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Example research essay topic: American Involvement In The Vietnam War - 1,996 words

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The Vietnam War is without a doubt one of the most memorable wars yet to date. Because of the time period the war took place there are many survivors that are still living. The basic reason I chose to do my individual project on the war was basically because it took place while I was a child. However, another reason I chose this topic was because I actually know a person who was in the war. The Vietnam War was basically a military struggle fought in Vietnam from 1959 to 1975. The war involved the North Vietnamese and the National Liberation Front in conflict with United States forces and the South Vietnamese army.

From 1946 until 1954, the Vietnamese had struggled for their independence from France during the First Indochina War. At the end of this war, the country was temporarily divided into North and South Vietnam. North Vietnam came under the control of the Vietnamese Communists who had opposed France and who aimed for a unified Vietnam under Communist rule. Vietnamese who had collaborated with the French controlled the South. Now what you might be asking yourself is Why did the United States get involved in the war.

Well the truth is that The United States became involved because it believed that if all of the country fell under a Communist government, Communism would spread throughout Southeast Asia and beyond. This belief was known as the "domino theory. " The U. S. government, therefore, supported the South Vietnamese government.

This governments repressive policies led to rebellion in the South, and the NLF was formed as an opposition group with close ties to North Vietnam. In 1965 the United States sent in troops to prevent the South Vietnamese government from collapsing. Ultimately, however, the United States failed to achieve its goal, and in 1975 Vietnam was reunified under Communist control; in 1976 it officially became the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. During the conflict, approximately 3 to 4 million Vietnamese on both sides were killed, in addition to another 1. 5 to 2 million Laotians and Cambodians who were drawn into the war. More than 58, 000 Americans lost their lives. In 1955, the United States picked a man by the name of Ngo Dinh Diem to head the anti-Communist regime in South Vietnam.

With U. S. encouragement, Diem refused to participate in the planned national elections. He was not favored to win. Instead, Diem held elections only in South Vietnam, an action that violated the Geneva Accords. Diem won the elections with 98. 2 percent of the vote.

Diem then declared South Vietnam to be an independent nation called the Republic of Vietnam (RVN), with Saigon as its capital. Vietnamese Communists and many non-Communist Vietnamese nationalists saw the creation of the RVN as an effort by the United States to interfere with the independence promised at Geneva. The repressive measures of the Diem government eventually led to increasingly organized opposition within South Vietnam. Diem's government represented a minority of Vietnamese who were mostly businessmen, Roman Catholics, large landowners, and others who had fought with the French against the Viet Minh. When Vietnam was divided in 1954, many Viet Minh who had been born in the southern part of the country returned to their native villages to await the 1956 elections and the reunification of their nation. When the elections did not take place as planned, these Viet Minh immediately formed the core of opposition to Diem's government and sought its overthrow.

The Viet Minh were greatly aided in their efforts to organize resistance in the countryside by Diem's own policies, which alienated many peasants. Beginning in 1955, the United States created the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) in South Vietnam. Using these troops, Diem took land away from peasants and returned it to former landlords, reversing the land redistribution program implemented by the Viet Minh. He also forcibly moved many villagers from their ancestral lands to controlled settlements in an attempt to prevent Communist activity, and he drafted their sons into the ARVN. Many people did not agree with the ARVN and protested against it. However, President John F.

Kennedy still believed that the ARVN could become effective. Some of his advisers advocated the commitment of U. S. combat forces, but Kennedy decided to try to increase support for the ARVN among the people of Vietnam through counterinsurgency. United States Special Forces would work with ARVN troops directly in the villages in an effort to match NLF political organizing and to win over the South Vietnamese people. The number of U.

S. advisers assigned to the ARVN rose steadily. In January 1961, when Kennedy took office, there were 800 U. S. advisers in Vietnam; by November 1963 there were 16, 700. Although the number of advisors began to increase, they wouldnt last long.

After some questionable incidents that took place, the numbers once again began to decrease. The inability of the ARVN to protect U. S. air bases led Johnsons senior planners to the consensus that U. S. combat forces would be required.

On March 8, 1965, 3500 U. S. Marines landed at Nang. By the end of April, 56, 000 other combat troops had joined them; by June the number had risen to 74, 000.

When some of the soldiers of the U. S. 9 th Marine Regiment landed in Nang in March 1965, their orders were to protect the U. S. air base, but the mission was quickly escalated to include search-and-destroy patrols of the area around the base.

This corresponded in miniature to the larger strategy of General William Westmoreland. Westmoreland, who took over the Military Assistance Command in Vietnam (MACV) in 1964, advocated establishing a large American force and then unleashing it in big sweeps. His strategy was that of attrition eliminating or wearing down the enemy by inflicting the highest death toll possible. There were 80, 000 U. S. troops in Vietnam by the end of 1965; 1969 would reach a peak of 543, 000 troops.

