Anti-Vietnam War Essay, Research Paper

The Vietnam war. It changed the lives of many people, eliminated those of others. For those back in America, the hardship was felt as their sons died overseas. In Vietnam, the hardship was felt as their sons and daughters died right in front of their faces as they fled to safety. From pictures that I ve seen, some of the kids looked so pitiful from suffering before they died, one would think that death was a better alternative to what they were facing. This war was a person changing experience. With all the horrible pain and gore the soldiers had to see and endure, they could never be the people they once were. The Vietnam War took its toll on the American soldiers. When they returned

home, they were different people. They didn t look the same, they didn t act the same, they weren t the same. Some could not hold on to their sanity in light of what they had seen and been through.

The Vietnam War is one of the most disgraceful periods in American history. Not only did the greatest superpower in the world get beaten by an almost third-world nation, but we lost badly. The Vietnam War was a brutal war that affected millions of people in many different countries. All wars start because their is a difference in people s opinions, and the Vietnam War was no different. One mistake was that the U.S. should have done everything in its power to win the war as quickly as possible. The U.S. was obligated by the Truman Doctrine to contain communism. Truly the best way to contain it would be to defeat it. If only they had sent a massive force into enemy territory, they could have bombed the North Vietnamese thoroughly and invaded their country with extreme force. This would have the potential to end the war more quickly and save American lives, and the success of the victory.

The Vietnam war was quite different from other wars. For example, in WWII, the average age of the boys/men that fought was 26. In the Vietnam war, the average age was 19. In other wars, a threat usually sparked the fighting. Vietnam had never threatened the United States. The fighting casualties were far more than those in WWII.

Some of the statistics about the war are surprising: For example, 0.5 percent of Vietnam veterans have ever gone to prison. Another surprising fact is that 2/3 of the people that fought in the Vietnam War were drafted, whereas only 1/3 of the people that fought in WWII were drafted. There were 58,148 deaths in the Vietnam War. The average age for those deaths was 23 years. The oldest man killed was 62. And five 16 year-olds died. The war cost ate up nearly a fifth of our nation s budget–at a rate of two billion dollars a month.

The Vietnam War changed the lives of many people, and it eliminated others’. It was quite different from other wars in many different ways. Some say that it was a “good” war, and others say it was “bad.” I say that war is hell and that any war is a bad war.