American Experience in Vietnam - Essay Example

American Experience in Vietnam On his debut of the Vietnam war, at the inaugural address on 1961, the then American President Kennedy said; “To those peoples in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required—not because the Communists are doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right.” (“Cold War Asia: The American Experience in Vietnam”, 2007) As a traditional preacher of democracy, America was determined to encourage democracy in Vietnam. President Kennedy selected a team to Vietnam to report the circumstances in South Vietnam and to find out whether there was any need for American aid in near future. The report, which is now familiar as the December 1961 White Paper, pleaded for an enhancement in military, technical, and economic aid, and the introduction of large-scale American advisers in order to assist stabilize Diem's government and smash the NLF. As Kennedy evaluated the positive points of these recommendations, some of his other advisers pleaded to the President to withdraw from Vietnam, according to them it were a "dead-end alley." To solve that controversy, the president chose a, moderate way. Rather than a large-scale army establishment, as the white paper had suggested for or an immediate withdrawal, Kennedy made an effort to establish a limited ally with Diem. The United States would enhance the level of its army intervention in South Vietnam through provision of more equipment and advisers, but would not assist at whole-scale with troops. This arrangement had some problems from the beginning, and immediately the reports from Vietnam pointed out that the NLF was having more of its control in the countryside. To prevent the NLF's progress, Washington and Saigon incorporated a large scale and deadly military progression in the rural areas which was marked as the ‘Strategic Hamlet Program’, the new counterinsurgency plan gathered the villagers and placed them in villages constructed by South Vietnamese soldiers. When Kennedy and Diem were assassinated, there were 16,000 American military advisers in Vietnam. The Kennedy administration succeeded to conduct the war from Washington without the large-scale application of combat battalions. The ever increasing political tussles in Saigon, however, made the new president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, to decide that more belligerent intervention was required. It could be the fact that Johnson was more prostrate to military action or maybe events in Vietnam had brought the situation so that the president was compelled to undertake direct action. Johnson justified his standpoint as “This is not a jungle war, but a struggle for freedom on every front of human activity” (Johnson, 1964). In any event, after flacks on two U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin, which had been supposed to be the mischief by the Communists, the Johnson administration pleaded for expansive war powers in the hand of the president. With the gradual advancement of the Cold War and a gradual rise in nuclear weapons, a limited war involved the brain storming of many strategic thinkers in and out of Washington. Of course, these goals had never been achieved. The Vietnam War ultimately brought about a major impact on everyday life in America and the Johnson administration was compelled to think over the domestic consequences of its strategic decisions every day. Over the time, there simply were not enough volunteers to carry on combating a prolonged war and the government planted a draft. With the mounting up of death and Americans carried on to leave for Southeast Asia, the Johnson administration had to face the full weight of American sentiments against the deadly wars. Protests erupted on campuses of different and in important cities initially, yet by the year 1968 it appeared that all corners of the country had realized the war's devastative nature. Most probably, the most notorious incident about the activities against war was the Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Millions of peace loving people came to Chicago in August 1968 to raise the voice of protest against the inhuman American involvement in Vietnam and the leaders of the Democratic Party who continued to pursue the war. (“The wars for Vietnam: 1945-1975”, n.d.)  Reference 1. “Cold War Asia: The American Experience in Vietnam”, (2007), Vietnam Home, available at: http://www.academicamerican.com/postww2/vietnam/vietnamwar.html (accessed on May 18, 2009) 2. Johnson, Lyndon B. (1964) The Tonkin Gulf Incident, American Experience, available at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/presidents/36_l_johnson/psources/ps_tonkin.html (accessed on May 19, 2009) 3. “The wars for Vietnam: 1945-1975” (n.d.), Vassar College, available at: http://vietnam.vassar.edu/overview.html (accessed on May 18, 2009) Discuss ‘Women’s Liberation Movement in the US. We can start this analysis with a quote by Shulamith Firestone. He said “What does the word 'feminism' bring to mind? A granite faced spinster obsessed with a vote? Or a George Sand in cigar and bloomers, a woman against nature? Chances are that whatever image you have, it is a negative one” (Firestone, 1968) Firestone made the clear analysis to explain the above fact in his own. Women's rights has some devastative revolutionary possibility; that the 1900s WRM was really a radical movement from the very beginning that it was synchronized with the most basic movements and ideas of the heyday, and that even to the hard end, in 1920, there was a powerful basal stress which had been intentionally overlooked and buried. To show this, we need to dig out and completely go through the entire history of the WRM in the U.S., to evaluate just what had been meant in political perspectives, and to understand the political and economic concerns bringing about these distortions. (Firestone 1968)  Actually the democracy without equality is not a complete sense. In that sense Carrie Chapman argued: “Everybody counts in applying democracy. And there will never be a true democracy until every responsible and law-abiding adult in it, without regard to