What Was The Legacy Of The Vietnam Essay
War Essay, Research PaperIn my sentiment the Vietnam War was a awful experience for both of the contending sides.
In this war both of the contending sides lost immense sums of military personnels, warfare, and civilian lives. The thoughts and beliefs of people around the universe about the Vietnam War are really different because of the contention over this issue. The Vietnam War brought the United States shame and shame in the eyes of the outside universe and the citizens of United States. The Vietnam War is a discoloration on the United States history. This discoloration still remains on the American flag after 25 old ages.
Possibly the greatest impact of the Vietnam War was left on the American citizen. Many of these citizens had shown their strong emotions against the war from the really get downing. The National Guard shots in the Kent State diseaster is an illustration of how most people felt about the Vietnam War. There was a sense of misgiving between the authorities and the people. The actions and the orders made by the authorities were largely against the public s sentiment and this caused a great sense of ill will and misgiving towards the American authorities by its people. The Vietnam War was a merchandise of the American civilization. As Colonel Zeb B. Bradford said:The great strength of US contending forces historically has been exactly that they have exploited their peculiarly American qualities and properties.
Highly mechanised and proficient warfare reinforces our inclinations and endowments and serves as a vehicle for evolutionary advance-counterinsurgency goes against the grain. We are a rich, industrial, urban state. Highly proficient forces are compatible with our features and resources. ( Page 321, BackFire )For more than a century the United States has been playing a conciliator in the western states and particularly the alleged 3rd World Nations. This is what got us into the Spanish war, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. Americans have ever had this position towards other states and this is about assorted within our civilization.
The Vietnam War acted as a accelerator for a alteration in this position. The images shown by the media, the Television, the Newspapers, the magazine headlines and articles provoked the state & # 8217 ; s choler and turned the streets and colleges into pandemonium. After the war many Americans stopped back uping the United States influence of other states.One of the groups who are affected the most by the Vietnam War are the veterans who fought in the war. Upon returning from Vietnam American soldiers received a cold welcome from the populace. It stemmed from a deep hatred felt by many Americans for the war and the manner it ended.
This made many veterans feel alienated.It s a large ground forces, this host of work forces with concealed lesions. Dr. John P. Wilson, a Cleveland State University psychologist who late completed a three-year survey of the War s aftereffects, says that P.T.
S.D. afflicts 500,000 of Vietnam s combat veterans. Other research workers put the figure at 700,000 which would give a psychiatric casualty rate among battlers of 50 to70 per centum. ( Page 107, The Vietnam War )These people fought for months and old ages in the swamps and rice Paddies of Vietnam. They had to contend in conditions unknown and surely uncomfortable to them, and worst of all these soldiers had to confront the conflicts each twenty-four hours. The landscape doesn T alteration much. For yearss and yearss you see merely about nil.
It s unfamiliar-always unfamiliar. Even when you go back to the same topographic point, it s unfamiliar. And it makes you experience as though, good, there s nil left in the universe but this.
( Page 36, Home From the War ) . Surviving in these conditions and seeing several dead organic structures each twenty-four hours ( sometimes cognizing who the organic structures belonged to ) was terribly rough for these 19, 20 twelvemonth olds.In some positions Vietnam was a triumph for communism and a licking for the United States. The Soviet Union and the United States have had struggles over Southeast Asia for decennaries. The South East Asiatic states are largely wanted for their natural stuff and their agribusiness South East Asia is the alleged rice Bowl which helps to feed the dumbly populated part that extends from India to Japan. It is rich in many natural stuffs, such as Sn, oil, gum elastic, and Fe ore.
It offers industrial Japan potentially of import markets and beginnings of natural stuffs. This country besides has great strategic value. Southeast Asia is astride the most direct and best developed sea and air paths between the control of Southeast Asia. ( Page 20, The Vietnam War )We fail miserably to understand the people, civilizations and histories of other states. In the Vietnam War there was really small communicating between the United States and the Vietnamese forces and Vietnamese citizens.
These two states were merely unfamiliar with each other. All US officials-those who needed to cognize most-lived in small Americas Villas or compounds fenced in with biting wire and defence stations. The most blazing signifiers of racism were spawned in a them against us attitude shared by about every American.
Small or no regard was of all time shown by the aliens to Vietnamese imposts, traditions, spiritual beliefs or values. ( Page 155 The Vietnam War )I think that after the Vietnam war the attack of the United States to other states changed. The United States policy became less involved in some of the international affairs and I believe that this is due to better apprehension of the different civilizations.The Vietnam War drastically changed the class of American History. The American policies on foreign personal businesss, domestic political relations, and cultural and societal history were greatly changed by this event.
For many, the Vietnam War and the struggle, alterations, and divisions it caused in the United States is the specifying event of the ulterior portion of this century. Twenty old ages subsequently, we still see and experience the effects of the war. At the terminal we try to calculate out the errors we made and seek non to reiterate them.
Fortunately, the Vietnam War had some positive impacts on the policy and the attitude of the United States indoors and outside the state.
