Summary Of Deliver Us From Evil By Tom Dooley

War is testament of military strength and a symbol of national identity, but it is also a testament of human cruelty. War is about casualties, objectives, enemies, and the narrations of people who were directly or indirectly involved with the conflict. War itself is complicated and it only gets more complicated from that point on with the involvement of politics, politicians, the media and the general public. There is no other war in American history that better exemplifies the above other than the Vietnam War. In fact, there was no other war that have caused Americans to reexamine the role and behavior of their country as much as the Vietnam War. In this essay, I will evaluate the official claims made by US officials with the realities of

In his book, Deliver Us From Evil, Dooley told stories about children who had chopsticks rammed into their ears because they were caught saying Lord’s Prayers by communist guards (Appy 14). This would have appealed to Americans because it is religious persecution and it paints the image of needy children in need of protection and that they too should be able to enjoy religious freedom like the US. Americans thought the US was fighting this war for a noble cause. In reality, these stories were not true nor was there any evidence of it actually happening (Appy 27). During Operation Passage to Freedom, more than 800,000 people were transported from North Vietnam to the South where they would be free (Appy 1). It was really just meant to mislead the public into thinking that there is Catholic majority in Vietnam that needs to be saved by throwing out a big number. It was also a way to help build support for Ngo Diem Phu in the South since he was

The Domino Theory essentially says that if one country became communist, then the nations around it would too turn communist (Appy, Creating and “Saving” South Vietnam). The US did not want Vietnam to become a communist country because it would be seen as a threat to US prestige and power. In a sense, the US prestige was already damaged when they has failed to prevent China from becoming a communists country. The US was not going to let Vietnam follow the footsteps of China and if Vietnam were to “fall” to communism as well, then it is almost certain that nearby countries like Laos and Cambodia would fall as well.

All of this feeds into the idea of American exceptionalism. American exceptionalism is a set of beliefs that Americans uphold to be true and that is the US is the greatest nation in the world since they emerged from World War II better than all the other nations, that their country had a moral duty to perform and is always pro-human rights (Appy, The Vietnam War and American Exceptionalism). US officials wanted to fight the Vietnam War under such a pretense, but it was never about moral duty, it was about keeping a free market in Southeast