Viet Cong

The story of JFK and the Vietnam War cannot be told without first telling the story of the political development before the war even was a possibility. At the end of World War 2 The United States no longer had to wage war against the Germans and the Japanese. Instead, The United States began to keep a watchful eye on their World War 2 ally in the Siberian North: Russia. After the fall of Nazi Germany, the Russian and American armies met for the first time on April 25, 1945, at the Elbe River in…

military as a gesture of confidence and good faith, which ultimately lead to the downfall of stability in the region ("Fall of Saigon," 2006, p. 1). With the transition of Saigon security to South Vietnam the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and the Viet Cong (VC) began planning in earnest for a large scale attack intended to show the people the control they had. The communist army had been repeatedly defeated in the South since the battle of the Ia Drang Valley in 1965 leading to desperate…

The Vietnamese conflict which gradually evolved after WW2 came about through Vietnamese nationalism born of European colonialism and the emergence of American hegemony. European born imperialism transformed and aggravated Vietnamese nationalism which spurred on and enflamed the on-going conflict between South and North Vietnam. Vietnamese nationalism was harnessed by the leaders of resistance against colonial powers such as Ho Chi Minh. Ho’s ideology was developed from sides of Marxism due to…

One of the longest and bloodiest conflicts in American history, was the Vietnam War. Fighting in Vietnam continued for decades before the Americans eventually interfered. Between the neighboring Chinese and the colonial French, the Vietnamese have continuously fought off foreigners with tenacity and fearlessness. Over 3 million people died and Vietnam become a communist nation, despite American intervention(Vietnam War, History). Due to these disastrous results, it would be expected that most…

Brutal, lengthy, and traumatizing are all words that can be used to describe the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War, which spanned from November 1, 1955 to April 30, 1975, was a conflict between the Communist North Vietnam (and their ally the Viet Cong) and South Vietnam (and their ally the United States of America). In the film “The Fog of War”, former United States Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara explains the lessons America learned from the changes made during and after the war. In 1965, the…

The twentieth-century Americans waged war not only against Communist Vietnam, but also their government in the fight to end the war. The beginning of the war in Vietnam had Americans proud that their country was fighting for what was right against the Communists, but society 's opinion changed over the course of the war. The American people’s opinions shifted because soldiers were killing civilians, the draft was prejudiced, nothing was being done about equality at home, and the people lost…

Former heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson commented that,“I came to see that I was a fighter and he was history” (Remnick 299). Patterson and Ali were rivals in boxing and even had personal conflict, but even he could see that Muhammad Ali was more than a boxer because he was a nonconformist committed to breaking the expectations that society put upon him. He was one of the first public figures to speak out against the draft for the Vietnam War, he was a member of the nation of Islam, and he…

The Vietnam War had segments that were broadcasted on television. The broadcasted events of the Tet Offensive appalled America’s viewers. The widely circulated photo of a suspected Viet Cong being executed by General Nguyen Ngoc Loan was a well-known photo that showed the hostility of the Tet Offensive. The events during the Tet Offensive were the first to cause public opinion on the war to change overnight, “public opinion polls showed…

The Real Effects of War In his novel, Night, Elie Wiesel describes his experiences as a victim in a concentration camp during the Holocaust of World War II. The following passage illustrates one of the effects caused by war, emotional death, “Outside, the SS went by, shouting: ‘Throw out all of the dead! All corpses outside!’ The living rejoiced. There would be more room” (99). As indicated in the passage Elie Wiesel is recounting the celebration of dead people being disrespected. The idea of…

What defines a great decade? The 1970’s, according to some people, could possibly be named as “one of the best decades” of their lives. During the 1970’s, audiences around the world were able to experience the very first Star Wars film on May 25, 1977, the Vietnam War ended on April 30, 1975, disco became very popular in the late 70’s, the Concorde’s first flight took place on January 21, 1976, in London towards its descent to Paris, France, and summer became the “blockbuster” season for…