History Of America’s Involvement In Wars
In August of 1914, most Americans saw no reason to join the struggle among Europe’s imperialistic powers. No vital U.S. economic interests were at stake. Indeed, the United States had good commercial relations with the Allied Powers of Great Britain, France, and Russia and the Central Powers of Germany and Austria Hungary. The divided loyalties of the American people also prompted Wilson to pursue neutrality. Many Americans, including Wilson himself, felt deep cultural ties to the Allies, especially Britain and France. Yet most Irish Americans deeply resented Britain’s centuries-long occupation of their homeland, which still continued. Moreover, ten million Germans had immigrated to the United States, and many of them belonged to German cultural organizations or lived in German-speaking rural communities and urban enclaves. Whatever his personal sympathies, President Wilson could not easily have rallied the nation to the Allied side in 1914.
Factors like financial commitments, neutrality rights, and cultural ties with Britain, and German miscalculations that would finally draw the United States into the war on the Allied side in April 1917. New military technology, some of it devised in the United States, made warfare more deadly than ever before. All soldier carried a long-range, high velocity rifle that could hit a target at 1,000 yards, a vast technical improvement over the 300-yard range of the rifle musket used in the American Civil War. The machine gun was an even more deadly technological innovation. Its American-born inventor, Hiram Maxim, had moved to Great Britain in the 1880s to follow a friend’s advice: “If you want to make your fortune, invent something which will allow those fool Europeans to kill each other more quickly.” These innovations changed the nature of warfare by giving a tremendous advantage to soldiers in defensive positions. Once the German advance into France ran into fortified positions, it stalled. For four bloody years, millions of soldiers fought from 25,000 miles of heavily fortified trenches that cut across a narrow swath of Belgium and northern France. One side and then the other would mount an attack across “no man’s land,” only to be caught in a sea of barbed wire or mowed down by machine guns and artillery fire. Trench warfare took an immense psychological toll; thousands of soldiers suffered from shell shock (now known as post-traumatic stress disorder). “I got quite used to carrying shell-shocked patients in the ambulance,” British nurse Claire Tisdall recalled. “It was a horrible thing rather like epileptic fits. They became quite unconscious, with violent shivering and shaking. The Germans launched a devastating new weapon, the U-boat (short for Unterseeboot, the “undersea boat,” or submarine).
In April 1915, the German embassy in Washington issued a warning to civilians that all ships flying the flags of Britain or its allies were liable to destruction. A few weeks later, a German U-boat off the coast of Ireland torpedoed the British luxury liner Lusitania, killing 1,198 people, and 128 of them Americans. The attack on the unarmed passenger vessel (which was later revealed to have been carrying munitions) incensed Americans; newspapers called it “mass murder” and branded Germans as “Savages drenched with blood.” President Wilson sent a series of strongly worded protests to Germany, but tensions subsided in September 1915, when Germany announced that its U-boats would no longer attack passenger ships without warning.
Many politically aware Americans refused to support either side. “It would be folly for the country to sacrifice itself to the clash of ancient hatreds which is urging the Old World to destruction,” declared the New York Sun. Progressive-minded Republicans, such as Senators Robert La Follette of Wisconsin and George Norris of Nebraska, vehemently opposed American participation in the European conflict. Virtually the entire political left, led principally by Eugene Debs and the Socialist Party, condemned the war as a conflict among greedy capitalist and imperialist nations. A. Philip Randolph and other African American leaders wanted no part of a struggle among white nations. Newly formed pacifist groups, such as the Women’s Peace Party, mobilized popular opposition to the war. So did two giants of American industry, Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford. In December 1915, Ford spent half a million dollars to send one hundred men and women to Europe on a “peace ship” to urge an end to the fighting. In recent times, American public opinion still ran strongly against entering the war, a fact that shaped the election of 1916.
The reunited Republican Party passed over Theodore Roosevelt in favor of Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes, a progressive who had served as governor of New York. The Democrats again nominated Wilson, who campaigned both on his record as a progressive and as the president who can kept us out of war. Wilson eked out a narrow victory; winning California by a mere 4,000 votes, he secured a slim majority in the Electoral College. Despite Wilson’s campaign slogan, the president found that events pushed him toward war. By mid-September 1918, American and French troops had forced a German retreat. As September ended, Pershing pitted over one million American soldiers against a vastly outnumbered and exhausted German army holed up in the Argonne forest. By early November, this attack had broken the German defenses protecting the crucial railroad hub at Sedan. The cost was high: 26,000 Americans killed and 95,000 wounded. The flood of American troops and supplies brought the war to a close. Recognizing the inevitability of an Allied victory and facing popular uprisings at home, the German government sued for peace and signed an armistice on November 11, 1918. Millions of soldiers and civilians had died, but the Great War was finally over.
It was during the World War II, when America involved its military action in Vietnam. The war in Vietnam escalated in 1950’s and reached to the highest in 1960’s. Japan attack on Pearl Harbor leads to the American involvement in Asia and started a war with Japan. Communism was taking place in Vietnam which most of the world is against off, people off. The people of Vietnam were troubled during the French rule before the WW II and even after it. The oppression leads to form the freedom fighter groups, Viet Minh was one of the group came into existence to fight against French and the Japanese. In 1944, Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was operating in Southern and Northern Vietnam. The OSS operatives made alliance with Ho Chi Minh to help the American soldiers that are gunned down from their aircrafts and were stranded in Vietnam area. Ho Chi Minh believed that he will get America’s support for the Vietnam Independence keeping in view the assistance he provided to the American soldiers and started the Movement of independence for Vietnam. He believed that his political views are not far different than that of the United States of America. But Ho Chi Minh failed to gain support of the American government to form an independent Vietnam state, America with France and Britain does not recognize the Minh government.
American government was not convinced of Minh’s success, they assume that some other power (Russia) is in play that is playing their part in Vietnam independence movement. President Truman rejected Ho Chi petition for assistance and get offensive, started funding money, providing military support, ammunition and supplies to French cause, French who were trying to occupy their Vietnam land. About 40 percent of the military expenditures were provided by America for this cause. When President Kennedy took oath as a president, he started accelerating military involvement in Vietnam. In 1963 President Kennedy send more military advisers to South of Vietnams estimated around 16,300. On 22nd of November he said, “Vietnam would not survive without The United States of America.”
The protests against war started that affected Nixon in elections, Humphrey pledge, he would stop the war in Northern Vietnam, and this act came as a plus point for his election campaign and gained popularity. Ronald Reagan when assumed office also assured that the country will put an end to Vietnam issue similar chorus was followed by the George Bush. This also indicates that the country would not get into a war without having full political support. During the Vietnam War multiple strategies and advanced technology were adopted by the American army as well as by the Vietnam fighters. USA has the most advanced equipment’s from sophisticated helicopters, tanks, deadly chemicals, ammos to highly advance electronic sensors. The most notorious technique used by the USA army was the use of Chemical agents. They were used to destroy land and evacuate dense forest area where enemies were hiding, chemicals affects the land disastrously, changed the entire landscape, children’s health were affected and food supply was highly affected. The most notorious among all the chemicals were “Agent Orange”.
