Vietnam:  Understanding the War





  Outline

  I.  Introduction

 II.  Common questions asked regarding the Vietnam War.

III.  Answers to Questions.

 IV.  Additives and Information regarding the War.

  V.  Elaborations by politicians and journalists regarding the          War.

 VI.  Conclusion

 Imagine this, a young boy about 10 years old comes home from school and asks,"Daddy, what
 was the Vietnam War?"  The father is at a loss of words to explain to his son the basics of
 the Vietnam War.  Not because of his lack of knowledge about the War itself, but moreover
 because of his inability to express his thoughts into words.  What should he do?  Should he
 take the time and attempt to give his son a rhetorical answer that both evades the question
 while at the same time satisfies his query?  Or, should he just take a trip down to the
 nearest Blockbuster Video and rent a movie such as Platoon, or Full Metal Jacket.  Well,
 what do parents and teachers in general tell the young people of our society about Vietnam,
 the ones who weren't born until after the U.S. withdrawal?  Yes, this is a tricky question
 that must be handled with ca	Well, what are some of the questions that the young people
 want to know?  Some of these Questions include:  What was the cause?  When was the war? 
 How many Americans were killed?  What countries fought in the war?  and, Who won?1  These
 questions express a simple, straightforward interest into the basic make-up of the War.  It
 may also be surprising that this strain of questions may be answered very effectively by a
 small spectrum of facts regarding the Vietnam War by well-informed people who took part
 i	The first thing that young people of the present generation should know is that the
 United States never fielded better armies than those that participated in Vietnam.2  The
 trouble was political in a sense and in another sense came from the upsurge of radicalism
 that swept the country and caused a lot of people to try to disrupt the war effort.3  We
 were in Vietnam for the same reason we had been in Korea:  to stop the spread of Communism,
 particularly in areas of vital interest to the United States.  Thel use of the area in case
 of a widespread international confrontation.5  Secondly, what about the role of the news
 media in the War?  What about it?  For example, people often remark that television
 affected the outcome of the War by making the home audience so conscious of the horrors of
 war that large segments of the population marched in the streets to protest it.  It's true
 that many people protested the war on the home front, for many diverse reasons, some based
 on a concern for war or for Vietnam, others for more personal or self-serving reasons.6 
 But, television almosthowed us war (though not its horrors) and turned the audience against
 it.  To some extent, in the safe banality of its coverage (especially in the early years),
 television banalized war and made it seem okay, manageable, winnable." What was a downfall
 of the U.S. cause?  Well, first the U.S. government was unwilling or unable to articulate
 effectively goals and objectives for our involvement in Vietnam, thus failing to mobilize
 public support for this sacrifice.  Second, the government failed to realize that Dau
 Tranh8 had both military and political applications and that the Vietnamese Communists gave
 equal weight to both sides of this situation.  Third, once committed to sacrifice, we did
 not fight to win because of political conschina conflict is that the nations that won the
 war have lost the peace.10 Geography was a decisive factor in the War.  Geography and
 political constraints made an allied victory impossible under the ground rules that were in
 effect between 1965 and 1973.  Hanoi was able to use Laos and Cambodia freely to reinforce
 the southern battlefield, always protected by U.S. self-constraints.  It was in actuality
 an Indochina war, as seen from Hanoi, if not seen from Washington.  United States forces
 were not allowed to block the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos and Cambodia.  Consequently, as
 l	Why did the U.S. get involved in the war?  Well, our original motives were good:  to help
 the South Vietnamese preserve their independence and freedom from Communist aggression. 
 But our strategy was flawed, our Saigon ally corrupt and incompetent.12  "America's motives
 in Vietnam were entirely honorable:  to help defend a society under attack.  We were not
 there as imperialists or colonialists.  We simply wanted to prevent an admittedly imperfect
 system and society from being changed by force into a tota	So, What lessons were learned
 from the Vietnam experience?  The United States learned in Vietnam that there are limits to
 its power and that to exceed those limits invites tragic consequences.  Another principal
 lesson of the Vietnam War is that the United States should not intervene in other countries
 with military forces unless that country is a serious threat to our own security.  We
 should not use military force to dictate the political system of another country-especially
 small countries that wish to	In Conclusion, what have we now to tell the young people of
 the country when they ask these hard-to-answer questions about the War that has longed to
 be forgotten by the American people?  We have these answers to give them; answers that are
 neither out- of-the-blue statements to stop the person from asking, nor are they concocted
 from a Vietnam War movie.  They are real facts, straight from the mouth of the
 most-involved persons from that era.  However, are we, the elders and the parents, just the
 hypothe    1Bill McCloud, "What Should We Tell Our Children About Vietnam?" American
 Heritage, IXL (May/June, 1988),56.
    2Ibid.,p.57
    3John Franks, Vietnam: Causes and Resolutions (Princeton, N.J.:  Princeton University,
    1975), 3. 4John Kaplan and Jon R. Waltz, The Reason:  A View On the Vietnam War (New
    York:  Macmillan, 1983), p.27. 5McCloud, p.57. 6Ibid. 7Ibid., p.58. 8Vietnamese for
    "struggle" 9Kaplan and Waltz, p.33. 10McCloud, p.58. 11Martin Deutsh, A Small Geographic
    Explanation of the Vietnam War (New York:  H.W. Wilson, 1976), p.4. 12Kaplan and Waltz,
    p.29 13McCloud, p.68.  Quote by Peter R. Kann, Reporter for The Wall Street Journal in
    Vietnam, 1967-68. 14McCloud, p.64.
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