Halle P's List: Social Benefits/concerns of PTSD and Vietnam

• Twenty five years have passed since the United States officially relinquished their involvement in Vietnam. Not since the Civil War had the country been so divided
• Over 50,000 Americans were killed and many of those who returned suffered and still suffer deep physical and emotional scars. Many more veterans took their own lives, were treated as social outcasts or ended up on America’s streets among the homeless.
• The Vietnam conflict was a war whose origins many did not understand, that seemed an exercise in futility, and that left a nation questioning the policies of a government they’d always trusted.
• Vietnam has always been rife with conflict
• It is home to over 40 million people whose origins stem from an equally diverse mix of tribes and kingdoms that subsisted mostly on what they harvested on terraced parcels of land
• Invasion by neighbouring armies from Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and China posed a constant threat. China did finally manage to impose its rule over the country, but the Vietnamese eventually overthrew the imperial yoke in 938 AD. A succession of Vietnamese Emperors brought peace, stability, prosperity and the opportunity for Vietnam to create its own national identity.
• Rebellions were common over the next 500 years as Vietnam continued to grow and change, not only its political views but also its varied religious ideologies like Buddhism and Taoism. French and British domination also threatened.
• Vietnam became a country of the rich and the poor, of corruption, of subjugated peasants, of bandits and frequent uprisings and revolts.
• The French established sovereignity in 1863 and maintained it for almost a century.
• France
• did little to help the peasant.
• The early 20th century also saw the rise of Ho Chi Min, a young student who prescribed to leftist doctrines and whose dream was to lead his people and Vietnam into independence. As eventual head of the Vietminh guerrilla movement, and with help from British, Chinese and American allies, he would succeed in 1945.
• But France wasn’t willing to forget about Vietnam. Revolution would eventually divide the beleaguered country into North and South and initiate a decades-long and bloody conflict that would not only include France, China and Japan but the United States as wel
• Harry Truman initially supported France’s dispute with communist leader Ho Chi Min in the early 1950’s. During the Eisenhower and Kennedy terms America’s presence increased, politically, economically and militarily.
• Seven presidents were involved with decisions that impacted America’s presence in Vietnam: Truman, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford
• By 1959 Vietnam was divided into North and South and in July of that same year 2 American soldiers died after a Viet Cong attack in Bien Hoa
• by August of 1964, after the North Vietnamese attacked an American destroyer, Congress gave Lyndon Johnson carte blanche authority to initiate troop movements into Vietnam.
• It wasn’t until Johnson began his massive bombing campaign against North Vietnam in 1965 that the Antiwar Movement actually found its roots and dug in.
• Words like “counter culture”, "establishment”, “nonviolence”, “pacification”, “draft-dodger”, “free love”, “Kent State”, and “Woodstock” were added to the American vocabulary.

  • counter culture= going against normal beliefs and behaviors.
    pacify= to make peaceful
    draft dodger= a person who avoids military service
    Kent State= in 1970, unarmed students were protesting The Vietnam War and were shot at by the National Gaurd, 4 killed, 9 wounded. It was at Kent State University in Ohio. it turned many people against the war and Nixon
    Woodstock= a festival with hippies and other people gathering to protest vietnam
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• It was the beginning of the hippie generation, the sexual revolution and the drug culture. The country’s youth, the ones dying in the line fire, began demanding answers to America’s high profile presence in Vietnam. They wanted to know why peace talks were organized and continually failed. They wanted to know what they were fighting for
• Extensive media coverage
• Through it all the bombings continued and more and more of America’s young GI’s came home in body bags.
• Once the draft was introduced young people on college and university campuses all around the country began to organise protests against the war.
• Activists, celebrities and musicians
• took up the Anti-war cause and waved Anti-war banners. Their speeches and their music reflected the anger and hopelessness that Americans felt over the Vietnam war. Even the GI’s stationed overseas began supporting the Anti-war movement in whatever capacity they could, from wearing peace symbols to refusing to obey orders.
• Anti-war rallies, speeches, demonstrations and concerts continued being organized all over the country. There was a backlash against all that was military. Soldiers returning home from the war were no longer regarded as heroes but as “baby killers”.
• Lyndon Johnson did not seek re-election.
• Richard Nixon’s number one campaign promise to Americans was that he’d end the war with “Vietnamization”, or systematic troop withdrawals. Yet the American presence in Vietnam remained high and casualties mounted, as did the cost of running the war effort. Taxpayers were paying 25 billion dollars per year to finance a conflict no one believed in anymore. The Woodstock concert brought 500,000 together from across North America in a non-violent protest against the war.
• after Kent State Anti-war activism seemed to wane. Yet the people still demanded to know why their country was involved in a war where a resolution seemed impossible.
• by the end of January, 1973, a pact had been signed by the United States, South and North Vietnam and the Viet Cong. By March all American troops were pulled out of the country and systematic release of prisoners of war on both sides was initiated
• Twenty five years have passed since the end of the Vietnam war. During that time Americans and the world learned more about the history of the conflict and why it all began in the first place. Many agree that the Anti-war movement had significant impact on the length and perhaps even the outcome of the Vietnam war.

