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Vietnam era changes and how they affect us today A quarter of a century after the Fall of Saigon, Vietnam continues to exercise a powerful hold of the American psyche. No deployment of American troops abroad is considered without the infusion of the Vietnam question. No formulation of strategic policy can be completed without weighing the possibility of Vietnamization. Even the politics of a person cannot be discussed without taking into account his / her opinion on the Vietnam War. This obsession with Vietnam is perfectly national when viewed from a far. It is the only war that the United States has ever lost.
It defined an era of American history that most rank with the depression as one of this nations most traumatic events. (Warren, 1990) The Vietnam War, to me, is one of the most interesting wars in American history. It was once said, it is like a shroud of a mystery wrapped inside an enigma. (unknown) Vietnam, Red China, and the spread of communism brought fear into the homes of many Americans, due to Red China and Russia tightening their strong hold on Indochina. The frequent media coverage on the poor South Vietnamese people suffering under communist rule aroused both fear and anger in America. Many feared that the iron hand of communism would slowly move from Southeast Asia towards the United States. (Sheldon, 1969) Feeling threatened and helpless, many American men volunteered to fight the war in Vietnam. My uncle served in Vietnam for three years. He was one of the many who went to fight the spread of communism, or so he thought.
He explained to me why he volunteered to fight with this simple analogy: Being nineteen, naive, and eager to serve my country I volunteered to fight in Vietnam. I pictured what was happening over there as a killer approaching my house. My house was America. Around the house is a white picket fence and the killer is approaching the fence. I saw this coming and had to protect my family.
He asked me if I would have waited for the killer to reach the front door or if I would meet him at the gate? He then continued: I decided I needed to meet the killer at the gate, before he got close enough to harm my family. That is why I volunteered to fight in Vietnam, to help stop the spread of communism before it reached home (America). The main focus of going to war against the North Vietnamese, it seems, was to halt the spread of communism. The United States wanted to free the South Vietnamese from communism. (Fall, 1963) The U. S.
government along with other countries felt they should help the South Vietnamese because they were not capable of helping themselves. (Manning & Janeway, 1969) John F. Kennedy, in his inaugural speech, spoke of making the United States a world leader again by asking the American people to live up to the ideas of their country and making the United States a leader again in order to meet the challenges of the world head on. Near the end of his address he emphasized his goal with this quote; My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you - but rather what together we can do for the freedom of man. President Kennedys speech inspired the nation. (web 2002) Many Americans felt as Kennedy did. In 1961 the people felt that the United States should not wait too long to get involved.
John Foster Dulles said, these risks are far less than those that will face us a few years from now if we dare not be resolute. " This is what prompted many men in the 1960 s to volunteer for the war, they felt as if they were contributing to the freedom of mankind. (Harrison, 1982) A short time later America found itself in the middle of the Vietnam War, one America so gallantly supported but soon would hate. When the United States entered the war it soon found how terrible the conditions were in Vietnam. Our government saw the extremely weak South Vietnamese forces. Dwight D. Roosevelt explains, Unassisted, Vietnam cannot at this time produce and support the military formations essentials to it. (web 2002) America tried to adapt to these conditions and fighting the North Vietnamese, and for the most part did. John F Kennedy had developed a new, stronger, more versatile style of warfare; which became known as Air Mobile.
The first Air Cavalry Air Division was born from John F Kennedy and his new warfare style. But Kennedy did not have much time to fulfill so many of his plans. On November 22, 1963, an assassins bullets in Dallas killed John F Kennedy. He was the youngest president elected and the youngest to die. Kennedys death changed a lot. In 1964 President Johnson took office and inherited all of John F Kennedys responsibilities along with the war. (web 2002) Lyndon B Johnson not only had to take on the crucial job of leading the war but also the new task of dealing with the American people. (Bender, 1969) Unfortunately, as the war continued the United States soldiers were beginning to receive bad press from reporters who were covering the war.
Lyndon B Johnson feared that his image with the American public was dependent on his confrontation with Vietnam in full force. (Harrison, 1982) By June 1964, Saigon and the whole countryside were teaming with American forces. Still little progress was being made. President Johnson had sent men, agents, and military officials and yet still no great actions had taken place. Johnson seemed to hold back American forces throughout his term. He hardly took an assertive position in his tactics. Not once did he send one large move or attack in Vietnam.
His lack of authority cost many American men their lives. (Sheldon, 1969) Ia Drang was a bloody battle that set the stage for the rest of the war and what was to come in the approaching years. Preceding this battle the United States and the North Vietnamese had never been to battle. It all began when the First Cavalry landed in the Central highlands, a few miles away from the Cambodian border. The Cavalry consisted of one division with fewer than five hundred men. They had unknowingly blundered upon two full regiments of the North V. C. , more than two thousand men.
This battle lasted for four days. Four very long days of battle, 234 United States soldiers died and more than 240 were wounded. Nearly 1, 500 enemy soldiers also died during this battle. It would prove to be the bloodiest campaign of the entire war. Ia Drang acted as an early warning sign for the rest of the war yet to come.
