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Vietnam War (view source)

Revision as of 23:42, September 21, 2010

902 bytes removed , 23:42, September 21, 2010

Should go under cost

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==The War==

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The war exacted a huge human cost, including an estimated one to two million North and South Vietnamese,<ref>http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/modules/vietnam/index.cfm</ref> 100,000 to 300,000 Cambodians<ref>http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/deaths.htm</ref> and 30-50,000 Laotians.<ref>http://www.vietnamgear.com/casualties.aspx</ref> The "most comprehensive demographic survey" ever conducted on casualties during the war, as endorsed by the Associated Press, estimated that nearly one million Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians were killed throughout the two decades of conflict.<ref>Associated Press, April 3, 1995; Charles Hirschman et al., “Vietnamese Casualties During the American War: A New Estimate,” Population and Development Review, December 1995</ref> R.J. Rummel puts the total at 1.2 million Indochinese killed on all sides.<ref>http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/WSJ.ART.HTM</ref>

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The [[Kennedy]] administration, which had repeatedly intervened to halt right-wing coups, acquiesced in 1963 to the overthrow of South Vietnam's Diem by a coalition of generals. President Nixon would later characterize this decision as a catastrophic betrayal of an ally that contributed to the ultimate disintegration of South Vietnam. The casus beli for the United States intervention was an alleged attack on a US ship by North Vietnam, the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. The US responded with a massive bombing campaign called Operation Rolling Thunder. Although a swift victory over North Vietnam would have taken a matter of months, the risk of Chinese intervention was considered too great to accept. Thus, Vietnam was fought to avoid "another Korea".

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