The Vietnam War Assignments | Collage Homework Help

The Vietnam War.
3 Pages.
You must use citations and have a source used (bibliography) page.
The Vietnam War story is a lengthy one. It has been told in fragments more so than in its entirety. Most literature is from the American perspective. The following interpretations capture the major schools of thought on the war from the American side (they are arranged chronologically as they developed).
you must choose one of the following schools of thought and be able to write a clear, coherent essay in support of its interpretation of American involvement in the Vietnam War. Should you not agree with any of the schools of thought, you can develop your own.
1. Orthodox: This interpretation was the first to emerge; it came together during the war. The main theme is that the United States engaged in a mindless anticommunist crusade that it could not win.
2. Revisionist: This interpretation holds that the United States did not blunder into the war; the government was aware of each obstacle, did only the minimum required to avoid defeat, and was largely successful in doing so until it lost the most essential domino–US public opinion. Many military writers have used this interpretation to criticize a civilian-run war.
3. Advanced Revisionist: There are three sub-groups of advanced revisionists.
4. Clausewitzians: The civilians misunderstood the war and sent the military off to wage the wrong kind of war. Had the government attacked and invaded North Vietnam directly, the United States would have won the war.
5. Hearts and Minds: There was too much emphasis on conventional warfare and too little emphasis on pacification. These writers blame the military leaders for wasteful and ill-conceived strategy (i.e., Search and Destroy).
6. Legitimacists: This interpretation emphasizes the geo-political, moral, and ethical legitimacy of waging war in Vietnam. US national interests were at stake and the South Vietnamese government was viable until Diem was assassinated in 1963. That was the turning point.
7. Neo-Orthodox: The United States misread its own interests and Vietnamese realities in a doomed effort to build an independent Vietnam (a flawed form of containment).