Ia Drang was just the beginning of the bloodshed. Shortly following this battle many other large battles were being fought throughout Vietnam as the war began to fester. In 1966 the war began to develop into full swing. Vietnam became covered with the bloodshed of war. (Warren, 1990) The Ho Chi Mihn Trail was another important target for the United States forces.
This trail acted as the main supply route for the North Vietnamese. It was used to move supplies, arms, and to infiltrate the South Vietnamese. General Westmoreland wanted to invade this trail so the route would be cut off. President Johnson, against this plan, enacted his own. Lyndon B Johnson planned to erect a billion dollar electronic fence, surrounded by a sixty mile across mine field, to enclose the Ho Chi Mihn Trail. Construction of this plan began in 1967, but was never completed because the V.
C placed the entire area under siege. (Manning & Janeway, 1969) Following the attempts to destroy the Ho Chi Mihn Trail a series of six significant battles were fought, one that was referred to as Operation Junction City. Intelligence reports stated that Operation City housed the Viet Cong headquarters, although no headquarters were found to destroy. General Westmoreland stated Operation Junction City a success although nothing was found. He declared this area, Junction City, cleared. This is when the North Vietnamese launched their largest offensive attack of the war from that very sector, Junction City. Twenty-one villages were demolished; many of the villagers were killed, wounded or put into pacification camps. (web 2002) Following the Junction City destruction The V.
C. launched the Tet Offensive on January 31, 1968. At 3: 00 a. m.
on that January morning, nineteen Viet Cong commandos shot their way into the United States Embassy compound in Saigon. This was the greatest upset of the war. (Bender, 1969) Despite Johnsons efforts to end Communist aggression and achieve a settlement, fighting continued. Controversy over the war had become acute by the end of March 1968, when he limited the bombing of North Vietnam in order to initiate negotiations. At this time he startled the world by withdrawing as a candidate for re-election. In 1969 Richard Nixon came into office. Over the next few years he managed to come to a settlement with North Vietnam to end this war.
In January of 1973 Nixon negotiated a settlement with General Thieu under which the United States would withdraw from the war, after a very long and hard fight. The South Vietnamese discovered in 1973 that America was pulling out and that it would not fight the war indefinitely. Bui Diem, a Vietnamese ambassador to the U. S. stated, small nations must be wary of the Americans, since US policies shift quickly as domestic politics and public opinion changes.
The struggle for us was a matter of life or death. But, for the Americans, it was merely an unhappy chapter in their history, and they could turn the page. (Harrison, 1982) United States casualties of the dead and wounded took a higher toll than those of World War I. Only in World War II and the Civil War did the United States suffer greater losses. Thousands upon thousands of brave soldiers thought they gave their lives to protect our country, many of which believed that they could prevent communism from reaching the United States and their families. However, this was not the reason why the United States government went to war in Vietnam. (Warren, 1990) A few years after my uncle returned home from the war he realized that the soldiers had not been fighting the spread of communism.
He told me the following: I did not figure out for a long time that I was not fighting communism. What we were fighting was a political war. We were fighting and dying for politics. It was never a war meant to be won by either side.
It was not til I got home that I saw the bull about stopping communism, cause lets face it, America would never fall to communism. Thousands of men and boys fought and died for a cause that did not exist, but only in the eyes of the public. It was not until near the end of the war that people realized this war was a mistake. General William Westmoreland criticized President Johnson in a catalog of grievance memoirs. Some of his complaints were: intensifying the war too slowly, giving the South Vietnamese Army inadequate equipment, refusing to approve incursions against enemy sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia, and failing to level with the American people.
He also criticized television networks and newspapers for distortions, which turned people against the war. As a result of this war, it is estimated that more than 2 million Vietnamese were killed, 3 million wounded, and hundreds of thousands of children orphaned. It has been estimated that about 12 million Indochinese people became refugees. Between April 1975 and July 1982, approximately 1, 218, 000 were resettled in more than 16 countries. In the Vietnam War U. S.
casualties rose to a total of 57, 685 killed and about 153, 303 wounded. At the time of the cease-fire agreement there were 587 U. S. military and civilian prisoners of war, all of whom were subsequently released. A current unofficial estimate brings the number of personnel still unaccounted for in the neighborhood of 2, 500. (Warren, 1990) The fight in Vietnam was the longest war ever fought by The U. S.
Shortly after the war ended an article appeared in Newsweek. I feel this article is a truthful description of the war then and now. It read as follows: The war has been the saddest chapter in the past century of U. S. history, and it will take years for us to recover from what happened in Vietnam and what Vietnam did to America. The faith of Americans in their leadership was practically destroyed, with many left convinced that they had been both seduced and deceived by their government.
Bibliography Beach, Donald. Personal Interview. Bender, David L. The Vietnam War Opposing Viewpoints. New York: Prison, 1969. Fall, Bernard B.
The Two Vietnam. New York: Praeger, 1993. Harrison, Picked James. The Endless War. New York: Free Press, 1992. web web Manning, Robert and Janeway, Michael.
Who We Are. Boston: Atlantic, 1999. Sheldon, Walter J. Tigers in the Rice. London: Crowell-Collier, 1999.
Warren, James A. A Portrait of a Tragedy. New York: Lothrop, 1990.
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