rican people actually see dying and destruction that was not rehearsed.
As this continued, it became apparent to the American people that the government was lying. One person who presents this argument of deceit and falsehood is Daniel Ellsberg. In his book which is a sort of memoir, he details his growing awareness of the lie that is America and his gradual rejection of that lie. Ellsberg tells us how he had to learn to reject as arrogant and stupid, the lies that had been told to the public and to Congress by six presidents.
It was Ellsberg who became known as the man who released the Pentagon Papers and made AmericaÆs duplicity public. In his words, when he discovered the documents, he saw that it was a ôdamning confirmation of the worst fears of the anti-war movement, and provided overwhelming evidence of the cynical, manipulative, and deceitful character of our government and its deceit to its own people regarding its involvementö (Ellsberg, 2002, 118).
This revelation, and others at the time, led to the serious campus revolts and protests that became the core of an anti-war movement. In this respect, the primary aftermath of the Vietnam War was that the American people lost a basic innocence and was forced to accept the fact that the government had officially lied. In many ways, this admission was accepted and became part of the national fabric. In other respects, the people, by not fighting back against the government, in effect supported the decisions of their government towards involvement in the Vietnamese civil war.
The aftermath of this is being seen in the actions of President Bush, who has taken as his cause, the toppling of Saddam Hussein, who is seen as the head of an Axis of Evil. In the events unfolding before us every day, we have a President trying to take a nation into war, even with the growing suspicion that it is unnecessary and perhaps even a little lunatic.
Ellsberg, D. (2002). Se...