Vietnam War Dbq Analysis

The Vietnam War was one of the most controversial wars of its time. Many americans opposed of the war because they thought it was highly unnecessary with all the trouble that appeared based around how the young felt and the use of brutal weaponry. Even though some government officials thought they were doing the right thing to protect southeast asia's freedom. It wasn’t worth giving up the many of our own people's freedom. The senate claimed in their debates of the Tonkin Gulf (Doc 8) 1964 that “the United States is assisting the people of southeast asia to protect their freedom.” Now this may make the United States look like they are doing the right thing in policing the world since we are ultimately trying to protect the lives from falling into a communist regime. Though this does sound like the correct thing to do, it is not since we are sacrificing the lives of just under 60,000 of American lives according to document 6 which is a statistical chart showing the casualty count of the war. This sparked controversy in America since people thought why are we just letting these …show more content…
In document “Agent Orange,” it is said that this use of chemical weapon made it so that if a human was exposed to it, would cause “muscular dysfunction, birth defects, various cancers,” and more after that. Generations later children are now born with harmful disorders and defects that are still talked about to this day. Now chemical weapons weren’t the only weapon that was widely talked about. The use of Napalm which was a mixture of gasoline and liquid that stuck onto human skin and set aflame. In document 5 “ Use of Napalm,” it is said that napalm gradually melted the flesh off of the humans. This was talked about in places all over the U.S. when photos were released of people on fire and cities burned down. It caused people to think of what we were also doing to their innocent people, leaving them homeless and