Abstract The paper discusses the manner in which WWI, WWII and the VietnamWars have changed America. The paper discusses how the wars changed society, how these changes were resisted and what the long term domestic results of the wars were on America. The paper places emphasis not on the conflicts themselves but on the evolving and lasting changes they each had upon society, politically, culturally and economically. The paper looks at each war chronologically and discusses aspects of domestic change. An annotated bibliography is included with the paper.
From the Paper "The period preceding the entrance of the US into WWI was a period known as the progressive era, the era was marked with demonstrative social change regarding the individual. Many changes were in progress and the general feeling of progressive thinkers was of social peace and individual prosperity and social service networks to support those in the economy who could not do so given the current state of employment, an often low paid sporadic and difficult condition. Political isolation also marked the day with a strong sense of independence and self realization. The progressive era was in direct response to the extreme disparity seen in class divisions associated with the industrial revolution."
Abstract This paper explains that the conquest and colonialization by France of Vietnam began by using the Catholic Church and their missionaries as an advance party to eliminate the threat to France's other vast southeast Asia holdings and ended with France's embarrassing military defeat in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu. The author points out that the nationalist movement arose in Vietnam in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and gained momentum during the Japanese occupation of World War II; after the end of World War II, the Vietminh party (the League for the Independence of Vietnam, a coalition of nationalists and Communist groups), headed by Ho Chi Minh, established a republic with its capital at Hanoi. The paper relates that President Truman, not President Kennedy, were the first leader to entangle the U.S. in the Vietnamese malaise because Truman actually sent military forces to set up missions in Indochina to protect the United Nations troops in Korea from being attacked by Communists from both China and North Vietnam.
Table of Contents
Introduction and Thesis
The True Beginning and the Reasons Therefore
The Geography and History of Early Vietnam Religion and French Imperialism in Vietnam World War II and Post WarVietnam up to 1954
The French Indochina War The Geneva Accords and U. S. Involvement
From the Paper "The first European missionary executed in the Vietnamese Central capital of Hue was Frenchman Francois Isidore Gagelin. This of course was a public and highly publicized event wherein the Good Father Gagelin was publicly strangled. Not hanged mind you but strangled with two beefy hands of a huge Vietnamese executioner. This incident happened in the late 1830s and stuck in the minds of both the Catholic Church and the French government."
Abstract The paper explores the VietnamWar from the vantage point provided by a website named "VietnamWar". The paper focuses on the way that the VietnamWar impacted and affected culture and societal perceptions in the United States. The paper highlights the intense debate, confusion and discord that were taking place in American society at the time. The paper demonstrates how major events like the VietnamWar have a far-reaching and profound impact on society and its future.
Outline:
Introduction
Choice of Website
The VietnamWar American Society and the VietnamWar
From the Paper "The fact that 58, 000 American soldiers were killed during the Vietnam War was one central aspect of the war's impact on society. This fact was to lead to the criticisms of the war from within the country. Coupled with this was the public knowledge that between one and two million Vietnamese were killed during the war."
"The Web site concisely and comprehensively describes the complex historical causes of the war from a political point of view. "The Vietnam War was in many ways a direct successor to the French Indochina War, sometimes referred to as the First Indochina War, in which the French fought to maintain control of their colony in Indochina against an independence movement led by Communist Party leader Ho Chi Minh. " (Vietnam War)"
Abstract This paper explains that the roots of the VietnamWar (1961-1975) really began with the fall of the French Colonial Empire at Dien Bien Phu, when the Americans became involved in the greatest war debacle in U.S. history. The author points out that this secret war was being conducted mainly by the Central Intelligence Agency and its founding Director Allen Dulles, the Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and President Dwight David Eisenhower. The paper explains that this war started when Ho Chi Min, the Communist strong man in Hanoi and founder of Viet-Cong, and Ngo Dinh Diem, president of South Vietnam, who had the full backing of the United States' assets, got involved in a gorilla war, which escalated into the VietnamWar from which Ho brought the United States to their knees in disgrace.
From the Paper "With the abrupt fall of the Japanese Empire in August of 1945, Ho Chi Minh seizes his opportunity. Using the established Viet Minh, formally known as Vietnam Doc Lap Dong Minh or The League for the Independence of Vietnam, Ho established at the 8th Plenum at Pac Bo, in May of 1941, as his tool. In September 1945, Ho Chi Minh declares Vietnam's independence in Hanoi. Surprisingly there is little to no opposition to his declaration and he feels confident his organizational structures and skills are sound. So confident, in fact, Ho goes to Paris in 1946 to negotiate the separation from France personally with his staff of advisors."