race, sex, color or creed has his or her own inalienable and unpurchased voice in government,” (Women’s Rights World, 2009) The first symbol of liberation of women and establishment of women’s right was the establishment of the ‘Commission on the Status of Women’ by President Kennedy in 1961. This commission was established by the continuous appeal of Esther Petersen of the Women's Bureau, in its short life the Commission came out with different basic reports by detailed proof of women's second class status. It was followed by the emergence of a ‘Citizen's Advisory Council’ and fifty state commissions. Many of the people who were engaged in those commissions became the nucleus of women who were not happy with the scanty advancements those were made on the recommendations that the commission had made, joined with Betty Freidan in 1966 to set up the National Organization for Women. (Women’s Rights World, 2009) NOW could be marked as the first new feminist organization in almost fifty years. However, it was not the entire emergence of the masterminded manifestation of the movement. The movement actually had two origins, from two different layers of society, with two different modes, predilections, values, and forms of establishment. In many paths there had been two distinct movements which only in the 1970 stood up sufficiently for the gloss "women's liberation" to be an umbrella term in real sense for the numerous organizations and groups. The main activists of these branches belonged mainly to the white, middle class and college educated members. The matter of fact was that the older group possessed more heterogeneity than the younger people. However, as per the issues were concerned the younger group was subject to more diversity.  The main centre of concentration of the older group was on the difficulties faced by the women in the legal and economic perspective. The group of the older women main consisted of the working class women and that’s why this group concentrated on the problems that a working woman could face. The main concentration of older members was related to the entrapment of women by the elected officers, board of directors, by laws and many other institutional and political factors.  However, the problem remained regarding the mass base. The expansion became scantier as the younger batch of women lacked organization. There was no concept of proper leadership and everyone was going through her own way. What was the consequence? The younger groups became distinct for each other and the only way of connection were the newspapers, monthly newsletters and some cross country travelers. Some cities possess coordinating committees which make effort to carry on a communication between the local clusters and channel newcomers into right ones but none enjoy any power over the activities of the group, and the group ideas were buried. (Freeman, 1971) The most significant innovation prompted by the younger branch had been the "rap group." It was, by virtue an educational technique, it was diffused far surpassing its origins and emerged as a major organizational unit of this revolutionary movement, most randomly used by housewives belonging to the suburban areas. The rap group, if evaluated in a sociological perspective, had probably the most valuable contribution by the women’s liberation movement to the process of social evolution.The rap group served two main objectives: traditional and unique. The traditional role consisted of the process to bring the women in a circumstances characterized by structured social interaction. (Freeman, 1971) Since 1960, women have achieved mammoth social gains. Gains in employment have been really praise worthy. In 1970s, the number of working women reached 42 percent, and maximum of this improvement happened in what traditionally had been considered "men's" work and work of the professionals. The percentage women lawyers had been accelerated by 9 percent, professors by 6 percent, and doctors by 3.6 percent - “By 1986, women comprised 15 percent of the nation's lawyers, 40 percent of all computer programmers, and 29 percent of the country's managers and administrators”. (Digital History 2009) Women made mammoth political gains. As in the year 1993, one would find around 1524 women providing service in public office of the U.S. Congress as well as state legislatures. In 1984, a major political party nominated a woman, Geraldine Ferraro, for the vice presidency. Women like Ruth Bader Ginzburg and Sandra Day O'Connor by 1994, provided service to the Supreme Court, along with 1,524 other women who were serving for the United States Congress as well as state legislatures. (Digital History, 2009) In this context we can quote Emmeline Pankhurst as “We have to free half of the human race, the women, so that they can help to free the other half” (Pankhurst, 2006) Though the liberation movement changed the scenario a lot, still now women are deprived in many senses and many types of oppression exploitation take place in every country. More consciousness is required for it and the male should be cooperative in the process of up-lift of women.           Reference: 1. Digital History (2009) Impact of the Women's Liberation Movement, available at: http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?HHID=385 (accessed on May 19, 2009) 2. Firestone, Shulamith, (1968) THE WOMEN'S RIGHTS MOVEMENT IN THE U.S.: A NEW VIEW, Documents from the Women's Liberation Movement  An On-line Archival Collection, Special Collections Library, Duke University, Available at: http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/wlm/notes/#newview (accessed on May 19, 2009) 3. Freeman, Joe (1971),  The Women’s Liberation Movement:  Its Origins, Structures and Ideas, Documents from the Women's Liberation Movement, An On-line Archival Collections, Special Collections Library, Duke University, Available at: http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/wlm/womlib/ (accessed on May 19, 2009) 4. Women’s Rights Worlds (2009) Women’s Rights World: Women’s rights quotations, available at: http://www.womensrightsworld.com/html/women-quotes-womens-rights.html (accessed on May 19, 2009) Read More