Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was a military conflict between the United States supported government of The Republic of South Vietnam on one side, and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) supported communist guerilla movement called the Viet Cong on the other. The war was fought over control of South Vietnam, with the United States of America supporting the South Vietnamese, and North Vietnam and the USSR supporting the Viet Cong. The USSR provided military aide to the North and Viet Cong, but was not one of the military combatants. Although the ground combat largely took place in South Vietnam, and in bordering areas of Cambodia and Laos, the United States also bombed military and strategic targets in North Vietnam during the course of the war.

The war in Vietnam was part of a larger regional conflict involving the neighboring countries of Cambodia and Laos. This regional conflict is known as the Indochina War.

In Vietnam, this conflict is known as the American War.

Origins of the War

The Vietnam War was in many ways a direct successor to the French Indochina War, sometimes refered to as the First Indochina War, in which the French fought to maintain control of their colony in Indochina against an independence movement led by Communist Party leader Ho Chi Minh. After the Vietnamese communist forces, or Viet Minh, defeated the French colonial army at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, the colony was granted independence. According to the ensuing Geneva settlement, Vietnam was partitioned, ostensibly temporarily, into a communist North and a democratic South. The country was then to be unified under elections that were scheduled to take place in 1956. However the elections were never held. The RVN government of President Diem, with the support of US President Eisenhower, feared that Ho Chi Minh would win any election. Other reasons cited for opposing these elections were the lack of adequate infrastructure in many parts of both North and South Vietnam, and the continuing high level of insurgency operations in the South.

In response to the failure of establishing unifying elections, the Viet Cong was formed as a guerilla movement in opposition to the South Vietnamese government. In response to the guerilla war, the United States began sending military advisors in support of the government in the South. North Vietnam and the USSR supported the Viet Cong with arms and supplies, advisors, and regular units of the North Vietnamese Army, which were transported via an extensive network of trails and roads which became known as the Ho Chi Minh trail.

American Escalation

American involvement in the war was a gradual process, as its military involvement increased over the years under successive U.S. presidents, both Deomcrat and Republican (including Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon), despite warnings by the American military leadership against a major ground ware in Asia. There was never a formal declaration of war, but in 1964 the U.S. Senate did approve the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave broad support to President Johnson to escalate U.S. involvement in the war. By 1968, over 500,000 troops were stationed there, and the toll of American soldiers killed, as reported every Thursday on the evening news, was over 100 a week.

The continued escalation of American involvement came as the Johnson administration, as well as the commander of U.S. forces, General William Westmoreland, repeatedly assured the American public that the next round of troop increases would bring victory. The American public's faith in the "light at the end of the tunnel" was shattered, however, in 1968, when the enemy, supposedly on the verge of collapse, mounted the Tet offensive in South Vietnam (and, to a lesser degree, in the 1969 Post-Tet Offensive). Although neither of these offensives accomplished any military objectives, extensive negative media coverage convinced many Americans that victory was impossible. There was an increasing sense among many people that the government was misleading the American people about a war without a clear beginning or end. When General Westmoreland called for still more troops to be sent to Vietnam, Clark Clifford, a member of Johnson's own cabinet, came out against the war.

Opposition to the War

There had been a small movement of opposition to the war within certain quarters of the United States starting in 1964, especially on college campuses. This was happening during a time of unprecedented leftist student activism, and of the arrival at college age of the demographically significant "Baby Boomers." World War II ended in 1945, and the Korean conflict ended in 1953, thus most, if not all of the "Baby Boomers" had never been exposed to war. In addition, the Vietnam War was unprecedented for the intensity of media coverage, as well as for the stridency of opposition to the war by the so-called "New Left."

Many young men feared being sent to Vietnam, and hundreds of them fled to Canada or Sweden to avoid the draft. At that time, not all men of draft age were actually conscripted; the Selective Service Board used a lottery system to select draftees. Some men found sympathetic doctors who could find a medical basis for classifying as 4F, making them ineligible to be drafted. Others took advantage of a student deferment. Still others joined the National Guard or entered the Peace Corps as a way of avoiding Vietnam. All of these issues raised concerns about the fairness of who got selected for combat, since it was often the poor or those without connections who eventually wound up in combat units.

The American people became polarized over the war. Many supporters of the war argued for what was known as the Domino Theory, which stated that if the South fell to communist guerillas, other nations, priamrily in Southeast Asia, would succumb in short succession, much like falling dominoes. Critics of the war argued that the war lacked clear objectives. The winnability of the war was called into question.

The U.S. realized that the South Vietnamese government needed to have a solid base of popular support if it was to survive the insurgency. This policy of winning the "Hearts and Minds" of the Vietnamese people sometimes seemed at odds with the emphasis on "body count" as a way of measuring military success on the battlefield. At the same time, the bombing of villages in "free fire zones" often had the effect of negating some of the positive impact of this approach. In 1974, the documentary "Hearts and Minds", dealt with some of these policies, and won an Academy Award for best documentary amid considerable controversy.

Of particular interest in "Winning the hearts and minds" of the Vietnamese people is the fact that units of the United States Army, referred to as "Civil Affairs" units were extensively utilized for the first time since World War II. Civil Affairs units, while remaining armed and under direct military control, engaged in what came to be known as "nation building:" constructing (or reconstructing) schools, public buildings, roads and other physical infrastructure; conducting medical programs for civilians who had no access to medical facilities; facilitating cooperation among local civilian leaders; conducting hygiene and other training for civilians; and other "nation building" activities.

