Impact of Vietnam War

The Vietnam War began in 1955 and lasted for 20 years or so. President Truman created a foreign policy that can assist countries that have instability due to communism. Truman then came up with the policy of the Truman doctrine. The causes of the Vietnam War was believed held by America that communism was going to expand all over south-east Asia.

Neither of the U.S and Soviet Union could risk a war against each other because of the nuclear military of both of them.

However, when it suited both of them had clients state that could carry on the fight for them. The Vietnam War was one of the longest wars in U.S history, the war caused around five hundred and forty three thousand troops to be deployed, the life of American troops dropped from five hundred and forty three thousand to one hundred and fifty seven thousand, almost four hundred thousand men lost, In the Vietnam war.

The Domino Theory was made when most Americans considered Communism as the antithesis to what they believed in. Communists did not believe in Democracy, human rights, they would stop trading with other nations, and used military within its country. America believed Communism to be a infectious disease that if it took over one place, others would fall with it one-by-one. Hence its nickname, The Domino Theory.

Believing in the Domino Effect caused the Congress to give permission to pass a law to allow the president to announce war and in result of that the war got intense, bombs where being dropped more men when going out to war and more men were coming home in caskets.

Another result in that was the vietnam soldiers carried light and blended in with villages and innocents. As a consequence of this, search and destroy was used, and bombs were dropped on villages and cities if they heard a single shot. Because so many U.S Troops fell, the vietcong got more active in their fighting and their casualty rate had started to increase. The Paris Peace Accords that ended the Vietnam war was signed January 27, 1973, and the American troops were sent home.

Vietnam veterans when they returned home where not greeted well they were called names and spit on as they left their flight. Most of veterans succeeded in transition to life back here, although many did not. About one hundred and fifty thousand came home wounded or missing limbs, at least twenty one thousand were disabled and couldn’t work for the rest of their lives. Even worse, they did not receive the proper care and necessary help. They could not even afford private health care services, and would have no choice but to be treated in dirty public hospitals. The Vietnam veterans didn’t just come back with physical pains, they came back with psychological problems, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, flashbacks, depression, and loneliness.

The effects in vietnam were different.

• It took away more than two millions lives, many of them civilians.
• three millions were wounded, and thousands of children made orphans.
• The war ruined North and South Vietnam. the U.S. Air forces dropped around 8 millions ton of bombs in Vietnam.
• infrastructure in the North was destroyed especially after Operation Linebacker II lasting from 18 to 29 in December 1972.
• In the South, the U.S. forces used twenty million gallons of herbicides along the borders of Laos and Cambodia to deforest the jungle that hide the Viet Cong,it also destroy crops that the enemy might use for food.
• Around one million acres of forest was destroyed.
• Agent Orange was one of major herbicides used, it has left a serious ecological and human impact on Vietnamese and U.S people’s lives.
• Today there are still many children in Vietnam growing up with various diseases and disabilities affected by the harmful chemicals that was in the war.
• On the U.S side American government spent roughly around $350 billion to $900 billion on the Vietnam War, it left a heavy burden on its economy.
• The war weaken the people’s beliefs toward their government  

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