Difference between revisions of "Vietnam War"

Revision as of 03:15, May 8, 2009

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),^[1] 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 North Korean leader Kim Il Sung had, Ho chose 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 communist resistance movement against the French had previously been known as the Vietminh. 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.

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.^[3]

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.” [2]

Media Bias

Charges of western media bias in favor of the Communist side have often been made by critics,^[4] who see such alleged bias as being crucial in turning military victories by America into a loss of the war, much by means of propaganda. Underlying the importance of such is the often quoted exchange between Colonel Harry G. Summers, Jr. and his North Vietnamese counterpart, Colonel Tu. During one of his liaison trips to Hanoi, Colonel Harry told Tu, "You know, you never beat us on the battlefield," Colonel Tu responded, "That may be so, but it is also irrelevant."^[5]

The success of the propaganda war has seemed enigmatic to many. “If there is to be an inquiry related to the Vietnam War, it should be into the reasons why enemy propaganda was so widespread in this country, and why the enemy was able to condition the public to such an extent that the best educated segments of our population (that is, media and university elite) gave credence to the most incredible allegations.” (Final Report - Chief of Military History - U.S. Government)

British "Encounter" journalist Robert Elegant stated,

“For the first time in modern history, the outcome of a war was determined not on the battlefield but on the printed page and television screens - never before Vietnam had the collective policy of the media sought, by graphic and unremitting distortion, the victory of the enemies of the correspondents own side.”^[6]

The most manifest example is this regard is seen as being the portrayal of the TET offensive, in which western media was charged with inspiring and aiding the propaganda war of the communists.

“The Tet Offensive proved catastrophic to our plans. It is a major irony of the Vietnam War that our propaganda transformed this debacle into a brilliant victory. The truth was that Tet cost us half our forces. Our losses were so immense that we were unable to replace them with new recruits.” (Truong Nhu Tang - Minister of Justice - Viet Cong Provisional Revolutionary Government - The New York Review, October 21, 1982)

Vietnam War in Popular Culture

The war and its aftermath were the inspiration for several films, including The Green Berets, The Deer Hunter, Platoon, Hamburger Hill, and We Were Soldiers.

The TV 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, 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

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
4. ↑ Leonard Magruder, “I was there and that’s not the way it was”
5. ↑ On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War, Harry G. Summers
6. ↑ How to Lose A War: The Press and Viet Nam; Encounter (London), vol. LVII, No. 2, August 1981, pp. 73-90

Further reading

• Prados, John. Vietnam: The History of an Unwinnable War, 1945–1975 (2009) 704 pages,

External links

• Vietnam War Bibliography by Richard Jensen
• 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.