North And South Vietnam example essay topic

The Vietnam War was the most controversial war in U.S. history. Also called the Indochina War, it was said to have been started in 1957 when communist rebels of North Vietnam launched an attack on The South. The country was divided because of the communistic views of the North. Because the North was trying to take over and make it a communist country the U.S. then got involved.

In 1958 we sent our first troops in. This caused much controversy throughout America. It still affects all the people who grew up in that generation, whether you were a veteran who actually fought or just an ordinary citizen. The war finally ended on April 30, 1973 with a defeated America going home, after the North Vietnamese had taken over the south.

The U.S. first got involved after president Dwight Eisenhower said, "If we let the communists take over, the other Asian countries would fall like dominos". At that time he pledged to assist the South Vietnamese government with war. By 1954 there were 342 American military personal there. The mounting communist assault against the south then prompted president John F. Kennedy to increase the troop strength to 16,000 by the time he was assassinated in 1963. One of the biggest ways the U.S. acquired the troops, was by the draft. This was a method to get people to war.

Anyone from the ages 18 to 26 had to sign up. After you signed up, they would give you a card that said that you registered for the draft. The draft card had to be carried by every male to show the police. Anyone who refused to be in the draft would be put in jail. Many of these people either fled the country or just hid out. These people were known as draft dodgers.

Some thought that these people were unpatriotic and therefore un-American. This caused even more controversy. The war also caused people to protest all over the U.S. especially on college campuses and at the nation's capital. One of the worst tragedies happened at Kent State University on May 4th 1970. The Ohio government sent the National Guard because someone set a fire in protest. A crowd of students began to taunt the troops.

Suddenly they opened fire and killed 4 students. At another college police opened fire on an antiwar protest killing 2 people. One of the biggest antiwar demonstrations took place at Washington D.C. in 1969.40,000 people gathered at the Arlington Cemetery and marched through the city. 3 and 1/2 hours later the crowd grew to over 500,000 people who held antiwar demonstrations. Thousands held up a "V" sign that came to mean peace. It was the largest demonstration ever during the war.

Many of the men who were opposed to the war grew out their hair and smoked marijuana to show their opposition to authority who tried to control the protests. These people were referred to as "hippies". One of the biggest battles of the war was the Tet offensive. It was also the biggest turning point in the Vietnam War.

In August of 1963 Lyndon Johnson took over the American presidency because of the assassination of John Kennedy. He ordered the first air strikes on the North. Six month's later the 'Rolling thunder' air campaign began. In this campaign alone more bombs were dropped on North Vietnam than were used in the whole of World War II.

In the following five years, the two Vietnam received the equivalent of 22 tons of explosives for every square mile of territory. A total of 2.6 million Vietnamese were killed. The American deployment of troops jumped from 23,300 in 1963 to 184,000 in 1966 and reached 542,000 in January 1969 under Richard Nixon's presidency. The Tet offensive is seen as the great turning point of the war costing 30 billion dollars a year, and was widely acknowledged as unwinnable by the Americans after it had taken place. On the night of January 10th, 1968, 70,000 North Vietnamese launched the Tet offensive. Violating their temporary truce for the New Year celebrations, they surged into more than 100 towns and cities, including Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam.

Shifting the war into the supposedly unbreakable urban areas. It shook the U.S. because more than 15,000 American soldiers died in that year alone. The biggest death toll during the war. Many of the 2,000,000 veterans of the war suffered many illnesses once they returned back to the U.S. Some of them included insomnia, drug abuse, mental illness, and over exposure to Agent Orange, a chemical used in Vietnam to thin out all the brush from the trees. This caused cancer and other major illnesses in people who were around it. Most of them were basically ignored when they got home.

Many people said that since they fought in the war they weren't welcome back. Now the government has set up many homes for veterans and hospitals to treat any illnesses that were associated with the war. To the over 50,000 men and women who died and were missing in the war they wanted to set up a memorial to remember them. In 1979 a war veteran came up with the idea for "The Wall", located in our nation's capital, which is a black wall with all the names of the veteran's who fought and died for our country. Approximately 2,000,000 people visit it each year making it the most visited in Washington D.C. The War for the U.S. finally ended on March 23, 1973 when the last ground troops left Vietnam badly beaten. But after the U.S. left another fight broke out.

The U.S. did not involve themselves again. North Vietnam invaded the South again and forced all the troops farther south. Thousands of Vietnamese died of starvation. General Ford then went to congress and asked for $722 million dollars of support to the south. Congress only supplied $300 million. Then on April 1975 the South Vietnamese surrendered at Saigon.

The death toll for the South Vietnamese had topped 1,000,000 deaths. The civilians in both North and South Vietnam were countless. In the war the U. S spent over $150 billion, and the bombing was the most in any war we were involved in. Most of the industry and transportation system was destroyed throughout Vietnam, more in the South because that is where the fighting was. The amount of war refugees in Vietnam amounted to over 10 million.

Because of the pesticides and Agent Orange, the South's cropland was destroyed permanently. In 1976 it was officially reunited into one communistic nation. Over 1 million Vietnamese have fled since the Country turned communist. The effects on the U.S. were very broad.

Including the 165 billion they spent on the war alone. Today this war has set up the fact that congress will now challenge the president on foreign moves. The war also set up comparisons on wars for the future. Today many people argued that we shouldn't have jumped into the war. They feel that it was a war that would not have affected the US economy in any way. Others feel that it helped in stopping the spread of communism in South East Asia.

The Vietnam War was a very controversial war, which lasted over a decade. It also caused many protests and Left many Veterans' unwanted. I hope that this kind of a situation can be avoided in the future, as any war is devastating. Word count = 1248 Work Cited Brigham, Robert K.?

A Brief History.? Battlefield Vietnam. 1 May 2002. Gas kill, Charles J.?

Liberal Views on Vietnam.? 1 May 2002. "Guerrilla Warfare". The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia. 2002.1 May. 2002 Morris, Jim.

A War Story. New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 1979 "Vietnam War", Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia. 2001. Microsoft Corporation. 1 May 2002.?

The Vietnam War and PTSD.? Vietnam Long Term Effects. 1 May 2002..