{"id":3739,"date":"2020-10-26T21:51:04","date_gmt":"2020-10-27T01:51:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/?p=3739"},"modified":"2020-10-26T21:51:04","modified_gmt":"2020-10-27T01:51:04","slug":"blog-post-10-28-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/2020\/10\/26\/blog-post-10-28-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Blog Post 10\/28"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reading about the mistreatment of Vietnamese citizens by the United States during the Vietnam War was extremely difficult. Zinn stated \u201cThe CIA in Vietnam, in a program called \u201cOperation Phoenix,\u201d secretly, without trial, executed at least twenty thousand civilian in South Vietnam who were suspected of being members of the Communist underground\u201d. (p. 478) The United States was determined to stop the spread of communism to the point that atrocities such as the 20,000 civilians Zinn mentions being murdered were viewed as inconsequential. Zinn discusses that the reasoning for the wars against communism in smaller nations, like Vietnam, were not because of the direct threat that Vietnam becoming communist would pose against capitalist nations, but rather to prevent a domino effect. In the 1950s this idea became known as \u201cdomino theory\u201d within the United States and was responsible for much of their international actions. It would seem that American propaganda was so effective at inspiring fear of communism within its borders, that its population was willing to accept anti-communist reasoning for almost any action.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was fascinating to learn that the United States not only fabricated much of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, but also the entirety of South Vietnam. As if lying to the public to incite a war wasn\u2019t awful enough, congress further used the Gulf of Tonkin falsity to give President Johnson complete control over the military. Whenever a leader is given or seizes absolute power under the veil of a crisis, the people he is meant to protect almost always suffer. Citizens of the United States did suffer as a result of the president\u2019s actions in the form of fighting and dying for a false cause. Per usual the main sufferers of war are not the leaders who involved their nation in the conflict, but the followers and citizens who had to actually fight the battles. The Vietnam war caused greater anger among the American people as it was based on a false cause and since the unnecessary suffering of the enemy was better documented in this war.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading about the mistreatment of Vietnamese citizens by the United States during the Vietnam War was extremely difficult. Zinn stated \u201cThe CIA in Vietnam, in…<\/p>\n

Continue readingBlog Post 10\/28<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":4913,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4913"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3739"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3754,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3739\/revisions\/3754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}