Vietnam war topic?

You could discuss China's role in Vietnam.

You could write about Ho Chi Minh's request to the United States for help against the French. In fact, Ho and his followers helped American troops in Vietnam against the Japanese during World War II.

You could write about how Ho was marginalized from the Vietnamese Worker's Party leadership as the war with the US began.

You could discuss the differences between Vietnamese leaders who came from the North and the South.

You could write about Vietnam's involvement in Cambodia before, during, and after the war with the United States.

You could write about the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which I think is fascinating.

You could analyze the impact of Confucianism on Vietnamese thinking regarding the desire for freedom and Communism.

You could look at Ho's time spent in Paris where many revolutionaries from Indochina became aware of Marxism and other political thought.

You could write about the assassination of South Vietnamese dictator Ngo Dinh Diem.

The Tonkin Gulf Incident. It's the combat incident

that ultimately escalated our involvement in the war.

It has a lot of intrigue for a research paper

1. Flawed intelligence, thinking there was an attack

against Navy ships when there wasn't.

2. First US pilots shot down.

3. A Johnson White House that may have

been anxiously looking for a reason to involve the US

in combat operations.

All that and more.

How about the dedicated marginalization of the Viet Cong National Liberation Front by the North Vietnamese after the final conquest of the South, culminating in the imprisonment and eventual execution of the North's former allies.

It might be interesting to run a time line type paper showing our involvement in Viet Nam as a continuation of a war that started after WW2 with the French in what was called FRENCH INDO CHINA at that time and concluded with the defeat of the French at DIEN BEN PHO in 1953 and partition of the country. Because of the growing power of Communist China and our experience in Korea, we felt that the CONTAINMENT POLICY that we established in Europe should be extended to Southeast Asia. Advisors were sent to Viet Nam during the Eisenhower administration and the numbers were increased during the Kennedy administration. Heavy duty involvement in Viet Nam began after North Vietnamese gun boats allegedly fired on the C TURNER JOY in the GULF OF TONKIN. Shortly after that Congress passed the GULF OF TONKIN RESOLUTION which allowed the President to commit troops without a declaration of war. The rest of the war you can pick up on any number of websites. I capitalized subjects that you can put into Wikipedia and get a ton of information. This should give you enough informaton for a small book.

Every one seems to want to ignore the exodus of the people of South Vietnam, the "boat people." About 1.6 million Vietnamese fled from the Communist government over a period of twenty years after the end of US combat in 1972.

The US accepted the largest number of these refugees, including Chinese-Vietnamese and the various hill tribes from the mountains of Vietnam and Laos..Their hardships, determination, and successes in surviving their ordeal is a story that deserves to be known.

I did a project about the Vietnam War in English class from the book The Things They Carried (great book, by the way). I wrote about the diminishing sanity of the soldiers and the brutal living conditions.

It would be interesting to try and document the allegations of mass executions following the fall of the south. It would be difficult to do, since I don't recall ever having seen any legitimate references, just allegations, as above.

The song "Alice's Restaurant" This song is called Alice's Restaurant, and it's about Alice, and the

restaurant, but Alice's Restaurant is not the name of the restaurant, that's just the name of the song, and that's why I called the song Alice's Restaurant......And I went up there, I said, "Shrink, I want to kill. I mean, I wanna, I wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and

guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, Kill, KILL, KILL." And I started jumpin up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL," and he started jumpin up and down with me and we was both jumping up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL." And the sargent came over, pinned a medal on me,

sent me down the hall, said, "You're our boy."

-Just as small sample-

the tet offensive, my lai massacre (i hope i spelled it right), henry kissingers role in creating such a disaster, i think the learned member above just gave you tons, here's my little two cents : )