Reflection Essay
My opinion about the Vietnamese War has always been against it. I’ve always thought that war was meaningless and the Vietnamese war was no exception. The idea of sending thousands of people to fight, and to die is worthless and the fact that they put so much meaning into it is really frustrating to me. The government uses pride and patriotism to force men and women to fight their battles is ruthless. So many lives could’ve been saved if they solved their problems with words instead of with war and fear. I feel that if I lived in the sixties when all of this was happening I would’ve been among the people who protested against the war. And among the many angry letters being sent to President Johnson demanding to bring back my friends and family. Which from what I saw in the documentary, protesting against the war most likely would’ve gotten me killed. At the time though we all have freedom of speech most people who actually rebel either get threaten, hurt or killed.
What’s really sad is that the government knew that more than half of the people were against the war and yet they didn’t even attempt to stop the war. It’s really funny how so many people trust the government with their lives yet when it comes to it, we don’t matter. Honestly I think that war in general just shouldn’t happen, peace treaties are results of war but after time those “peace” treaties are broken and there’s more war as a result of the treaty being broken.
Most of the letters I had the opportunity of going through was angry mothers demanding the government to stop the war and to bring back their kids. It was all very depressing for me to read because if one of my family members were recruited to fight in the war I would’ve died inside. As much as it was depressing it was really inspiring, just by reading their letters I could feel how strong these women were, to have the strength to fight against their own people takes real courage. My letters were all from the year 1966 and though not that many civilians were protesting a good amount of women were. The letters that weren’t written by angry mother were written by confused men. Most of them were questioning what the real reason they were fighting for and honestly they didn’t really see any point of continuing the war and were proposing that they stop the war before more lives were lost. One of the things I found amusing were that some of the letters were really short telegrams that were feisty, rude and straight to the point, since most of them were written by women the government didn’t really know how to properly respond to them. Their responses were polite but surprised that so many people were against the war, not that they were going to stop the war because they wanted a victory not a retreat. This is mostly where their pride always gets in their way.
After doing some research and watching the documentary all the information I’ve gathered just supports my opinion about the war. From the documentary it seems that President Nixon pretended that he was going to end the war but he continued it because it would benefit him for the election. So the government was using the war to make profit without actually caring about the lives that they are killing. In a way it’s good that some people can see what can happen in the future and be prepared.
