¶ … Vietnam War [...] what role the United States should have played in the Vietnam War.
role in the Vietnam War was controversial from the first. Thousands of Americans protested the war while thousands more lost their lives in the fight. The war killed 58,000 Americans, and cost Americans about $150 billion dollars. America first sent troops to the war because leaders felt it was the only way to stop the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia (McCullough). The role of the United States as a co-defender of South Vietnam against the spread of communism did not end well, and why the U.S. was involved in the war is still a pressing question.
In retrospect, it is simple to say the U.S. had no business in South Vietnam, and ultimately the U.S. presence meant nothing, and the South fell to communism anyway. The U.S. role in Vietnam should have been much less than it was, because we cannot fight the world's wars. World peace is certainly important, but world peace did not hinge on Vietnam, and the Vietnamese went no further to take over other countries in the name of communism. The U.S. involvement in the war cost billions of dollars, and millions of lives were lost when the fighting was finally done. We should have continued to send advisors to help the South Vietnamese army, but we should have stayed out of the fighting ourselves. Perhaps if the U.S. had stayed out of the war, the war would have ended sooner, and less lives would have been lost. The U.S. involvement was pointless, and proved nothing in the end. The Vietnam War was a tragedy for the United States, and for Vietnam, and for Indochina in general.
Bibliography
Kirkwood-Tucker, Toni Fuss, and Janet E. Benton. "The Lessons of Vietnam: Using Literature to Introduce Students to the Vietnam War." Social Education 66.6 (2002): 362+.
McCullough, David. "The American Experience: Vietnam: Introduction." PBS.org. 2003. 1 Aug. 2003. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/vietnam/intro.html
Schulzinger, Robert D. A Time for War: The United States and Vietnam, 1941-1975. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
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