How did the war affect Vietnam and the USA? Essay Example

used by the NLF for making booby traps and other devices, which effectively killed the US soldiers with their own weapons.

Many American soldiers suffered extreme stress, and other mental disorders as a result of the Vietnam conflict, to the extent that one former US soldier feels so attached to the jungle environment and mentally unstable, that he lives outside in a tent, in a forest in Washington. He suffered a mental breakdown after serving two terms in Vietnam, and nearly murdered his mother as a result. Most people who fought suffered some kind of stress, even if not to this extent.

When the Americans arrived in Vietnam, they brought with them some of the unpleasant aspects of western life. Drugs suddenly became popular, and after the war, many addicts in Vietnam suddenly had no way of getting them. American men used prostitutes to relieve their sexual frustration, and when these weren't available, women were simply raped. Many children were born as a result of these attacks on women, and those children grew up neglected and resented.

The South Vietnamese soldiers who fought alongside America are still considered criminals under the present regime in Vietnam, and remain in prison, unlike their American allies.

The peasants hated the Americans, and there is still a strong feeling of anti-Americanism in Vietnam. The American army felt that they could trust no one, whatever people may claim. If they had the slightest suspicion that someone was a member of the NLF, they would be tortured and shot. One detailed account by a woman states that the American soldiers "tied her nipples to an electric wire and gave her electric shocks". She continued, "Two

American advisors were always standing either side of me"

Many Vietnamese children died or were severely damaged as a result of Napalm - a petrol-like jelly substance that can cause 5th degree burns. Napalm burns looked "like swollen red meat", and touching them is "intolerable", as is contact with air. One American woman went to Vietnam to adopt three children, and couldn't believe what she saw as she walked around numerous Vietnamese hospitals. "The chemical reaction of this napalm does melt the flesh, and the flesh runs right down their faces and it sits there and grows there..."

After US combat troops had left Vietnam, but before the NLF victory in 1975, effects of the American occupation of South Vietnam were still showing. Girls, mainly prostitutes, were still dying of VD after catching it from US soldiers. Others had grown desperate since the heroin ran out, and now have to find �4-5 per day for opium. If addicts had no arms or legs to inject into, they used veins in the side of their head.

6.2 million tonnes of bombs were dropped between 1964 and 1971, whole villages being destroyed by bombs, and their inhabitants killed with napalm. Agent Orange was another chemical used in Vietnam. It was a defoliant for destroying forests so the enemy could be seen. It also had severe effects on the people of Vietnam because land was infertile for years, so food still cannot be grown in certain areas of the country, and perhaps the most disturbing fact, children were born with deformed limbs. Many people after the war were made homeless, after their villages had been cleared as part of the "Strategic

Hamlet Programme" (an attempt by the Americans to keep civilians under control), and placed in relocation centres.

Even the Americans themselves were shocked at the effects of the war in Vietnam which could still be seen in 1982. A group of former US soldiers, one of which was paraplegic since the war, went to Vietnam, and saw the destruction that the 11 million gallons of Agent Orange dumped on Vietnam had done. Children with deformities were still being born; some without eyes, some even without brains. Even these men, who had suffered themselves, went back to America and called for the government to pay compensation to the Vietnamese people.

The war had no geographical effects on America, because all the fighting took place elsewhere. It's only the people (both soldiers and civilians) who were affected. Vietnamese NLF fighters tortured men until they gave away secrets, and then kept them prisoners - slightly more moral then shooting the enemy if they didn't say anything. American soldiers ended up slowly becoming emotionally immune to the endless killings in Vietnam, as one soldier said "it happens because the human mind can't hold that much suffering and survive".

All through the Vietnam War there was a huge protest against the American military actions, and this resulted in the death of John Filo, at Kent State University. Many people saw bits of the war on television, and suffered emotionally from that. The American public wanted to end the war.

The Americans find losing a war very hard to cope with. As a film critic pointed out, "...the harsh reality [is] that America suffered a costly military defeat." Films made by Americans fail to point

this out, with slogans such as "the war that nobody one..." Not one of the Vietnam films mention any justification for entering the war, or the atrocities committed, such as the defoliation, and the bombing campaign against the communist North. A lot of films about the Vietnam War use a scenario where America sends in agents to release prisoners. It is clear that this is an attempt to prove that communism can be beaten, and America has started to respect its own army again.

In conclusion the war had horrific effects on Vietnam, the country is still suffering and will continue. Some areas of land are still infertile due to the use of Agent Orange, and there are still children with disfigurements (some inherited, some not). The peasants suffered with the fighters. Often whole villages were wiped out, so innocent people were being tortured and killed. In America, the war had quite a large effect on the army, and also the viewers watching the first ever televised war. Some people have had mental breakdowns because of what they encountered in Vietnam; others remain emotionally scarred.

There are 2 totally different types of suffering for American people and Vietnamese people. We tend to sympathise with the Vietnamese more, because we can see their scars, and everything that happened to them is visible, or able to be broadcast. We cannot begin to understand the emotional suffering of the American soldiers. This suffering is because of what they saw. The anger they showed towards the civilians was purely taking out frustration. The Vietnamese soldiers were better fighters prepared for a long war. The Americans thought they'd win easily, and the

war would be short.

There is less mental suffering for the Vietnamese people now, because everything went as they wanted, and the enemy was beaten. A lot of Americans still shocked that their country, one of the richest in the world, didn't win against communism. There is no physical suffering in America. The country hasn't been damaged. The only casualties, apart from John Filo, were soldiers.

To conclude these paragraphs, Americans and Vietnamese are both still suffering from the war. The Vietnamese will have intense suffering for a very long time, whereas the Americans will only have emotional scars.

After the war had finished, politically, Vietnam saw some major changes. Ho Chi Minh united North and South Vietnam, under a Communist regime; a fate which the Americans had not succeeded in preventing. The American president, L. B. Johnson lost a lot of popularity, and so to did the American military. Despite being told that they had won the war, the American public were very anti-war, especially in the 1970s, when the messages of love and peace delivered by new age people, or hippies, were most popular. Back in Vietnam, the American - selected leader of South Vietnam was jailed, as were soldiers who fought against the Vietcong.