam, but there was also animosity between the American soldiers and citizens. It was a horrifying and devastating time in American during the Vietnam War and Young even describes it as, “American civil War.” Young inquiries the government on why America got involved in this war in the first place. In the film Platoon and the article “What Did You Do in the Class War, Daddy,” there is a discussion on how to interpret the Vietnam War.…
The article written by Veronia Majerol in New York Times Upfront, titled “The Vietnam WAR” talks more on how the war divided America, mostly between generations, the older crowds supported the war and the younger crowd resisted even…
I was asked to talk about the 50-year anniversary of the Vietnam war. And as most of you can probably tell, I wasn’t alive 50 years ago, so I went to my grandfather who fought in that war and I asked him to recount his experience. I asked him if he lost any friends during that time. He responded with “Hunny, all the guys you are with are your friends. And it hurts to lose any of them.” He recalled for me one individual. Greg. He said “losing that one was hard.” He told me he was a good man who found a Vietnamese child that he wanted to take back to the states with him. My grandfather said that man was later killed in action and the child, lost track of. Ladies and gentlemen. 58, 220 American soldiers died in that war. To some, these numbers aren’t more than graphs, statistics, or numbers on a chart. But to the brave soldiers who fought, each number is a face, a name, a story or a memory. Every number, every digit matters. Let us not forget the 2.5 million soldiers who fought for us. Who fought against communism, against an ideal they felt to be…
Even though the war was so terrible soldiers continue to fight for the lives lost during the war. Some soldiers were prepared to risk their lives so long as there was a chance of success for them. Most went into the war believing they could make a change. Not just for themselves but for their family and country. Some were forced into going to war and forced to fight for their…
The war in Vietnam in the 1960’s was an extremely controversial topic among the American public. America’s role in the war was questionable, and thousands of young men were drafted into the army against their own personal beliefs. In If I Die in a Combat Zone , author Tim O'Brien argued that the Vietnam War was unjust through his depictions of violent events during the war, how the war affected both the soldiers and innocent civilians, and the inhumane duties required of the soldiers.…
A 21-year-old man by the name of Tom O’Brien was drafted into the American War in Vietnam merely one month after graduating from college. Tom speaks of his journey of living with the shame of events that took place the summer of 1968. War to Tom is sickening and revolting; there was no unity or purpose. The 1960’s were a period of social disturbance with both the feminist and the civil rights movements occurring. In addition, the United States’ was divided by those who agreed and those who did not agree with the US’s involvement in the Vietnam war. When he received his inauguration, Tom was trapped and felt hopeless. “All around me the options seemed to be narrowing, as if I were hurtling down a huge black funnel, the whole world squeezing in tight. There was no…