Abstract This paper explains that President Richard Nixon's strategy for the VietnamWar was "peace with honor". The author relates that Nixon's 1969 policy of the "Vietnamization" of the war meant the handing over of the responsibility of fighting to the South Vietnamese in order to protect their own country. The paper points out that this "Vietnamization" policy was a success domestically in the U.S. but was certainly a failure for South Vietnam. The author concludes that, although Nixon's strategies were thoughtful and not without solid footing, the time was too late to mend things in Vietnam; however, he did manage to reduce greatly the number of American casualties and the U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
From the Paper "Nixon also attempted more diplomatic ways to achieve peace with honor. One was that of meeting with the Great Powers: China and the Soviet Union. In 1971, Nixon met with China's Mao and Russia's Brezhnev and held talks. Behind the facade of Nixon's diplomacy was the underbelly of attempting to disillusion the Vietnamese by meeting peacefully with their supporter nations. This policy was somewhat successful in that Vietnam questioned the true stance of their communist allies, but it ended up coming to no avail."
Abstract This paper gives an historical overview of foreign intervention in Vietnam starting with the colonial occupation of Vietnam by the French. It details the Vietnamese revolution as a result of French rule (including the rise of Ho Chi Minh). It concentrates on the causes of the Vietnamese civil war and the later American Involvement in Vietnam.
From the Paper "Vietnam, bordered by China to the north, Laos to the west and northwest, and Cambodia (now Kampuchea) to the southwest, is an S-shaped country no bigger than the state of Florida. Vietnam occupies the eastern coast of the Indochinese Peninsula. For thousands of years the people of Vietnam have lived with constant foreign intervention and colonization (by the French)."
Tags: America, Vietnam, history, United, States, vietnam, war, French, civil
Abstract This paper explains that the American involvement and error in Vietnam and Vietnam's internal strife probably began toward the end of World War II when President Franklin D. Roosevelt failed to place Indochina under a United Nations trust and when President Harry Truman (1)permitted France to return to the former French Indochina and (2)initiated U.S. military aid to Indochina in May 1950. The author points out that President Johnson needed to create a "foreign aggressor"; thus North Vietnam became a "foreign" country enabling the United States to shift its focus from the intractable problems of the South. The paper states that it is important to acknowledge the possibility of ulterior motives for the retention of a American military presence in Vietnam long after even the U.S. leadership realized that involvement in this civil war was an error and a loss was possible.
From the Paper "Until 1965, North Vietnam had limited itself to training and sending Native Southerners to fight in the south. Roger Hilsman, former Assistant Secretary of the State for Far Eastern Affairs, predicted the effect of bombing on North Vietnamese policy: It would be well for the advocates of bombing and other "easy" solutions to such problems to remember that Hanoi's policy was not to infiltrate North Vietnamese into South Vietnam-the infilitrators have almost all been Southerners sympathetic to communism who went North in 1954. Hanoi has kept this self-imposed limitation partly to maintain the fiction that the origins of the fighting in South Vietnam were internal, but partly to minimize the risk of retaliation against their precious factories. Once the factories are gone, so is the deterrent."
Abstract This paper examines the lessons learned from the VietnamWar. It looks at the background of the French involvement in Vietnam and the role played by Chinese communists. Also examined are the VietnamWar as defining American culture and the U.S. evacuation from Vietnam.
Abstract This paper looks at the how the conceptions of masculinity in the 1960s influenced men to volunteer for the VietnamWar. The author hypothesizes that men then either felt that they needed to prove their masculinity or that they wanted to reinforce their pre-existing level of masculinity. The paper includes interviews with two individuals who served in the war. The author relates their family background, their experiences in the war and their reasons for wanting to join the war in Vietnam - a lot of which has to do with looking big and tough and proving their manliness. The paper also analyzes how family and cultural traditions of war service influenced some men to volunteer for Vietnam. The paper uses MLA style footnotes but does not include a works cited page.
From the Paper "Many men volunteered to serve during Vietnam for a wide variety of reasons like duty, patriotism, the GI Bill, societal pressures, or to bypass the draft. The prevailing gender ideology of the 1950s, that accentuated notions of gender roles, influenced men to either prove their masculinity (from their lack of) like Paul or to reinforce a preexisting masculine identity like Bradbury. In all cases mentioned, these men felt a pressured from society to prove their manliness. As an ideal, masculinity placed these men in harms way as they fought to prove themselves so that society would not condone them as cowards. Family traditions of war service masculinized war service."
Tags:war communism, gender roles, family values, cultural values
Abstract This paper attempts to estimate what the real total economic cost of the VietnamWar was to the United States. The paper concludes that a reasonable estimate of the economic impact of the VietnamWar on the American economy is that an entire year's worth of productive activity was used to fight the war.
From the Paper "The Vietnam War was the defining experience for a generation of Americans. Indeed, it is arguably one of the defining experiences of America as a whole in the Twentieth Century. Its impact on the men who fought there, the men (and women) who did not, the American military in general, American society and popular culture during and following the war has been well documented. However, it was not just a life changing experience for soldiers and protestors, or a force for social change, or even an inspiration for thousands of books and dozens of movies. War is not least an economic event. In addition to being a military defeat, a political blunder and a human tragedy, the Vietnam War was also an economic disaster."
