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The Role Of Us Involvement In The Vietnam War Essay

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Nearly 60,000 Americans lost their lives in Vietnam without a true reason why (Relin, 1990, p. 1). In war, all lives are at stake. America’s decision making is crucial to determine who will live and who will die. America is one of the biggest politicians of war with the most military power. It has been a debate in the U.S. on how much we should intervene. Some believe the United States is responsible to stop the war and suffering in foreign counties. Others think the U.S. should avoid foreign situations unless they threaten the homeland. Either way, the morale and physical responsibilities fall in the hands of the government (Relin, 1990).
The U.S. has a long history of intervening in faraway conflicts that pose no immediate threat to American …show more content…

A total of 150 billion dollars worth of supplies and artillery was used to try and beat the Vietnamese (Relin, 1990, p. 1) Vietnam was facing a communism takeover. The Cold War was going on and America was terrified of communism. For a while, the U.S. had sided with France and was just paying for their military expenses. They then decided to take the war upon themselves. In 1964, President Johnson announced that Vietcong had attacked U.S. ships. This allowed the President and Congress the permission to go ahead with war. This event, however, has little to no proof of it even happening. In 1965, the U.S. Air Force conducted roughly 5500 bombing missions a month on North Vietnamese. The goal was to break the Vietcong’s will to fight. In the end, it only killed many enemy soldiers as well as thousands of civilians. The war never ended in a victory, but more with a mutual draw. In 1970, Richard Nixon would bring the majority of soldiers home. Millions of people died in this war whether they were involved or not. This creates debate on whether this war should have happened. Because people’s lives are at stake, America must make the right decisions during war (Relin,

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The war just showed signs of failure. The government put such a great amount of work into there lies only for every one of the certainties to turn out later. Nothing the government said we could trust. The armed force influenced it to appear as though it was Nobel thing they were doing by assaulting Vietnam the way they did however it wasn't at all courageous. The grim pictures showed in document 7 showed more than enough to show the citizens that America went to Vietnam causing mass terror on civilians."

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The broadcasts showed the American people that what the government was telling them was very different from the ground reality, and despite the many promises and assurances from the government on the swift victory, it there was no sign of that happening. This made the public become very skeptical about the statements being made by the government and caused massive damage to its credibility among the public. This started to lead to a disapproval of the war and calls to stop the continuation of the war began coming up. The image of the self-immolation of a Buddhist monk in 1963 to protest Diem government as well as the eight Americans that set themselves ablaze to protest the war within five years from 1965-1970 generated a very strong response and triggered an urgent alarm among the American public about the horrors of the war and they started staging protests to stop it, especially during the aftermath of the 1965 bombing policy Operation Rolling Thunder to blast Hanoi. These protests eventually reached massive numbers with the march on the Pentagon in 1963, the largest protest in decades, drawing up to 50,000 protestors coming from different groups to stop the

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