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• The antiwar movement of the 1960s was a broad and diverse coalition and many in it could agree that the war in Viet Nam was illegal and immoral without seeing it as a struggle to save Viet Nam for the capitalist world.

• The USA did not only pay the debt of the Vietnam War in blood and money, but in political cost as well. It weakened the public's faith in their governments, and the honesty and competence of its leaders. Skepticism and a high degree of suspicion

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   characterized the views of the American public following the wake of the wa

• The majority of Americans feigned amnesia, wishing neither to talk nor think about their nation's

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   most debilitating war, and the only one they ever lost.
• It was not until the 1980's that Americans accepted that the war took place, and even then Americans mentioned it as little as possible.
  
• WHY DID AMERICA LOSE THE WAR?
• e Americans did not see reason to close down the Ho Chi Minh trail, the main supply route for the VC. American support waned after the "average Joe" saw what happened "over there".
• While the US technically won in a military sense, their own media and public back home abandoned them. The Tet offensive killed many Viet Cong soldiers, yet the media merely latched onto the fact that the American leaders had consistently been saying that North Vietnam was incapable of launching such a focused and well organized offensive.
• The win such a war would require the US to invade North Vietnam. However, Russia and China had clearly stated that should any Russian or American supply ships, or supplies for that matter, be bombed, they would declare a state of war against America. This effectively resulted in Americas hands being tied.
• a loss of pride and self confidence ensued.
• The economic woes, and mounting debts, caused by the $167 billion dollars spent each year on the war, did not help liven the celebrations.

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• During the short span of the Vietnamese war, 2.5 million people died, and millions more displaced. More bombs were dropped than all of World War II, and over one quarter of Vietnam's forests were killed by Agent Orange. No war has divided the American public like the Vietnam War.

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• The American people wanted nothing to do with the Vietnam war.
• and the obviousness that the Vietnamese did not want them there in the first place, the majority of Americans distanced themselves from the war.
• costing them more than $167 billion dollars a year. This pushed the US economy to its limits
• Vietnam was communist, and that's all that mattered. They thousands of men, with each of them believing they were fighting to protect their country. Eventually however, they realised that the entire concept of the war was flawed.
• They had no idea about the demonstrations and protests going on in their own country against the War. When the word finally got to the troops there were mixed reactions. On the one hand they could clearly see why the American public did not like this prospect of war. Yet on the other hand, these men were killing, when they didn't want to, for their countr
• y. They were also being killed in there hundreds each day, and for nothing!

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• PTSD Claims on The Rise
• The study suggests that the VA needs to broaden its definition of PTSD and standardize criteria for screening and treatment options in accordance with current scientific knowledge.
• Additionally the VA needs to set fixed long term disbaility benefits for those who suffer from PTSD and bring them up to date and standardize them as well.
• Adding to the situation is the fact that there continues to grow a shortage of nurses, psychiatrists and psychologists who have been trained to deal with PTSD. Those who remain are battling issues of burnout of their own.
• skyrocketing costs associated with this problem as well as replenishing the mental health workers are challenges the VA faces in providing appropriate health care for the veterans afflicted with this condition.

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