Why did i lose my uncle in Vietnam ? Why does it take someones death to make them a hero ?

Question

My unlce died in vietnam I never got to know him yet many say he was a hero. I didn't want a hero I needed my uncle ! What did he die for. So the USA could pull out of vietnam and abandon the people that helped us there . The US left and many people that helped the usa were killed by the Viet Kong.The fall of sagan etc this all happened . Now Korea has the atomic bombs and power to destroy countries .So why did I lose A 20 year old yuong man . That is now an uncle I can never know.What was this all for ? And why are we losing our people to kill other people. Can't the usa just spend our money here to make the usa safer.Please save our people, our friends our families ! Otherwise when you lose someone to a forien war you to will have an empty hole in your heart ! Or more holes or empty spaces if you have already lost someone.

Answer 1

The Vietnam police action was fought badly, politically, and for the sake of a lot of moneyed interests, once it got going. It got going because our ally France asked for help to get Indo-China back. We could have defeated Vietnam if we'd just fought the war, but our government put restraints on our military's actions to the point where we could not win. Vietnam was backed by the resources of China. But we still could have won if we'd just fought it out fast.

That Korea now has nuclear capacity puts the free world at risk from the Japan and southeast asian side of things. That gives greater power to Iran in the middle east. North Korea is most definitely allied with China and Russia, however secretly, and so that should answer the questionof why we can't just let things be. Even if we would others will not until they have established a tyrannical way of life everywhere they can.

I am sorry you lost your uncle. My father, cousin, and my then future husband, all fought in Vietnam. I was lucky. They all came home.

But darling, people die. It's the nature of life. And if no Vietnam,
a car accident, or an aneurysm, or heart failure, or cancer, or mugging, and so on. Any death leaves an empty hole in our hearts. Your Uncle was a hero not because he died, but because he fought for and believed in the best of the motives we had in Vietnam--to keep Vietnam and Cambodia free.
If our politicians let us down that doesn't diminish what your uncle or my dad or cousin or husband did. They are heroes because they put their lives on the line in unusually dangerous situations to save others. That's what makes a hero. Some are walking around alive now. Some have died and been honored.

I honor your uncle, though I don't know him. Walk along the wall and realize how many men tried to hold tyranny at bay.

Now we have Korea on one side (China and Russia secretly
working to help North Korea), and we have Iran and Iraq and some not very reliable middle eastern allies on the other.

We are at danger across both the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans. And we are farther from the danger than others--like
Japan and Europe and Britain.

What is going to turn Iraq into another Vietnam is our politicians and their individual agendas. If America will stand strong and as one against this new enemy (he's really the same old one)
we may have the strength to pull through. If we allow ourselves to become divided as we are doing we make ourselves weak in the eyes of the world, strengthen our enemies, and lose the chance we have to help the world keep peace at least for a little while longer. If you look at history. That's always been a difficult job. It's just tht more and more of the world is becoming affected by each new war, as we become more and more connected.

Honor your Uncle. And fill that hole with pride in him and the others along that wall in Washington. And choose to be a hero yourself for your own generation. Each of us can only serve our own generation. And we have to do it always in the face of fears and the failures of ourselves and of others. But we have to do it.

Answer 2

I myself have also wondered the same thing many times. I've seen Oklahoma and the scene with Jud and Curly where Curly tells Jud it would be a good thing to hang himself...well I guess that scene helps me understand a little. While they are living people have all these feelings of the person but they are too nervous to let those feelings be known. But once they are gone, if those feelings are good feelings, they want to person to know them and feel guilty about not letting them know while they were still alive. That is part of it. The part about becoming a hero is because when they just go to fight they are already heros, it is just not said as often because it doesn't need to be. But once they die, they are true true heros because they died to help someone else, and like I said before the mourning people want those feelings of thinking that he was a hero to be known. It may also help them cope somewhat, knowing that he died a hero... just somehow that can somehow probably help people deal with the death.

Answer 3

The forefathers of the United States warned future generations to keep an isolationist stance, to not get involved in matters of foreign affair in particular wars. Yet somehow our stance towards the world radically shifted in the 20th century and here we are with no hope of turning back. God bless America that we are compelled to send aid whether it be monetary or millitary or both to areas of the world less fortunate and opressed. However if it were my decision as a taxpayer, not another cent would go towards a foreign war until all the people devistated by Katrina had a place to live, that our schools and healthcare infrastructure were brought up to par, and that not another child in this country would go to bed hungry. Though it is an oversimplified ideology I believe it is more important to help yourself first before you proceed to help others. Maybe I am a filthy over-educated hippie for not supporting this war, but I just don't want to see any more of our fine young men killed for the sake of a country that has no desire to save itself.

Answer 4

I strode among monuments in a row.
What men died to make it so?
Under monuments where soldiers lie
Why did so many have to die?

What was so precious to cost a life
in wild and maniacal strife?
A maniac of fearful force I am told.
What idiot would be so bold
as to seek the mold
of one from days of old?

One developed of the Spartan line
whose form came down the vine
of history to plague us yet again
and once more begin
to build monuments where soldiers lie.

In freedom’s name they died
But upon closer scrutiny
this is not really so.
They died for the certainty
that merchant’s wealth would still flow,
for which they made monuments on high,
monuments where soldiers lie

Sadly,
not one of our fights
were for freedom’s light
Despite what we are told
they were only for merchant’s gold.
So now there are monuments set just so.
Too many monuments where soldiers lie
set so neatly in a row.