If I Die In A Combat Zone Analysis

In his book If I Die In A Combat Zone, Tim O'Brien shines a light on his time spent training and fighting in the Vietnam War. O’Brien makes it clear that he believes that the Vietnam War as a whole was unnecessary by attesting to the violence it brought, the lack of motivation of the soldiers, and the morals it brought into question. From the beginning of training to life in a non-combat position in the Vietnam War, O’Brien depicts and even sometimes argues against not only the unnecessary violence, but the frequent, unnecessary violence. This starts during his first days of basic training; after being selected to go on to advanced training, O’Brien describes the AIT training program as the declaration that solidifies the fact that you are on the way to the war, or as he puts its, the “pending doom” (57). This feeling of an inevitable demise was not exclusive to the United States either; it was the one of the first remarks O’Brien made about vietnam. He took a deep breath of the putrid smell of Vietnam and began to “ascribe …show more content…
This factor is what made the Vietnam war uniquely violent. The majority of deaths America faced were deaths that were brought upon themselves. Under the command of Captain Smith, the Alpha Company made an arguably futile expedition to sweep the villages in the My Khe area. On the way to the village they encountered enemy fire and ended up retreeting. During this, many died to various mines, and when added to the ones who were shot, a total of seventeen men in total died (155). A war- justified or not, will never go without kills; however, the biggest issue was that those men died for nothing. No battles were won, no progress was made, and in the end, Saigon still fell to