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Summary Of Deliver Us From Evil By Tom Dooley

1754 Words8 Pages

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 …show more content…

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 …show more content…

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

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In A Viet Cong Memoir, we receive excellent first hands accounts of events that unfolded in Vietnam during the Vietnam War from the author of this autobiography: Truong Nhu Tang. Truong was Vietnamese at heart, growing up in Saigon, but he studied in Paris for a time where he met and learned from the future leader Ho Chi Minh. Truong was able to learn from Ho Chi Minh’s revolutionary ideas and gain a great political perspective of the conflicts arising in Vietnam during the war. His autobiography shows the readers the perspective of the average Vietnamese citizen (especially those involved with the NLF) and the attitudes towards war with the United States. In the book, Truong exclaims that although many people may say the Americans never lost on the battlefield in Vietnam — it is irrelevant.

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In Martin Luther King Jr's passionate speech about America's involvement in Vietnam, he manages to create a strong and compelling argument that America's involvement in unjust . He does this by appealing to certain issues the public see as important, using irony, and using diction and tone in persuasive ways. Martin Luther King Jr says in his first paragraph that,"It seemed as if there was a real promise fr hope... to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destruction suction tube." Here, Martin Luther King Jr is getting the audience emotionally and completely invested by showing the effect of America in Vietnam on their lives. The audience now feel as though this is very important because it has to do with regular poor people and t effects them as well.

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Thousands of Americans soldiers died in Vietnam. The war had cost so much that President Johnson was forced to cancel multiple programs including his social reform program. America had failed to contain communism and many people lost confidence in our country. It was nearly 20 years before America again tried to police the world. However, the domino affect was proved wrong because the loss of South Vietnam to communism did not immediately effect what happened in governments of other countries.

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It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio; fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms. I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.” This ideology, in conjunction with Eisenhower’s Domino Theory gave the nation’s leaders the impetus to become involved in the Vietnam War. World War II was definitively a just war, and initially, Americans perceived the Vietnam War as a just war too, supporting those Vietnamese who were resisting a communist regime.

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The Vietnam war took a major death toll in Vietnam, United States, South Korea, Thailand, New Zealand, and Australia. Just in the U.S., “more than 58,000 American soldiers were killed while more than 150,000 others wounded”. On both sides, there were almost 2 million civilians dead and 1.1 simply on the Vietnamese side. The My Lai Massacre, where soldiers brutally killed Vietnamese children and mothers, presents an example where the war mentally changed the soldiers in the war in a very horrendous way. On the other hand, the United States took brutal losses in the Tet Offensive, where the Vietcong slaughtered over 100 towns and twelve United States air bases.

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The Vietnam War was a war the United States should have never been involved in. The “Domino Theory” was a direct cause of the war. The war resulted in much death; innocent civilians and young Americans were killed. The Vietnam war also resulted in rioting, distrust for the United States government, and the loss of many lives. 58,000 Americans were killed and 300,000 were wounded.

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According to Martin Luther King 's opinion over the Vietnam War it hurt both the poor and Vietnamese. As he has said “I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam”. The war claims to fight for the freedom of the Vietnamese but the government can’t even secure freedom for it’s poor and african american homes. Also the methods going about freeing Vietnam with violence won 't work as “...Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems”. Shown by the Kent State Shootings you can’t even protest Vietnam without being met with force.

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