Hi, need some help with the Vietnam war in the american eye?
444663
Well you see... there were vietnamese people... and we killed a lot of them.  Then they killed a lot of us.  Much like iraq, we should have just turned their country into a charred black rock in east asia.  i mean, after all... the winners of the wars are the ones who write the history books.
711187
well it was on the t.v. up close & personal, I will carry those images with me till I die. other than the casualty lies we REALLY saw the Vietnam war, we saw those flag draped coffins too, I believe it should still be that way, Americans should see the cost of war in blood & death, this sanitized conflict is no good, the people are disconnected from it, the coverage of the Vietnam war was reallity, that is NOT a bad thing.
597452
Well Vietnam was stopped by adequate media coverage of it's failures. Perhaps it needs to be made more clear in the public eye that the events taking place, caused by our countries, is not serving to suit the needs of all people involved. I do not believe that the majority of people that do not live in the countries that this war is taking place are fully aware of the severity of the situation. They need to be made aware. Once they understand the extent of damage that is being caused, which is totally unjustified, they will be motivated into seeing that something is done about it.\nAnd if the Americans are fighting for freedom, what do you think the Iraqis, sorry, 'insurgents' are fighting for? The right to be opressed? I don't think so. They are fighting for control of their own country which does not belong to America.\nAnd if it's true that the reason America came in to Iraq was to free the people from Saddam, why are they not free now? Why was Saddam allowed to torture his people for 25 years, actively being supported by the American government a decade or two ago.\nAnd if America is so tough on dictators why did they put Pinochet in place?\nCan anyone answer that?\nI prey the more soldiers see the light and the web of lies they are trapped in.
879242
Nixon has been one of the best president the US had together with Reagan in the last 50 years. Honorable peace? You think that by leaving the South Vietnamese helpless, it's a honorable peace that he has achieved? The pressure from the American public was too big and he had to withdraw. But, was the cause just? What did the North achieve? What were they fighting for? Communism? Where is that communism now? The American cause was a cause that was right and in the end it has proved that it were the North Vietnamese who have for something that they now do not believe... So many lives lost.... Is that honorable?
589945
Write a detailed description of whta it would be like to be in the jungle of Vietnam with napalm and agent orange and the Vietcong. Incorporate some story with characters and make the battle and death pertinent to a main character. Or you could write it from the perspective of a Vietnamese child or a member of the Vietcong. You'll have to do a little bit of research about the roles of the things I mentioned in order to make it true to the Vietnam War history.
536608
There were two great empires (the Soviet Empire & the American empire) and these empires had the ability to completely destroy each other, so they couldn't fight each other directly. But they could fight over out lying territories, and so Vietnam became te battle ground for the Americans to fight the Soviets.\n\nExcept that we weren't actually fighting the Soviets. We were fighting Vietnames people, so that explanation doesn't really make any sense. Gosh, maybe we shouldn't have been there and the whole thing was a huge mistake. Oops.
1000150
Gee i seem to understand that America had a few problems ourselves after the revolution.  I mean like a previous answerer stated Germany and Japan were not fixed overnight.  The biggest difference between Iraq and Vietnam is that in Vietnam the Democrats would not let the military fight to win, but were more interested in making money on our dead 58,000 American soldiers than doing what needed to be done to help democracy succeed, but now the Republicans, much to the anger of the liberals, have turned the conflict over to the military so that they can do what they need to in order to win.  In wartime someone always makes money, but something you need to keep in mind is that most of the major conflicts America has been involved in the Democrats have squarely planted us in them.  You are so concerned with getting us out of Iraq, and so worried about the soldiers dying there, because Bush got us there, but you have said nothing about the American, and allied troops that still get into firefights in Bosnia!!!  Clinton put us there 11 years ago, and we still rotate troops there, but no says anything about Clinton's screwup!!  If you are going to ask these kind of questions, then at least have the balls, and intestinal fortitude to ask about ALL the places AMERICAN troops are dying in!!!!!
