The idea of this project is perspective I wanted to do a perspective poem on fear and do an essay on The Vietnam War from the perspective of the side we were protecting and fighting.
History is an essay about the perspective of the Vietnamese people.
Imagine With Me
This essay is about The Vietnam War or more importantly the things we aren’t told from the side we were fighting. As children, we learned about the war and why it began, but never the other side's perspective it is my job to give you as much as I can of that perspective. Imagine with me for a second your on the grass or tending rice paddies (A garden mainly of water and full of rice.) In the South Vietnamese countryside. Now imagine hearing a helicopter overhead and then a whistle of something dropping and then BOOM a bomb dropped on your garden near your home. And the reason for these strange people bombing you is because you live near a jungle and they want to weed out their enemy. The Viet Cong (a communist guerilla fighters group), that’s the reason they destroyed everything you have.
There was Admittance
“Most people didn’t even know the difference between communism and Democracy.” Recalled John Kerry, a Vietnam Veteran who went to become a U.S. Senator “They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their villages and tearing their country apart. They wanted everything to do with the war, particularly with this foreign presence of the United Staes of America, to leave them alone in peace, and they practiced the art of survival by siding with whichever military force was present at the time, be it Viet Cong, North Vietnamese, or American.” Many people during the war were afraid of cooperation with either side because if they did they would be punished by the other. To quote Senator Gaylord Nelson “Our program of defoliation, carpet bombing with B-52’s and bulldozing… did not protect our soldiers or defeat the enemy, and it has done far greater damage to our ally than to the enemy.” We may have weeded out the enemy but at the cost of our ally’s getting hurt. We did more damage to the land that helped us then we did good to it, we destroyed their land, we destroyed their homes, we hurt their family. We left destruction in our wake, we brought things to them and profited off their desperation. We cost them everything and we only tell people our side.
Their Land
“From the air, some areas in Vietnam looked like photographs of the moon.” - Arthur H. Westing & E.W. Pfeiffer wrote in Scientific- American, Their land was bombed to the point where there were craters in their land, people took photos of this and compared it to the moon. “Air Force planes sprayed 18 million gallons of herbicide containing dioxins [Toxic Chemicals] on some six million acres- around one-seventh of South Vietnamese total land area, and a much higher proportion of it’s most fertile cropland and richest forest.” - James William Gibson revealed in The Perfect War: The War We Could Not Lose and How We Did. We destroyed their land, we destroyed what they depended on to live. We may have made peace but that doesn’t undo what we’ve done. We lost a war that we won because we destroyed our enemy and ruined our allies.
Refugees
Before the war, 90% of South Vietnam’s population had lived in rural villages in the countryside. Sixty percent of the population continued to live in Urban Areas. Saigon City is a perfect example of a city that changed after the American war. Refugees, for example, camped there with Americans after the war. Saigon tripled during the Vietnam War reaching a total of 3 million people in 1970. “Where limbless Vietnamese victims of the war would crawl like crabs across the handsome tile floor to accost (confront and demand money from.) American soldiers construction workers, journalists, and visitors as they chatted and sipped their drinks under the ceiling fans.” While the people we hurt suffer we live in luxury. We set up shop there and we destroyed an already destroyed land with our cars, motorcycles, televisions, and stereos. Yes some may have gotten legal jobs but many others did not we destroyed their economy. We didn’t help them and we still haven’t.
This essay is about The Vietnam War or more importantly the things we aren’t told from the side we were fighting. As children, we learned about the war and why it began, but never the other side's perspective it is my job to give you as much as I can of that perspective. Imagine with me for a second your on the grass or tending rice paddies (A garden mainly of water and full of rice.) In the South Vietnamese countryside. Now imagine hearing a helicopter overhead and then a whistle of something dropping and then BOOM a bomb dropped on your garden near your home. And the reason for these strange people bombing you is because you live near a jungle and they want to weed out their enemy. The Viet Cong (a communist guerilla fighters group), that’s the reason they destroyed everything you have.
There was Admittance
“Most people didn’t even know the difference between communism and Democracy.” Recalled John Kerry, a Vietnam Veteran who went to become a U.S. Senator “They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their villages and tearing their country apart. They wanted everything to do with the war, particularly with this foreign presence of the United Staes of America, to leave them alone in peace, and they practiced the art of survival by siding with whichever military force was present at the time, be it Viet Cong, North Vietnamese, or American.” Many people during the war were afraid of cooperation with either side because if they did they would be punished by the other. To quote Senator Gaylord Nelson “Our program of defoliation, carpet bombing with B-52’s and bulldozing… did not protect our soldiers or defeat the enemy, and it has done far greater damage to our ally than to the enemy.” We may have weeded out the enemy but at the cost of our ally’s getting hurt. We did more damage to the land that helped us then we did good to it, we destroyed their land, we destroyed their homes, we hurt their family. We left destruction in our wake, we brought things to them and profited off their desperation. We cost them everything and we only tell people our side.
Their Land
“From the air, some areas in Vietnam looked like photographs of the moon.” - Arthur H. Westing & E.W. Pfeiffer wrote in Scientific- American, Their land was bombed to the point where there were craters in their land, people took photos of this and compared it to the moon. “Air Force planes sprayed 18 million gallons of herbicide containing dioxins [Toxic Chemicals] on some six million acres- around one-seventh of South Vietnamese total land area, and a much higher proportion of it’s most fertile cropland and richest forest.” - James William Gibson revealed in The Perfect War: The War We Could Not Lose and How We Did. We destroyed their land, we destroyed what they depended on to live. We may have made peace but that doesn’t undo what we’ve done. We lost a war that we won because we destroyed our enemy and ruined our allies.
Refugees
Before the war, 90% of South Vietnam’s population had lived in rural villages in the countryside. Sixty percent of the population continued to live in Urban Areas. Saigon City is a perfect example of a city that changed after the American war. Refugees, for example, camped there with Americans after the war. Saigon tripled during the Vietnam War reaching a total of 3 million people in 1970. “Where limbless Vietnamese victims of the war would crawl like crabs across the handsome tile floor to accost (confront and demand money from.) American soldiers construction workers, journalists, and visitors as they chatted and sipped their drinks under the ceiling fans.” While the people we hurt suffer we live in luxury. We set up shop there and we destroyed an already destroyed land with our cars, motorcycles, televisions, and stereos. Yes some may have gotten legal jobs but many others did not we destroyed their economy. We didn’t help them and we still haven’t.
English is a poem that I wrote about fear in the perspective of the Vietnamese people.
Bombs above me,
Guns aimed near were I am,
Running endlessly,
My family scattered I’m unsure if there dead or alive.
I felt scared what if I was mistaken for their enemy?
While I was running I felt like I was running on the moon because of the craters.
I made it to Saigon but at the price of being orphaned.
Guns aimed near were I am,
Running endlessly,
My family scattered I’m unsure if there dead or alive.
I felt scared what if I was mistaken for their enemy?
While I was running I felt like I was running on the moon because of the craters.
I made it to Saigon but at the price of being orphaned.