Having easily pushed aside the ARVN, both the North Vietnamese and the NLF had anticipated the U. S. escalation. With full-scale movement of U. S. troops onto South Vietnamese territory, the Communists claimed that the Saigon regime had become a puppet, not unlike the colonial collaborators with the French.

Both the North Vietnamese and NLF appealed to the nationalism of the Vietnamese to rise up and drive this new foreign army from their land. The strategy developed against the United States was the result of intense debate both within the Lao Dong in the north, and between the northerners and the NLF. Truong China, the leading southern military figure, argued that the southern Vietnamese must liberate themselves; Le Duan, secretary general of the Lao Dong, insisted that Vietnam was one nation and therefore dependent on all Vietnamese for its independence and reunification. Ho Chi Minh, revered widely throughout Vietnam as the father of independence, successfully appealed for unity. The Central Committee Directorate for the South (also known as the Central Office for South Vietnam, or COSVN), which was composed of DRV and NLF representatives, was then able to coordinate a unified strategy. After the United States initiated large-scale bombing against the DRV in 1964, in the wake of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, Hanoi dispatched the first unit of northern-born regular soldiers to the south.

Previously, southern-born Viet Minh, known as regrouped, had returned to their native regions and joined NLF guerrilla units. Now PAVN regulars, commanded by generals who had been born in the south, began to set up bases in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam in order to gain strategic position. Unable to cross the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) at the 17 th parallel separating North from South Vietnam, PAVN regulars moved into South Vietnam along the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Laos and Cambodia. In use since 1957, the trail was originally a series of footpaths; by the late 1960 s it would become a network of paved highways that enabled the motor transport of people and equipment. The NLF guerrillas and North Vietnamese troops were poorly armed compared to the Americans, so once they were in South Vietnam they avoided open combat.

Instead they developed hit-and-run tactics designed to cause steady casualties among the U. S. troops and to wear down popular support for the war in the United States. In June 1964 retired general Maxwell Taylor replaced Henry Cabot Lodge as ambassador to South Vietnam. A former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the military advisory group to the president, Taylor at first opposed the introduction of American combat troops, believing that this would make the ARVN quit fighting altogether. By 1965 he agreed to the request of General Westmoreland for combat forces.

Taylor initially advocated an enclave strategy, where U. S. forces would seek to preserve areas already considered to be under Saigon's control. This quickly proved impossible, since NLF strength was considerable virtually everywhere in South Vietnam.

In October 1965 the newly arrived 1 st Cavalry Division of the U. S. Army fought one of the largest battles of the Vietnam War in the Ia Drang Valley, inflicting a serious defeat on North Vietnamese forces. The North Vietnamese and NLF forces changed their tactics as a result of the battle.

From then on both would fight at times of their choosing, hitting rapidly, with surprise if possible, and then withdrawing just as quickly to avoid the impact of American firepower. The success of the American campaign in the Ia Drang Valley convinced Westmoreland that his strategy of attrition was the key to U. S. victory. He ordered the largest search-and-destroy operations of the war in the "Iron Triangle, " the Communist stronghold northeast of Saigon. This operation was intended to find and destroy North Vietnam and NLF military headquarters, but the campaign failed to wipe out Communist forces from the area.

By 1967 the ground war had reached a stalemate, which led Johnson and McNamara to increase the ferocity of the air war. The Joint Chiefs of Staff had been pressing for this for some time, but there was already some indication that intensified bombing would not produce the desired results. In 1966 the bombing of North Vietnam's oil facilities had destroyed 70 percent of their fuel reserves, but the Drv's ability to wage the war had not been affected. Planners wished to avoid populated areas, but when 150, 000 sorties per year were being flown by U. S.

warplanes, civilian casualties were inevitable. These casualties provoked revulsion both in the United States and internationally. In 1967 the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Earle Wheeler, declared that no more "major military targets" were left. Unable to widen the bombing to population centers for fear of Chinese and Soviet reactions in support of North Vietnam, the U. S.

Department of Defense had to admit stalemate in the air war as well. The damage that had already been inflicted on Vietnam's population was enormous. In 1967 North Vietnam and the NLF decided the time had come to mount an all-out offensive aimed at inflicting serious losses on both the ARVN and U. S.

forces. They planned the Tet Offensive with the hope that this would significantly affect the public mood in the United States. In December 1967 North Vietnamese troops attacked and surrounded the U. S.

Marine base at Khe San, placing it under siege. Westmoreland ordered the outpost held at all costs. To prevent the Communists from overrunning the base, about 50, 000 U. S. Marines and Army troops were called into the area, thus weakening positions further south.

This concentration of American troops in one spot was exactly what the COSVN strategists had hoped would happen. The main thrust of the Tet Offensive then began on January 31, 1968, at the start of Tet, or the Vietnamese lunar New Year celebration, when a lull in fighting traditionally took place. Most ARVN tro...


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