The Disillusionment of the Vietnam War essays

The Disillusionment of the Vietnam War essays Never before in the history of the United States had a war created such disillusionment as the Vietnam War. From the soldiers who fought in it, and the students who protested it, to the politicians who funded it, they all felt that somewhere along the line that they had been lied to. Whether it was why we were there in the first place or the way the war was being fought to the stories of our winning and it will all be over soon, pride and patriotism were soon replaced with doubt and skepticism. World War II and its "glorious" victory made people believe that the United States was an unbeatable force. It glorified the military and its role as world peacemaker. "It is hard to exaggerate the extent to which young boys growing up in the 1950's and early 1960's were captivated by fantasies of warfare. Boys who would be sent to fight a war of counterinsurgency in Vietnam grew up fighting an imaginary version of World War II." As Caputo says, "War is always attractive to young men who know nothing about it, but we had also been seduced into uniform by Kennedy's challenge to 'ask what you can do for your country,' and by the missionary idealism he had awakened in us...and we believed we were ordained to play cop to the Communists' robber and spread our political faith around the world." So it was with this idealism that young men in the early 60's joined the military. "So, when we marched into the rice paddies on that damp March afternoon, we carried, along with our packs and rifles, the implicit convictions that the Viet-Cong would be quickly beaten and that we were doing something altogether noble and good. We kept the packs and rifles; the convictions, we lost." Caputo joined the Marines in 1960 and became an infantry officer, where his first assignment was a rifle platoon in the 3d Marine Division on Okinawa. It was here that they got orders as one of the first units to go to Vietnam. On the night they were deploying, t...