738727
Even though I support trade, and full diplomatic recognition of Vietnam.....there's a lot of unanswered questions.\n\nMia's need to be accounted for.....BEFORE we have full ties to Vietnam. The Vietnam conflict was a somber tale in our history. The brave Americans that died there need to be brought home.
327116
It wasn't all that different from Iraq.  The US decided that we wanted to prevent communist domination, in this case of S. Vietnam.  We said it was to help freedom and democracy, but it was really about a power struggle.  So like the freedom fighters we are, we stuck or noses in to prevent S. Vietnam from Northern invasion.  However, the North had their own supporters like Russia.  As the war lingered on and the draft was forcing young men to fight a war that wasn't directly threatening our national security, a lot of people disagreed...many innocent victims, us and them.  War heros returned to an unpopular welcoming.  The famous boxer Mohammed Ali refused to go and they took his title away from him.  The whole thing sucked.  Not too many guys really wanted to go and many moved to Canada, if their number was picked.  Hippies protested with peace signs while the smoked grass and dropped acid.  I missed a lot of this...a bit young, but I know other guys that were there.  It was no picnic.  One buddy of mine was so ready to fight.  He was #1 in boot camp, ready to storm the beach.  He got his wish, first off the boat, stepped on a mine, blew his face off, lost an eye, half a nose, half a mouth, a bunch of hair, and a little brains, while Nixon and Kissinger watched this whole thing go down the toilet.  It was a stalemate.  Rambo couldn't do it justice.  We finally bailed out.
345383
I assume your Dad was with this unit?\nName:  Bill Bouckaert  \n\nEmail Address: bbilljb@aol.com\n\nDate: 10/03/05\n\nComments: My name is Bill Bouckaert. I was in country from 2/67 till2/68. I was the Commo man for the whole year I was there. Sgt Torre was the Commo Sgt. 66 was our APC,  Rosemarys  Baby. Most of my time was spent at Blackhorse.\nI met a lot of great guys, I enjoy reading all the communication from friends from 30= years ago.\nGod Bless\n\nI hope this will be of some help for you! Our Vietnam Troops served proudly and certainly did not deserve the treatment that some of them recieved when they came home\n\nAn excellent site where you can find any and all info on Vietnam is: http://members.aol.com/TeacherNet/Vietnam.html#Images\n\nAnother site I enjoyed/there are a lot of photos on this site too! :\nhttp://www.woodlot.com/vietnam/html/photo.cfm
535810
There was no official start to Viet Nam war. It started back in about 1954 for the United States, that is about the time that the French pulled out. They had come to the conclusion that it was to costly and a lost cause. We sent advisers in at first. Kennedy continued with the advisers and Johnson Sent in the most troupes to actually fight the war that was about 1964 or 1965 Nixon got us out of there finally about 1973 or 1974, those are as close as I can come to dates from memory.
386013
I did serve on active duty for several years, and was honorably discharged.  Thanks to Ronald Reagan, most of my generation never saw war up close and personal.\nIt's a shame that yours did, thanks to Lyndon Johnson.  Since you were part and parcel of our involvement in Vietnam, I can understand why you are anti-war and lean slightly to the left.\nWe need to learn to pick and choose our battles with more care.  In the last 15 years or so, we have become militarily involved in a lot of places in the world that are not vital to our interests.\nWe should be the friend of freedom everywhere, but the guarantor only of our own.\nThis does not mean that we need to retreat from the world.  The "Pax Americana" does bring tangible benefits to the world, as did the "Pax Britannica" and "Pax Romana" before it.  But we don't have to be responsible for righting every wrong or curing every illness!  Take up the "White Man's Burden"?  No thanks, I'm not a racist!\nPresident Washington had it right: We should avoid entangling alliances.\n(P.S. Thank you for your service.  I'm pretty sure no one ever thanked you after you got back from Vietnam.  "Semper Fi" from an ex-Navy man!)
