Vietnam War

From Conservapedia

South Vietnamese residents flee Saigon, as North Vietnamese forces enter the city.

The Vietnam War was an undeclared war fought principally between North Vietnamese Communist troops vs. South Vietnamese forces supported by American soldiers. American troops first intervened in 1965, not counting "military advisers." The war was basically a fight over whether South Vietnam should have a Communist government.

The war was in progress more or less continuously since the surrender of Japan, which occupied Vietnam during World War II, in 1945. Ho Chi Minh, an operative of the Comintern (the Soviet organization charged with promoting Marxist-Leninist revolution around the world),^[1] led the movement for a unified, Communist Vietnam from 1945 until his death in 1969.

Ho's declaration of Vietnamese "independence" in 1945 from France, the former colonial power, was famously modeled on that of the United States,^{[Citation Needed]} but that country correctly interpreted the flattery as subterfuge and backed France and its ally Bao Dai to the hilt. By 1953, 80% of the money and material used by Bao Dai's troops came from the United States. Nonetheless, in early 1954 French and allied troops were defeated at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. The French sued for peace at talks in Geneva, the upshot of which was the creation of four independent countries in their former colony of Indochina: Cambodia, Laos, North Vietnam and South Vietnam.

The war was characterized for the ensuing twenty years by the efforts of North Vietnam to take over the South. Rather than play to the strength of the Americans by launching a conventional war like Korean leader Kim Il-Sung had, Ho chose subversion of the South as his strategy, using as his tools the National Liberation Front and its non-uniformed guerrilla wing, the Viet Cong. The Comintern resistance movement against the French had previously been known as the Viet Minh. The South Vietnamese, under various military governments following the overthrow of their last civilian leader Ngo Dinh Diem in early November 1963, similarly tried to subvert Ho's government in North Vietnam, but with much less success. U. S. forces supported these operations, leading to the Gulf of Tonkin incident on August 2, 1964, when at least one U. S. destroyer was fired on by North Vietnamese forces as it operated close to their waters. The United States responded first with air attacks that became known as Operation Rolling Thunder and later with ground troops.

Failure of US campaign to help the South

Military, political, and social historians have ever after debated why the United States was unable to defeat the North Vietnamese.

James Q. Wilson wrote: "First, Presidents Kennedy and Johnson both wanted to avoid losing Vietnam without waging a major war in Asia." ^[2]

Another factor was careerism of the officer corps. The number of officers in the US army grew disproportionately from the end of WWII, with a 1-in-15 ratio dropping to 1 in 6. Competition for promotions was handled badly by General Westmoreland, who permitted a six month tour of duty for officers. This was hardly enough time to learn how to engage the enemy successfully, and gave rise to resentment among the largely working-class enlisted men.^{[Citation Needed]}

America at first operated on the assumption that victory by body count was possible and would eventually bring the North Vietnamese to the peace table. There were in fact peace negotiations following Operation Linebacker II in December 1972, but these succeeded mostly in giving the United States its prisoners back and time to withdraw from the fight. It was simply impossible for the North Vietnamese leadership, which had been fighting in some form for 30 years, to imagine the indefinite existence of South Vietnam apart from unification under their rule. Accordingly, after U.S. troops had withdrawn, they renewed their offensive in 1975 and took over the former South Vietnamese capital of Saigon, renaming it "Ho Chi Minh City."

Over the course of the war, the United States suffered 46,226 battle deaths with 153,311 wounded 5,486 missing and 10,326 non-battle deaths. 3.3 million troops fought over the course of the war, with the largest number of 625,866 reached on March 27th, 1969. The North Vietnamese are estimated to have lost 1 million men.^[3]

Today Vietnam has a communist government.

Controversies about the war

Max Boot wrote:

• Numerous bits of conventional wisdom have accreted around the Vietnam War. It is commonly held that Ho Chi Minh was a Vietnamese nationalist above all, not a true communist, and that his victory was inevitable. That Ngo Dinh Diem was an unpopular and repressive reactionary. That the United States had no vital strategic interest in defending South Vietnam. That the ‘domino theory’ was a myth. That the U.S. was right not to invade North Vietnam or Laos for fear of triggering Chinese intervention. Mark Moyar, a young, bold, and iconoclastic historian, takes a sledge hammer to these hoary beliefs. [His boox] is ‘revisionist’ in the best sense of the word.” [2]

References

1. ↑ Triumph Forsaken, book by Mike Moyar
2. ↑ When Richard Nixon became president, he wanted to end the war by pulling out American troops, and he did so. None of the three presidents wanted to win, but all wanted to report "progress." All three administrations instructed military commanders always to report gains and rely on suspect body counts as a way of measuring progress. [1]
3. ↑ Encyclopedia of Military History, Dupuy & Dupuy, 1979, Chart Page 1221

External links

• Larry Berman, Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An, Time Magazine (Smithsonian Books/HarperCollins, 2007). [3]
• SIGINT and the Fall of Saigon, April 1975.
• "Secrecy, Freedom and Empire: Lessons for Today from Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers".
• Vietnam War.