One artist to pinpoint in connection with the anti-war movement was Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s song “Ohio.”
One artist to pinpoint in connection with the anti-war movement was Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s song “Ohio.”
This song is a very simple one with a very clear message against the war in Vietnam, and against President Nixon. It was not surprising to find that because this was an anti-war song, it was banned from many radio…
Though this time it is used introverted towards America, and not the outside world. Pathos dominates this statement because it implies that soldiers had to give the ultimate sacrifice to allow South Vietnam peace, which also portrays the war with a higher meaning and purpose. There appear an amount of carefully selected loaded words in the text that is relevant to point out. Nixon speaks of a right kind of peace that works in coherence with the soldiers not dying in vain. He uses this loaded word connection to indicate that there has been achieved a very unique kind of peace in Vietnam. Only one comparison appears in the speech and it is very important for the outcome of the successfulness of it: “Johnson endured the vilification of those who sought to portray him as a man of war. But there was nothing he cared about more deeply than achieving a lasting peace in the…
People were afraid of going to war and the effects it could have on our country. In Alan Rohan’s How Much Did The Vietnam War Cost? he states “Among all the wars the United States had fought, Vietnam War is ranked 4th in casualties just below the Civil War and the two World Wars. Out of 2,594,000 personnel who served in Vietnam, there were 58,220 Americans dead, 153,303 wounded and 1,643 missing. More than 23,214 soldiers suffered one hundred percent disabled. Even when it already ended, the war continued to cost many American lives. It’s estimated that 70,000 to 300,000 Vietnam Veterans committed suicide and around 700,000 veterans suffered psychological trauma,” and continues with the cost of the war “The Department of Defense (DOD) reports that the United States spent about $168 billion (worth around $950 billion in 2011 dollars) in the entire war including $111 billion on military operations (1965 – 1972) and $28.5 billion on economic and military aid to Saigon regime (1953 – 1975).” (Rohn). The United States lost thousands of young adults and had to pay a high political cost for the Vietnam War. Parents were afraid of losing their children. There were thousands of American casualties from age 17 to…
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…
The people started to protest against the war through marches, occupations and songs. One song (Document B) was written saying “you’re dead if you go to Vietnam.” The intensity of the peoples’ dismay was intensified after the people realized that civilians were being killed over on the battle ground, many by the Green Berets which were first introduced.…
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…
Nixon knew a military victory in Vietnam was no longer possible. He wanted to end the war as quickly and as soon as possible. He wrote that, “without continuous and massive aid from either or both of the Communist giants, the leaders of North Vietnam would not have been able to carry on the war for more than a few months.” He planned to conduct a two prong agenda to end the war; first by changing the relationships between the DRV, USSR, and China and second, by a massive expansion of the war to force the DRV into serious negotiations. Foreign policy matters dominated the Nixon administration throughout his tenure.…
Michael Lind takes the approach that this war was something America could not have avoided if we had any hope to eventually win the Cold War over the Soviet Union and emerge as the world’s number one super power. He acknowledges that the administrations involved with the conflict did little to clearly explain our involvement to the public, and would often change their reasoning over time. But he goes on to explain that we had a very real reason to get involved in a conflict that many believed did not involve us. To easily explain why, is to simply bring up credibility. “Credibility, in power politics, is a country’s reputation for military capability combined with the political resolve to use it in order to promote its goals.” (Lind, 1999) In a sense credibility, or perceived power, was one of the most important tools in the Cold War. Allies and small dependent countries had to believe that America would be able to support them in a crisis, and enemies had to be under the impression that we would be able to back up any threats. To back out of Vietnam would have only prepared America to enter another battlefield later. A main reason of entering Vietnam was to avoid a humiliating defeat to our own reputation as a powerful country. Keeping South Vietnam out of Chinese control and permitting the South Vietnamese to enjoy a freer lifestyle were lower down on the…
Many Americans believed it was important to prevent South Vietnam from falling to Communism. Others believed the country should not get involved in the region's affairs. In addition, many Americans were opposed to the government's authorization of required enlistment as a way to mobilize troops for the war. By the mid 1960s, public protests against American involvement in Vietnam were becoming more common. Perhaps nowhere was this objection more evident than on U.S. college campuses. Students staged rallies and marches. They penned essays and songs to express their opinions. Many of these protestors expressed their opposition to the war by practicing a strategy of passive…
It was mid-spring in the United States Capitol- Washington, DC, the grass was green and onlookers could take in the view of the Washington Monument. On the specific date of April 17, 1965, the streets were not only occupied by historical monuments and statues of American History, but also occupied of 25,000 outraged protesters against the Vietnam War. This rally, organized by the Students for a Democratic Society, was the first significant act of defiance towards the Unites States Government. And this act of defiance was the beginning of a societal trend of abhorrence towards the Vietnam War. An angered country, defiance in Society and opposition in many households, is just the commencement of the Antiwar Movement.…
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…
In chapters 3 and 4 of Robert McMahon’s Major Problems in the History of the Vietnam War, there are a number of reasons given for the increased American involvement in Vietnam from the late 1940s to the mid 1950s. McMahon includes several documents in these chapters that point to three main reasons used to justify our role in Vietnam.…
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (CSNY) wrote this song, Ohio, in response to the Kent State shooting in Ohio. This song made a bold musical statement during its time as it mentioned Nixon by name, blaming him for this massacre. The instruments hold a constant beat in the song while the lyrics were carefully crafted so that they could express a lot in a few words.…
The Vietnam war is an incredibly controversial topic; some say America won, while others say that they lost. In this case, America took a major loss, they were never winning at any point. The reason the Americans officially lost the war is because they were unable to achieve their goal which was to stop the spread of communism in Vietnam. In fact, the exact opposite happened, after the American forces left South Vietnam in January of 1975, communism immediately overran it. Along with the reasoning behind why the Americans lost are 3 points which will give a deeper explanation on why the U.S lost the Vietnam war. First of all the Americans lost because the North Vietnamese wanted to win more than they did. Following this is the American’s bombing strategies that proved to be horrendously ineffective because they were choosing to bomb locations that would end up giving them no real advantage. Thirdly, and quite possibly the biggest reason that lost America the war was their attempt to fight a war of Attrition against the North Vietnamese strategy of Guerilla warfare…
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.…