The Vietnam War: A Concise International History is a strong book that portrays a vivid picture of both sides of the war. By getting access to new information and using valid sources, Lawrence’s study deserves credibility. After reading this book, a new light and understanding of the Vietnam war exists.
- Robert J. McMahon, ed. Major Problems in the History of the Vietnam War. New
The year was 1967 when Charles Haug returned home from Da Nang, Vietnam. Charles is a veteran of the Vietnam War. In Vietnam, Charles Haug was a mechanic who worked on different types of heavy equipment; such as forklifts, cranes, and military vehicles. While in combat, he was moved from Khe Sanh, Vietnam to Da Nang, which was his home base in Vietnam. At that moment he was moved between those two locations, Charles had confidence that he was going to make it back home to Indiana after being away for nineteen months. During those nineteen months, he experienced more things that someone else could learn in a lifetime living in peace.
The Vietnam War brought many tears and casualties to both the United States and Vietnam. Millions of soldiers lost their lives in the time consuming battle. On February 8, 1967 President Lyndon B. Johnson wrote a letter to Ho Chi Minh, Dictator of Vietnam at the time. President Johnson’s letter expresses his hopes of ending this conflict that has gone on so long in Vietnam. President Ho Chi Minh replied back on February 15, 1967 stating that it had been the United States that prolonged the wicked war. President Ho Chi Minh’s reply to President Johnson was the more persuasive of the two letters, because he appealed more to pathos, used stronger and bolder diction, and asked an important rhetorical question.
By the time Joseph McCarthy gave his Lincoln day speech the Red Scare in America was on full blast. Just a year prior to the speech the Soviets had successfully tested a nuclear bomb and China fell to the communists. There were problems both internationally with the Soviet incursion into Eastern Europe and domestically with Soviet spies in the United States. On February 9th 1950 this Senator from Wisconsin took advantage of the opportunity at his speech to the Republicans Women’s Club of Wheeling, West Virginia.
Guttmann, Allen. "Protest against the War in Vietnam." The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 382.1 (1969): 56-63. Print.
In American History, the nineteen sixties and the nineteen seventies were extremely turbulent and controversial times. Protest rights were being tested and occasionally suppressed, new moral and political values began to develop, and the Vietnam War dominated the twenty-year period. Vietnam invited many young activist people to begin a huge movement of anti-war protesting denouncing the war, the government, and even the soldiers who were picked against their will to fight. Reasons for American entry into the Vietnam War are controversial, and everyone has a different opinion on why we got into the conflict. Multiple reasons contributed to the entry in Vietnam from support of allies who were fighting their battles, to the fact that the American Government felt that they were responsible to stop the spread of communism led America to fight a war that would define an era.
- Dougan C. & Lipsman S. 1984 The Vietnam Experience: A Nation Divided. Boston: Boston Publishing
The antiwarriors that have been described in Melvin Small’s book have shown to be relentless. They were fighting for a just cause, or at least it was a just cause in their opinion. They were able to organize and rally others to join in their quest to end the violence that was occurring in Vietnam. Between 1967 and 1968, however, a new phenomenon was occurring, the age of the “hippies.” Small mentions, “For many Americans by 1967, antiwar demonstrators were not only unruly and potentially violent but hippies…serious politically oriented activists became easily conflated with hippies to the detriment of their cause.” (Small, 81) This unexpected result of the antiwar movement definitely did put a damper on the cause because hippies were perceived as these pot-smoking, disrespectful, unappreciative bunch of kids who had no idea what they were talking about because they were high all the time. This proved to be untrue. The hippies were just as much as a centrifugal as the other activists, and this was evident in the rally held at the Pentagon.
The Vietnam War began in 1954 after North Vietnam’s victory over the French colonial administration of Vietnam. North Vietnam’s goal was to unify the entire country by establishing a central Communist administration with support from the Soviet Union, China, and other Communist allies. By 1957, the Communist Vietnamese, known as the Viet Cong, utilized guerrilla war tactics against all those who were opposed them in the region. The United States government sought to guard against a Communist bloc in SE Asia and seized the opportunity to prevent the unification of the inevitable Communist rule of Vietnam by conducting strategic bombing methods in North Vietnam and surrounding areas suspected of housing the Viet Cong. President John F. Kennedy was a supporter of Dwight Eisenhower’s Domino Theory, which states that a communist victory in one country would cause a chain reaction of Communist rule in neighboring states.
...ation he delivers a motivational speech towards the Vietnam War, saying that we cannot be defeated by the North Vietnamese army, but only by our own public, who determine the popularity of our battles. (Document G)
Wells, T., (1999). The Anti-War Movement in the United States. Retrieved September 27, 2008, from http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/vietnam/antiwar.html
...was set for the Soviet Union and the United States to demonstrate which country was more powerful by using the Vietnamese vicariously; the two countries proceeded to take their rivalries to the next level. The war in Vietnam likewise illustrated the ideological revolution of the times that American citizens were undergoing, in a time where "love and peace" was the backbone slogan of the new american lifestyle. The word "war" became absolutely detestable, this was proven during the many protests against the war. I chose to write a paper on the Vietnam War because i believe the war in Vietnam, was the best represenative event of the times. It was a war that threatened to dismantle our government, a war that mirrored other events in Latin America and Europe involving the Soviet Union and the U.S; and a symbol of how far the U.S was willing to go to win the cold war.
James A. Baldwin once said, “The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose” (BrainyQuote.com). In the 1960s, “the man” was youth across the country. The Vietnam war was in full force, and students across the country were in an outrage. Society needed an excuse to rebel against the boring and safe way of life they were used to; Vietnam gave them the excuse they needed. Teenagers from different universities came together and formed various organizations that protested the Vietnam war for many reasons. These reasons included protesting weapons and different tactics used in the war, and the reason the U.S. entered the war in the first place. These get-togethers had such a monumental impact on their way of life that it was famously named the Anti-War Movement. When the Vietnam War ended, The United States did not have a real concrete reason why; there were a bunch of theories about why the war ended. Through negative media attention and rebellious youth culture, the Anti-War Movement made a monumental impact in the ending of the Vietnam War.