According to Gates, he observed that there was a lack of commitment in much of the executive branch of the government and in the Department of Defense. As a result, the Afghanistan and Iraq wars costed many soldiers’ lives and resources than could have been lesser. It is undeniable that they did not care enough and there was no or little sense of urgency, which is why the Afghanistan war became one of the longest war fought by the United States. The assumptions that it was supposed to be short and the responsibility for security could be quickly handed off is one of the reasons why it became a 13-year war. There were overly optimistic forecasts and no significant adjustments in the strategies, which results in no or little progress. There
The war in Vietnam and the war in Iraq differ in many ways such as; the reason for war, US support, the cost, number of deaths, and the time and place. In this essay I am going to compare the Vietnam War with the war in Iraq describing three ways in which the war in Vietnam differs from the war in Iraq. Three of the ways the two wars differ are the reason for war, number of deaths, and the cost.
September 11, 2001 marked a tragic day in the history of the United States; a terrorist attack had left the country shaken. It did not take long to determine those who were behind the attack and a call for retribution swept through the nation. Citizens in a wave of patriotism signed up for military service and the United States found resounding international support for their efforts in the war on terror. Little opposition was raised at the removal of the Taliban regime and there was much support for bringing Osama Bin Laden and the leaders of al-Qaeda to justice. Approval abroad diminished approximately a year and a half later when Afghanistan became a stepping stone to the administration’s larger ambition, the invasion of Iraq. The administration would invent several stories and in some cases remain silent of the truth where would prove positive for the Iraqi invasion. It seems they were willing to say anything to promote the largely unpopular and unnecessary war they were resolved on engaging in.
Mark Atwood Lawrence’s The Vietnam War: A Concise International History shows readers an international affair involving many nations and how the conflict progressed throughout its rather large existence. Lawrence starts his book in a time before America was involved in the war. It starts out with the French trying to colonize the nation of Vietnam. Soon the United States gets involved and struggles to get its point across in the jungles of Indo-China. Much of the book focuses on the American participation in helping South Vietnam vie for freedom to combine the country as a whole not under Communist rule. Without seeing many results, the war drug on for quite some time with neither side giving up. This resulted in problems in Vietnam and the U.S.
The United States has again stumbled into an overseas quagmire from which there is no easy exit. History seems to be repeating itself when again, we are led by a group of men who launch wars without exit strategies and fail to understand the nature of their enemy. In Vietnam the United States became involved because they felt the need to stop the spread of communism throughout the rest of Asia and attempt to prevent the "domino effect." The belief is that if Vietnam fell, so then would Cambodia, Laos, etc. Vietnam was the longest U.S. war with its never ending deaths, escalating destruction of Vietnam and Cambodia, and growing danger of splitting the American people (Carter 28). In Vietnam the Americans were told that U.S. was there because the South Vietnamese asked us to save them from the communist threat. But what the soldiers experienced did not add up to what the American people were being told (Thura 9). Americans have been told that the United States is going to war against Iraq in order to remove Saddam Hussein, eliminate him from power, abolish Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and prevent Baghdad from aiding terrorist groups. (Anderson 5). In Iraq the soldiers are anxious with no evidence of weapons of mass destruction, and Saddam Hussein no longer in power the reason why U.S. is still fighting in Iraq when the war was declared over a year ago is questionable (Moore 19).
As a result, the Geneva agreement was set up to try and keep order in
...s differed most significantly between the Gulf War and Korea was that in the Persian Gulf War President George H.W. Bush and (with the assistance of many of his advisors) was able to resist the calls, and the urge, to push operations beyond their originally defined parameters. When presented with the choice of whether or not to overstep the agreed upon goal of liberating Kuwait. It was this decision, to keep the war limited, that Truman could not follow through with, that made military operations in the Gulf War so successful. Though American forces had torn through the Iraqi Republican Guard, if Bush had succumb to public and military pressure to remove Hussein from power, a fate he had earned, the United States would have been mired in the quagmire that American forces were stuck in for nearly eight years after removing Hussein from power in the Second Iraq War.
miles away from them, and so they felt they had to be involved in a
It is impossible to accurately describe the major events that occurred during the cold war without mentioning the war in Vietnam. From its start, this war has been very controversial concerning its purposes and effects on the countries involved. Both sides of this war lost a great number of soldiers and most of these men and women were not even sure why they were fighting. To this day, there is still a lot of uncertainty about the events that took place during this heated time in south Asia. One of the biggest questions raised is why the United States felt it was their responsibility to ever got involved and what were they trying to gain by sending in their troops. A look at the history of the cold war and its relation to the Vietnam War can answer a lot of these uncertainties. Many of the decisions made by the officials involved in this war would not have been made if it were not the cold war and its effects on the countries involved.
