Difference between revisions of "Vietnam War"

Revision as of 18:20, April 4, 2009

Doctor Manhatten just ended it with his giant blue thing. Yeah thats right, his hand.

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-{{rewrite|Doesn't give the origin of the war, what it was fought about, and what the sides were. See [[Talk:Vietnam War/draft]]}}
+Doctor Manhatten just ended it with his giant blue thing. Yeah thats right, his hand.
-[[Image:SaigonFall.jpg|thumb|South Vietnamese residents flee [[Saigon]], as North Vietnamese forces enter the city.]]
-The '''Vietnam War'''  was fought principally between [[North Vietnamese]] [[Communist]] troops and [[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, part of the ongoing [[Cold War]] between the US and the Soviets.
-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),<ref>[http://www.triumphforsaken.com/index.php?pr=Excerpt Triumph Forsaken], book by [[Mike Moyar]]</ref> led the movement for a unified, [[Communist]] Vietnam from 1945 until his death in 1969.
-==Prelude==
-Ho declared the "independence" of Vietnam in 1945 with the removal of Japanese occupying forces with Japan's defeat in the war and before France had the opportunity to return.  The French ignored Ho's proclamation and put troops back in Vietnam to re-establish their colony.  The [[United States]] backed France and its ally [[Bao Dai]] and Ho began a campaign to fight a weakened France and seize independence through force.  France's economy was shattered by the war and so by 1953, 80% of the money and material used by Bao Dai's troops came from the United States.  Nonetheless, in early 1954 French were defeated at the [[Battle of Dien Bien Phu]] over many months when the fortress was overrun by a well-forged Vietnamese fighting force.  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]].  North Vietnam was run by Ho Chi Minh as a Communist nation, while the South was run based on the Western model.  Ho expected the two entities to merge as one nation in a vote.  The United States did not sign on in agreement and the time period came and passed with the United States taking the official position that there could not be a fair election in North Vietnam.  The start of the campaign by the North to take over the South was underway.
-==The War==
-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 (political)|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." <ref>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. [http://www.opinionjournal.com/federation/feature/?id=110009203] </ref>
-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. {{fact}}
-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.
-==Fall of South Vietnam==
-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."
-==Cost of the War==
-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.<Ref>Encyclopedia of Military History, Dupuy & Dupuy, 1979, Chart Page 1221</Ref>
-==Aftermath==
-Today Vietnam has a communist government.  Many people from the former area of South Vietnam fled in the years directly afterwards by taking to sea in crafts that were overcrowded and barely seaworthy.  Many of these "boat people" would be picked up and taken to the United States where they excelled with many of the young going on to not only learn English, but become top students and valedictorians of their class.
-==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.” [http://www.triumphforsaken.com/]
-==Vietnam War in Popular Culture==
-The war and its aftermath were the inspiration for several films, including ''[[The Green Berets]]'', ''[[The Deer Hunter]]'', ''[[Platoon (film)|Platoon]]'', ''[[Hamburger Hill]]'', and ''[[We Were Soldiers]]''.
-The TV series ''[[Tour of Duty (television series)|Tour of Duty]]'' was about a U.S. Army platoon in country around the time of the [[Tet Offensive]].  The series ''[[Magnum, P.I]]'', ''[[Night Court]]'', ''[[Airwolf]]'', and ''[[Area 88]]'' all had Vietnam veterans as main or major characters.  In the military drama series ''[[JAG (TV series|JAG]],'' the main character's father was a US Navy pilot lost over North Vietnam, and the main character's desire to find out what happened to him is the focus of a major story arc over the first few seasons.
-==References==
-<references/>
-==Further reading==
-* Prados, John. ''Vietnam: The History of an Unwinnable War, 1945–1975'' (2009) 704 pages,
-==External links==
-* [http://tigger.uic.edu/~rjensen/vietnam.html Vietnam War Bibliography by Richard Jensen]
-*Larry Berman, [http://hnn.us/articles/37934.html ''Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An''], Time Magazine (Smithsonian Books/HarperCollins, 2007). [http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780060888381/Perfect_Spy/index.aspx]
-*[http://www.fas.org/irp/nsa/almanac-saigon.pdf SIGINT and the Fall of Saigon, April 1975].
-*[http://www.independent.org/events/transcript.asp?eventID=6 "Secrecy, Freedom and Empire: Lessons for Today from Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers"].
-*[http://www.onpower.org/foreign_regional_Asia.html#10 Vietnam War].
-[[Category:United States History]]
-[[Category:Vietnam War]]
-[[category:Cold War]]

Difference between revisions of "Vietnam War"

Revision as of 18:20, April 4, 2009

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