Abstract In this article, the writer maintains that the war in Iraq and the Vietnamwar hold very similar foreign policy agendas, which rely on falsified intelligence information to enact pre-emptive war. The writer explains that the lack of presidential action to halt the War in Iraq further reveals the growing problems of war powers that allow nations, such as the United States, to attack smaller countries without reliable proofs of a threat. Further the writer notes that both president Bush and President Johnson invoke similarities in how war is created and enacted through poor intelligence and aggressive policies toward lesser nations.
From the Paper "In many ways, the instigation of war through fabricated intelligence was seen in the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which can also be seen in the false intelligence the United States used to launch a War in Iraq. In this manner, both of these wars offer examples of similar wars in that they were based on false intelligence and were preemptive in design. The historical background to the Vietnam conflict was brought on by the rise in anti-communist campaigns, such as those made by McCarthyism in the 50s."
This paper explains how the U.S. and Vietnam's misperceptions of each other affected the way they fought the war, mentioning the My Lai massacre and the affect this had on the way Vietnamese perceived the United States.
Abstract Because of the way the Americans fought this war, the Vietnamese had different perceptions or misperceptions of the United States. All of the assigned readings make this point valid. Many of the Vietnamese civilians saw the American soldiers as instruments for America's leaders wanting their war machine to defeat the North Vietnamese, not to help Vietnam, but just to win. American leaders were making their decisions by listening to certain people "who didn"t really know what they were dealing with.? This paper explains how the Americans misunderstood the Vietnamese and what went wrong when they tried to take over the fight between North and South Vietnam.
From the Paper "After reading the assigned books for this paper, I have come to the conclusion that the way the US fought this war was not very honorable. The American military leaders back in the United States did not know enough about what was really going on in Vietnam and as a direct result, they underestimated the power of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Regular Army. Herr makes this evident when he says ?there is a point of view that the United States got involved in the Vietnam War ... simply because we thought it would be easy.?1 "
Abstract This paper compares two viewpoints as to the reasoning behind the presence of the United States in the VietnamWar. It expands on the legacy of the Korean War. It also discusses the policy of containment of the Cold War. The author explores the Vietnam experience and U.S. goals.
From the Paper "In his book, "The Unfinished Journey" , William H Chafe generally takes the position that the reasons for the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War were purely for the reasons of containing the threat of Soviet expansion in ..."
Tags: containment, Cold War, American policy, Vietnam, Korean
This paper examines how the U.S. military policy of Vietnamization contributed significantly to the chaos and collapse of democratic and military structures and the eventual loss in the VietnamWar.
Abstract The first part of this paper examines the roots of American involvement in South Vietnam, as well as the American objectives in maintaining two separate Vietnamese nations. In the next part, the paper examines the origins of the policy of Vietnamization, tracing how this policy evolved through the terms of President Johnson to President Nixon. In this section, the paper also looks at how Vietnamization was enacted. The next section details how these Vietnamization policies ultimately proved insufficient in light of the North Vietnamese offensives from 1972 to the final offensive in 1975. In the last part, the paper concludes that Vietnamization failed not as a policy per se, but because Vietnamization failed to meet its own goals. The South Vietnamese armed forces were not yet equipped or trained to stave off their North Vietnamese opponents. This weakness was exacerbated by the fact that Vietnamization was enacted at the very time when the North Vietnamese armed forces were gaining strength in the countryside.
From the Paper "More than 25 years after the last helicopter lifted from the United States embassy in Saigon, the Vietnam War continues to cast a shadow on American history. Whether the preservation of South Vietnam was worth the human and financial costs to both the Americans and Vietnamese continues to be the subject of contentious debate.
The chaotic withdrawal of US forces in 1975 was a blow to the collective American psyche that had, until then, yet to experience such a failure. By then, the United States had spent an estimated $150 billion on the Vietnam War, wreaking havoc on its economy in the process. It had dropped seven million tons of bombs in both North and South Vietnam. The war had served as a divisive force, causing tense civil unrest throughout the country."
Tags:vietnam, war, america, north, south, democracy, nixon
Abstract A discussion of the effects of the VietnamWar on ideals of morality, rationality and logic. Examines how America had to completely rethink its ideals; explaining that the Americans saw a side of themselves that had previously thought extinguished by moral superiority. Several explorations of this phenomenon can be found in the literature that grew out of the Vietnam conflict. The paper provides a discussion of how the VietnamWar influenced and changes ideals of morality.
From the Paper "Kant here argues for the existence of a supreme moral law which exists as the sole extension of reason; he contends that the only purpose of reason is to define and create moral ethics, and thus the conclusion that any action is "moral" must be reached solely through reason itself. This idea, that reason dictates morals, has been one of the most influential philosophical ideas in western thought. It influenced strongly the great political theorists, including Locke and Voltaire, and was hailed as the New Ethics for the Enlightenment. Indirectly, it can even be said to have influenced strongly the two great revolutions (French and American), both of which resulted in nations which held that reason was the highest goal of humanity, and that morality could be defined by rational means."
