Vietnam War and War

Vietnam War Effects

The Vietnam war was a game-changer in many ways. Just one of the major ways that things changed was the power of the political machine in Washington DC. Vietnam had very much devolved into a political war whereby the government's civilian leaders were controlling (or trying to) what was going on in Vietnam in terms of what the soldiers were doing and what the goal was. Concurrently, this made the politicians very unpopular and the people revolted. As a result, the policy and power of the government changed in many ways in the 1960's and the power gained by the people is still invoked to this very day.

Everyone that knows Vietnam and what came of that war knows how it changed American politics and how wars are fought by the United States forever. Just one example of this was that the "bombs" were dropped in World War II on the Japanese so as to coerce them to surrender and not take more American lives. Despite the fact that the Japanese were the ones that most directly brought the United States into World War II, doing such a thing during Vietnam or any other major war since World War II (after Vietnam in particular) would literally be a non-starter. Another thing that became clear is that voice of the people mattered a great deal when it came to the Vietnam War. The voice of the people is what led to Lyndon B. Johnson not even trying to run for President again after the people literally turned on what he was doing and what he was doing wrong. In fact, he specifically cited losing Cronkite when it came to the same. His view was that if he lost Cronkite, he has lost the people and that meant his chances of winning the Presidency again were not good, and that assumes that they were not zero. Given that he did not run and the other party (in the form of Nixon) won, it stands to reason that he was correct that he did not stand a chance of winning (Foner, 2014).

Of course, the effects on the political power machine have been felt long since the effects that were rendered by the people on the streets during the 1960's. The first major example was the exploits and actions of Nixon. Breaking into a hotel to get political advantage is certainly a wrong thing to do but it is not the crime of the century. Sure, there were other things that Nixon did that resembled J. Edgar Hoover, and not in a good way. Even so, Watergate is what did Nixon in and it led to him having to resign or be forced out via impeachment. The wars of George W. Bush are another example. There was little resistance to the initial Afghanistan war effort, although it was there. This is not surprising given that many people were quite angry and enraged by the deaths of more than 3,000 Americans (Foner, 2014).