Many Americans continued to support the war. Aside from the domino theory mentioned above, there was a feeling that the goal of preventing a communist takeover of a pro-Western government in South Vietnam was a noble objective. Many Americans were also concerned about saving face in the event of disengaging from the war, or as Richard Nixon later put it, achieving "Peace with Honor."

Some Americans opposed the war on moral grounds, seeing it as a destructive war against Vietnamese independence or an invervention in a foreign civil war; others opposed it because they felt it lacked clear objectives and appeared to be an endless, unwinnable quagmire. Some anti-war activists were themselves Vietnam Veterans, as evidenced by the organization Vietnam Veterans against the War.

Of particular note during the Vietnam War were actions taken against members of the Armed Forces and their families. Soldiers were condemned for their participation in the war. Many were spat upon and cursed by anti-war demonstrators upon their return from Vietnam. Families of soldiers killed and wounded in the War received threatening phone calls and hate mail.

In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson began his reelection campaign. A member of his own party, Eugene McCarthy, ran against him for the nomination on an antiwar platform. McCarthy did not win the first primary election in New Hampshire, but he did surprisingly well against an incumbent. The resulting blow to the Johnson campaign, taken together with other factors, led the President to make a surprise announcement in a March 31 televised speech that he was pulling out of the race. He also announced the initiation of the Paris Peace Talks with Vietnam in that speech.

Seizing the opportunity caused by Johnson's departure from the race, Robert Kennedy then joined in and ran for the nomination on an antiwar platform. Johnson's vice president, Hubert Humphrey, meanwhile, ran for the nomination, promising to continue to support the South Vietnamese government.

Kennedy was assasinated that summer, and McCarthy was unable to overcome Humphrey's support within the party elite. Humphrey won the nomination of his party, and ran against President Nixon in the general election, who claimed during the campaign he had a "secret plan" to end the war.

Vietnamization

Nixon won the election and began his policy of slow disengagement from the war. The goal was to gradually build up the South Vietnamese Army so that it could fight the war on its own. This policy--"you supply the firemen, and we supply the hoses"--became the cornerstone of the so-called Nixon doctrine. As applied to Vietnam, the doctrine was called "Vietnamization". The goal of Vietnamization was to enable the South Vietnamese army to increasingly hold its own against the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army. During this period, the United States carried out a gradual troop withdrawal from Vietnam. Nixon continued to use air power to bomb the enemy, and American soldiers continued to die in combat. Ultimately, more American soldiers died, and more bombs were dropped, under the Nixon presidency than under Johnson's.

The morality of US conduct of the war continued to be an issue under the Nixon presidency. In 1969, it came to light that Lt. William Calley had led a massacre of Vietnamese civilians (including small children) at My Lai a year before. The massacre was only stopped after two American soldiers in a helicopter spotted the carnage and intervened to prevent their fellow Americans from killing any more civilians. Although many were appalled by the wholesale slaughter at My Lai, Calley was given a light sentence after his court martial hearings in 1970, and was later pardoned by President Nixon.

In 1970, Nixon ordered a military incursion into Cambodia in order to destroy Viet Cong sanctuaries bordering on South Vietnam. This action prompted even more protests on American college campuses. Several students were shot to death during demonstrations at two universities, Kent State and Jackson State.

One effect of the incursion was to push communist forces deeper into Cambodia, which destablized the country and which in turn may have led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge, who siezed power in 1975. The goal of the attacks, however, was to bring the North Vietnamese negotiators back to the table with some flexibility in their demands that the South Vietnamese government be overthrown as part of the agreement. It was also alleged that American and South Vietnamese casualty rates were reduced by the destruction of military supplies the communists had been storing in Cambodia.

In the 1972 election, the war was once again a major issue in the United States. An antiwar candidate, George McGovern, ran against President Nixon. Nixon's Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, declared that "Peace is at Hand" shortly before the voters went to the polls, dealing a death blow to McGovern's campaign, which had been facing an uphill battle. However, the peace agreement was not signed until the next year, leading the media to suggest that Kissinger's announcement was just a political ploy. Kissinger's defenders assert that the North Vietnamese negotiators had made use of Kissinger's pronouncement as an opportunity to embarrass the Nixon Administration to weaken it at the negotiation table.

The End of the War

The peace agreement did not last.

Although Nixon had promised South Vietnam that he would provide military support to them in the event of a crumbling military situation, Congress voted down any further funding of military actions in the region. Nixon was also fighting for his political life in the growing Watergate scandal, so none of the promised military support to defend the South Vietnamese government was forthcoming.

In 1975, the South Vietnamese capital, Saigon (now officialy called Ho Chi Minh City) fell to the communist forces.

Both during and after the war, significant human rights violations occured. Both North and South Vietnamese had large numbers of political prisoners, many of whom were killed or tortured. After the war actions taken by the victors in Vietnam, including firing squads, torture, concentration camps and "re-education," led to the exodous of tens of thousands of Vietnamese. Many of these refugees fled by boat and thus gave rise to the phrase "boat people."

Many effects of the animosity and ill will generated during the Vietnam War is still felt today among those who lived through this turbulent time in American history.

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