ny he had and affair with his 15-year-old babysitter, she went to the army and an investigation was launched. He convinced his wife to lie for him, and eventually figured out how to fool a lie detector test to avoid the charges. It was this ability to lie to himself that eventually caused his downfall. Near the end of the war, most people came to accept the fact that the US could not win the war, but he continued to preach that it could be won if it was fought his way. It was this irrational belief that caused him to believe that he could hold a position with AVRN troops, that nobody else believed could be held. It was while flying between his command post and the battle zone area that his helicopter crashed. Vann had in the end fell victim to the same lie that held everyone else in awe at the beginning of the war. He just could not come to believe that the U.S. could lose a war. Everything he was ever taught told him that losing was not possible; he took that belief with him to the grave. Vietnam was one big lie from the beginning to the end. In the end this novel is really about a lie. We have discussed in class the effects that illusion have on people's perception, it is clearly evident here that the illusion that America was invincible caused a lot of harm. Thousands of people were killed, a country was devastated, and billions of dollars were spent all because of a lie. This novel has provided me with a basic background knowledge that better equips me to deal with analyzing this war. So much of what we base our opinions on in discussion are based on movies and other works of fiction. What this novel does is show that theses movies and books of fiction all get one thing right, the war was an illusion and it was hell. The war was an illusion in the sense that no one could get a straight answer about how it was going. The war was hell because everyone was lying to everybody else and as a result lots of soldiers were d...
