My Opinion About The Vietnam War example essay topic

847 words
The Vietnam war is something, that no one can forget. There are a lot of different opinions and emotions involved. They say the war started on August 7, 1964, when Johnson was president, and he sent hundreds of thousands soldiers into Vietnam to bomb North Vietnam. USA's Participation in the war was to stop Noth Vietnam in trespassing into South Vietnam. USA also saw communism as their biggest enemy, and felt that it was their duty to stop communism, America was very committed to a theory called the "Domino Theory" America believed that communism was likely to spread very rapidly when a country became communistic, and if just one country fell to it then many others would follow, just like a game of dominos. President Kennedy plan was to help South Vietnam in helping itself, adn not to send American troops into Vietnam.

But that was all changed when President Kennedy was assassinated and President Johnson came to power. One of the first things he did was to send American troops into Vietnam, and he was also the one who gave permission to use a chemical agent called Agent Orange. The consequences of Agent Orange were dreadful. Many thousands of Vietnamese people became sick of it, and out of many their children were born deformed. The next president was Nixon, who was elected because he promised to take all of the American soldiers out of Vietnam and stop the war.

In the beginning of the war, nobody knew anything about it. All Americans who were in America knew nothing, but it changed when the media became interested in the Vietnam war and began to write about it, and film it. The whole world now saw what a terrible war it was, people began to think about it and created their own opinions. They saw how children and women were tortured, raped and killed, villages burned and other dreadful things.

The Support in the war changed to aversion, and a lot of enthusiastic Americans, changed to Americans with a lot of rage and anger. Nobody wanted to see people in pain and living a life in pain. So many Americans, and people around the world, started demonstrations against the war. One thing someone said was, that the war in America would not stop before the war in Vietnam stopped. The demonstrations became more and more violent. In one university in America there was a demonstration, where four people got themselves killed by the military.

But the demonstration I consider as the most effective and most violent, was a demonstration in Vietnam. there were a couple of monks who set themselves on fire and burned to death, it was a terrible suicide demonstration. I think that it had a major affect on everybody, who were involved in the war. As the Veterans came home, they got a stunning surprise. People hated them for have been in the war. Most of the soldiers did not understand why the American people hated them because the Veterans belived that they had been fighting to protect the United States of America and it's people. They also belived that they fought for a good reason, and were proud of what they had done, but the American population thought otherwise.

The society was closed for most of the Veterans, their family didn't understand them, their friends didn't understand the either. So many Veterans felt that they had not place in society and therefore resigned for another tour in Vietnam. The Veterans weren't able get jobs, and many became addicted to drugs or began to sell them to make a living. Some even commited suicide. It wasn't until years after people began to see signs of post-traumatic-stress-disorder in the Veterans, and it took several more years to begin to understand it. It wasn't until 1982 that Veterans were acknowledged and recognized for their service and sacrifice, by the construction of Vietnam Veterans Memorial which Veterans themselves started!

My opinion about the Vietnam war, is that the war was a show of power "threat" to the Soviet Union, and to show what would happen if a country became communistic, but it failed because of the fact that the Vietnamese people had become accustomed in defending their country. And because of the failure the United States of America wanted to forget all about the Vietnam War, and in the process the Veterans became victim's of their countries fault! One of the reasons that the Vietnam War became so well known is because of the fact that it was the first war to be seen live in television, and therefore the average person became aware of the cruelty that is war. If you look back in history the Vietnam War wasn't so different from all other war's, the only difference is that humanity has perfected the art of kill a little bit more.