408998
I would contact the VFW in your area Veterans of Foreign Wars, or The American Legion, or your nearest veterans center.........good luck
859919
As an American living in Vietnam see this war is a tragic mistake, we are mired down in a quagmire, much worse than in the Vietnam War. You should see the poor people here with legs and arms missing begging on the street. Total Vietnamese killed about 300,000 no idea how many wounded. Our brave shoulders 55,000 and how many wounded. In Iraq they estimate 650,000 dead. For our brave 2,200 plus young boys that have died for a lost cause, hope Bush and his cronies sleep well.  America has a civil war going,  feel It's time the leadership of this country admit to their blunder, and lets go home.
364721
The Causes of the Vietnam War\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\nAndrew J. Rotter\n\nMost American wars have obvious starting points or precipitating causes: the Battles of Lexington and Concord in 1775, the capture of Fort Sumter in 1861, the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, and the North Korean invasion of South Korea in June 1950, for example. But there was no fixed beginning for the U.S. war in Vietnam. The United States entered that war incrementally, in a series of steps between 1950 and 1965. In May 1950, President Harry S. Truman authorized a modest program of economic and military aid to the French, who were fighting to retain control of their Indochina colony, including Laos and Cambodia as well as Vietnam. When the Vietnamese Nationalist (and Communist-led) Vietminh army defeated French forces at Dienbienphu in 1954, the French were compelled to accede to the creation of a Communist Vietnam north of the 17th parallel while leaving a non-Communist entity south of that line. The United States refused to accept the arrangement. The administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower undertook instead to build a nation from the spurious political entity that was South Vietnam by fabricating a government there, taking over control from the French, dispatching military advisers to train a South Vietnamese army, and unleashing the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to conduct psychological warfare against the North.\n\nPresident John F. Kennedy rounded another turning point in early 1961, when he secretly sent 400 Special Operations Forces-trained (Green Beret) soldiers to teach the South Vietnamese how to fight what was called counterinsurgency war against Communist guerrillas in South Vietnam. When Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, there were more than 16,000 U.S. military advisers in South Vietnam, and more than 100 Americans had been killed. Kennedy's successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, committed the United States most fully to the war. In August 1964, he secured from Congress a functional (not actual) declaration of war: the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. Then, in February and March 1965, Johnson authorized the sustained bombing, by U.S. aircraft, of targets north of the 17th parallel, and on 8 March dispatched 3,500 Marines to South Vietnam. Legal declaration or no, the United States was now at war.\n\nThe multiple starting dates for the war complicate efforts to describe the causes of U.S. entry. The United States became involved in the war for a number of reasons, and these evolved and shifted over time. Primarily, every American president regarded the enemy in Vietnam--the Vietminh; its 1960s successor, the National Liberation Front (NLF); and the government of North Vietnam, led by *Ho Chi Minh--as agents of global communism. U.S. policymakers, and most Americans, regarded communism as the antithesis of all they held dear. Communists scorned democracy, violated human rights, pursued military aggression, and created closed state economies that barely traded with capitalist countries. Americans compared communism to a contagious disease. If it took hold in one nation, U.S. policymakers expected contiguous nations to fall to communism, too, as if nations were dominoes lined up on end. In 1949, when the Communist Party came to power in China, Washington feared that Vietnam would become the next Asian domino. That was one reason for Truman's 1950 decision to give aid to the French who were fighting the Vietminh,\n\nTruman also hoped that assisting the French in Vietnam would help to shore up the developed, non-Communist nations, whose fates were in surprising ways tied to the preservation of Vietnam and, given the domino theory, all of Southeast Asia. Free world dominion over the region would provide markets for Japan, rebuilding with American help after the Pacific War. U.S. involvement in Vietnam reassured the British, who linked their postwar recovery to the revival of t
77247
First of all, let me say how sorry I am for your loss. As a combat Viet-Nam veteran of some twenty (20) months I know a little about the numerous questions you must have, at this most difficult time. If I may say, this is not the forum from which to seek the answers you must so desperately need. My advice to you would be to go directly to the horses mouth, so to speak. Contact the Bureau of Veteran's Affairs in your local area, you'll be on the right track then, with out getting wrong information and without shareing your grief with half the internet.    veteranpainter@yahoo.com
200778
http://www.waronhunger.org\nhttp://www.wfp.org\nhttp://www.19centsaday.org/\n\nYou can help. Start today