The Vietnam War: A Fight for Human Liberty and Freedom Essay -- Vietna

No war that the United States has ever fought has drawn so much heart-rending criticism than the Vietnam War. This war divided the United States as no war since the Civil War ever has. Citizens that favored the participation in Vietnam still argue their point of view with those that opposed the United States involvement in Vietnam. The Vietnam conflict started as civil war in the country of Vietnam, one that lies very far away from the United States in Indochina. Why did Americans sacrifice so many lives and so much money for a country so far away? Why did millions of Americans violently protest involvement in Vietnam? It has been twenty-six years since the last American soldier left Vietnam, and the United States has still not come to peace with the Vietnam experience. Despite the 58,156 American causalities, the 1.5 million dead in North Vietnam, the 924,000 Vietcong killed in the South, the South Vietnamese losses of 183,000 and the 120 billion dollars spent by the US in Vietnam, the United States was justified in its reasons for entering the Vietnam conflict (Edwards 10). Time has not altered the facts of why the United States chose to fight for freedom halfway across the world. Vietnam is a long narrow country in the China Sea that is in the shape of an â€Å"S.† Its total size is that of New Mexico, but it is much more populous with 47 million residents (Fincher 7). Vietnam is a land of thousands of small villages with many rice fields. Three out of every four Vietnamese live on the coast and all the major cities also lie there (Lawson 1). Vietnam has a monsoon climate, which consists of a hot wet season followed by a cooler dryer time. The average summer temperature in the South Vietnam ... ...nd freedom, which is still a just cause today. Works Cited Chomsky, Noam. Rethinking Camelot. Boston: South End Press, 1993. Dinh, Viet. â€Å"How We Won in Vietnam.† Policy Review. Dec. 2000-Jan. 2001. P.104-115. Dunnigan, James and Nofi, Albert. Dirty Little Secrets of the Vietnam War. New York: St. Maetin’s Press. 1999. Edwards, Richard. The Vietnam War. Vero Beach, Florida: Rouke Enterprises, 1986. Fincher, E.B. The Vietnam War. New York: Fraklin Watts, 1980. Herring, George. â€Å"Vietnam, American Foreign Policy, and the History.† Virginia Quarterly Review. Winter 90. p. 1-11. Kaiser, David. American Tragedy. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belkwap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000. Lawson, Don. The United States in the Vietnam War. New York: Thomas. Y. Crowell, 1981. Nickelson, Harry. Vietnam. San Diego: Lucent Books, 1981.