Tim O'Brien's If I Die in a Combat Zone

Tim O'Brien in his book If I Die in a Combat Zone offers a personal account of his time in Vietnam during the war. The view taken in this book is from the ground up, from the point of view of the soldier in the field. Critics offered an analysis of the war that tried to be more objective and to view the war from some distance as a national policy issue. The film documentary Hearts and Minds suggested that the war was unwinnable, that the U.S. leadership knew this, and that the leadership was hiding the fact from the American people. Some at the time considered the war unwinnable but were little more than voices in the wilderness, while since the end of the war, this has become the prevailing view. The loss of the war by the United States was not inevitable if the United States were willing to go much further in fighting the war than it did, but given the reduced level of support the military was able to generate at home, the loss could be foreseen long before it actually occurred.

O'Brien's book is very much from the point of view of the average American and sees war as something that recurs from time to time. He notes this when he says, "I grew out of one war and into another" (O'Brien 20). The stories told to him about World War II were one thing, but the reality of the war in Vietnam was very different. He considered avoiding the war as so many did, and he entered the war in part to avoid upsetting the balance between himself and his family and friends. He says

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wn, right up to the revelation by Robert S. McNamara recently that much of what this film says was true, the film was quite accurate in its appraisal of the situation and was right to be critical of the government position and government reports. This is the idea the filmmakers present with considerable force and effectiveness. Some analysts considered the specific issue of the legitimacy of the war, something O'Brien also considers while Major Callicles rejects this even as an issue. An alternative paradigm can be suggested, one by which there was a civil war between North and South Vietnam and the U.S. had a role first by giving assistance to a legitimate government and secondly undertook a policy of counter-intervention in response to covert military moves by the North Vietnamese. It is possible to argue with the legitimacy of the South Vietnamese government. It would seem that everyone involved had to live with the consequences of a policy that was ill-conceived and that was never given a proper reason for being. In the foreign policy area, the War in Vietnam was the major problem during the Johnson administration, and this issue stood between the United States and the Soviet Union as a rationale for continuing conflic

Category: Literature - T