AHII students are completing our Vietnam unit. We have discussed the historical background of US involvement, the rationales for going to Vietnam, the legacies of our involvement and the lessons we could learn from this conflict.
EXTRA CREDIT: Discuss at least TWO things that you learned from our unit on Vietnam. More than TWO would be better.
I learned a great deal from this unit. I didn't understand that we went in the war partly in response to America's fear in communism. I also didn't know that the war was technically two wars. I learned how much the war cost, and continues to tax the US to this day. I never would have known the extent of bombs dropped or the lesson that relying on technology to win a war is flawed. Many of the points in Vietnam are mirrored in military issues to this day, and I had never realized.
ReplyDeleteA couple things that I have learned in this unit include, the effect that the body count had on the outcome of the war, our strategy for "protecting" the innocent Vietnamese people, and finally, the effect we had on the environment.
ReplyDeleteQuiet simply, body count lead to the winning of the war. It was a terrible way to tally up winnings.
To "protect" the Vietnamese non-communist we placed them in "Strategic Hamlets". This lead to a lot of them dyeing because we shot them if they were in the free fire zone right outside the hamlet.hamlet of this was due to our misunderstanding of their culture. Finally, I learned about what our involvement did to their environment. Dropping more bombs here then most of the prior wars combined didn't help anything. Napalm was also dropped and some places were so badly hit that the Vietnamese could no longer plant anything there because the soil was no longer arable.
- Brandon Caswell
One thing I learned during the Vietnam Unit is that the mistrust to our government starting during this war. I kind of assumed that people just always mistrusted the government. Media is the main reason why people started defying the government. The civilians saw what the troops had to do to find the VC and saw both sides being slaughtered.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing I learned was that people didn't really understand the purpose of the war. They didn't want to send their children off to fight and see their bodies in a pile on television being killed for some reason they didn't even know. The video in class portrayed people burning their draft notices and refusing to go to war because they didn't want to die because the president is sending them somewhere and not telling them why.
1.Over 58,000 died, 300,000 wounded
ReplyDelete2.Most soldiers in the war were drafted
3.War over communism
4. More bombs dropped in Vietnam than WWI and WWII
I learned we depended on our technological advances to win the war. These advances included Huey's, bombs, Agent Orange, and more. The Vietnamese were fighting for their independence but most people assumed they were trying to spread communism. The most important thing I learned about the Vietnam War is we were not victorious, and everyone suffered loss and faced death.
ReplyDeleteI learned a lot of stuff in this unit. That the Vietnam war was pretty pricey costing $140 billion direct and $150 with indirect costs. And there was a time when people were being drafted that if you were in college you didn't have to go in the war. That had later changed because it wasn't fair to the people who couldn't afford college and was drafted anyways. With the military involvement there was poor training in jungle conditions to prepare the men for battle. And they had inexperienced officers. With this it was because they had a 1-year rotation and once the officer had confidence and knew what they were doing they would be taking out of action. I had learned so much this unit but this was what I had learned the most about.
ReplyDelete-Haley Lindgren
In this unit i learned that america was more afraid of communism then anything. Tanks were not able to be used in the thick harsh jungles.I also learned that many men and teens would harm themselves to exempt themselves from the draft. Both the presidents of south Vietnam and america were both shot in 1963.
ReplyDeleteBrayden Waldo
Our strategy to protect to protect the Vietnamese who lived in hamlets failed in some ways. I learned that we relied a lot on technology and it failed us in many ways, Agent orange only killed vegetation and caused cancer. I learned that the US did not win the war many were killed and injured leaving veterans. Though the US gives money to some vets, a lot are homeless
ReplyDeleteOne thing that I learned was we lied to Ho Chi Minh, and we placed a tyrant in power of South Vietnam. A reason we went to war was the red scare. Also 1/3 of Vietnam is a wasteland, and a quarter of their population died.
ReplyDeleteNoah McDuffie
A few of the things I learned from the Vietnam unit was historical background, and what we as a country, learned as a lesson, resulting from the war. The historical background is very complicated, starting with Indo-China. China wanted the land, and then France got involved making it their own. The Japanese took over which basically kicked the French out. This only got into WWII and the U.S. got involved in trying to fight the Japanese out of the land. There were broken promises after WWII and Vietnam then became our enemy because of communism. The United States did not know very much about the country before we started to get involved. The media distorted the war, our understanding of a foreign country was very poor and we did not respect their religions. America also assumed that having the best technology was the best, and that Vietnam was only a poor and dumb country that did not have very good technology. The end result of the war has left many things in the ruins. The Vietnam War was an important even in history that could have been prohibited if America would have acted differently.
ReplyDelete