The Vietnam war started in December of 1956, and lasted until April of 1975. The war was between the U.S., and Vietnam. This war was a very gruesome, and tragic war. In Vietnam their leader Ho Chi Minh came back after a 30 year trip to explore around the world. When he returned his country was occupied by two major countries, Japan and France. Ho Chi Minh had a plan to run them out of his country, but he needed the U.S. for it to work. U.S. was still in the Cold war with Russia and there was fear of communism there. So the U.S. decided not to help Vietnam and send military aid to help the French and Japanese forces, in order to stop communism. Thus begun The vietnam war!
In the early 1960s the U.S. began sending military advisors to South Vietnam beginning the Vietnam War, arguably the most controversial war in United States history. This incident followed Vietnam gaining its independence from the French Empire’s Indochina in 1954. The nation soon split, creating a communist North Vietnam, and a noncommunist South Vietnam. In fear of communism spreading the U.S. supported South Vietnam and sent troops. As the incident dragged on it caused a huge anti-war movement and a lot of political turmoil.The troops were withdrawn in 1973, the whole country fell to communism, and the U.S. failed. How did a superpower such as the U.S. take defeat from a small country like Vietnam? Many have wondered and continue to wonder
The longest war in the history of the United States took place in Vietnam during the Cold War. The United States involvement in the Vietnam War started when the Vietnamese were fighting the French for independence. Prior to U.S. involvement, France had attempted to govern Vietnam as one of its own colonies, but after years of being at war with the rebels and communists, France could not take anymore. The United States feared of the spread of communism and saw themselves as a democratic super power, and therefore, they felt morally obligated to stand up and fight against communism in place of France. Vietnam was later split into North and South Vietnam at the Geneva Conference which was originally designed to end the French/Vietnam war. Northern Vietnam was run by communists and supported by China and Russia. Southern Vietnam was then solely supported by the United States.
The reports in this novel are prefaced with a quote by Robert Shaplen, which sums up the feelings of those Americans involved in the Vietnam conflict. He states, "Vietnam, Vietnam . . .. There are no sure answers." In this novel, the author gives a detailed historical account of the happenings in Vietnam between 1950 and 1975. He successfully reports the confusing nature, proximity to the present and the emotions that still surround the conflict in Vietnam. In his journey through the years that America was involved in the Vietnam conflict, Herring "seeks to integrate military, diplomatic, and political factors in such a way as to clarify America's involvement and ultimate failure in Vietnam."
As the only military dictatorship in a world full of democracies, I feel that we really had to overcome hostilities from the other countries. Right off the back, we sought to inform the other countries that we wanted peace with them and had no intention of attacking them. Still, a lot of the countries were weary of us. I feel like Panem and the Democratic Republic of Lima were the most accepting of us as we did a lot of trade and negotiations with those countries. I think the others were still expecting us to start a war, even though we didn 't have the largest or strongest military. On the contrary, we were the ones who really pushed for world peace. We chose to be a military dictatorship because we felt it would be advantageous for us since we were surrounded by terrorism. In the end, I do not think being a military dictatorship helped us out a whole lot, but other than some hostilities from some countries, it did not hurt us either. I think if we had more types of government in the simulation it would have made the simulation more
Trueman, Chris. "Ho Chi Minh." Ho Chi Minh. N.p., n.d. © 2000-2013 Web. 21 Jan. 2014.
The Cold War was a prolonged period of political and military tension between countries on the side of democracy and those on the side of communism, the major players being the United States belonging to the former and the Soviet Union belonging to the latter (Westad). While the Cold War was known as such because there were no direct wars between the two major powers, there was large scale fighting in Vietnam. The Vietnam War (1954-75) is thought of as a historical consequence of the Cold War and hence a proxy war between the socialist and capitalist blocs, although many historians provide a second perspective, which is that the war was simply a nationalist struggle for national independence and reunification. While the latter argument acknowledges that external factors played a part, it states that the deciding factor that led to the Vietnamese people fighting for their independence was their nationalism and patriotism (Marr). However, it is clear that from the moment after the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was recognized by communist powers China and Soviet Union and America’s subsequent direct intervention in the war in Vietnam that the Vietnam War was no longer a nationalist fight against the French colonialists’ re-conquest, but had become a part of the Cold War.