Reaction to Howard Zinn's Writing about Vietnam.
Zinn gives a complete overview of what happened. He does not go into immense detail on every subject, because if he did that he still would be writing about Vietnam. I was very interested while reading. What I found different was the way Zinn plays a neutral position on the war, leaning a little towards a pacifist. While reading this some of my thoughts of the entire Vietnam War changed. I wish I could have been a bird in the sky while the War was going on. It would have been great to be able to watch all the events, battles, riots, and protests take place. .
The way that the government lied and continued to lie to the people of America was astonishing to me. It puts a question in the back of my mind of what we do truly know. The things that they do not tell us could change peoples thought and ideas forever, but we will never know. I would like to read the "Pentagon Papers" sometime and see the truths behind our government's actions.
I think that one of the biggest problems our country had during the Vietnam War was the extreme lack of public support. The U.S. was almost fighting two wars with in it self. There was the government vs. Vietnam and the Government vs. the People, and to think the U.S. was losing lives on both ends of the spectrum. Remember this was all because of an analogy to a game of dominos.
What I found amazing was the amount of people evading and revolting. I think reading a book about the people that were for the war would make an excellent counter part to Zinn. Although he does say that the people with college degrees were more for the war than people with high school and no education, but it does not take a genius to figure out why that was. Who was going to war? Yep the lower class people. The presidents claimed that all they would not be affected by all the antiwar cries from the public. Nixon later said he was affected.