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... ops had gone home on leave, and U. S. troops were on stand-down in many areas.
Over 85, 000 NLF soldiers simultaneously struck at almost every Major City and provincial capital across South Vietnam, sending their defenders reeling. The U. S. Embassy in Saigon, previously thought to be invulnerable, was taken over by the NLF, and held for eight hours before U. S.
forces could retake the complex. It took three weeks for U. S. troops to dislodge 1000 NLF fighters from Saigon. During the Tet Offensive, the imperial capital of Hue witnessed the bloodiest fighting of the entire war.
Communists assassinated South Vietnamese for collaborating with Americans; then when the ARVN returned, NLF sympathizers were murdered. United States Marines and paratroopers were ordered to go from house to house to find North Vietnamese and NLF soldiers. Virtually indiscriminate shelling was what killed most civilians, however, and the architectural treasures of Hue were laid to waste. More than 100, 000 residents of the city were left homeless. The Tet Offensive as a whole lasted into the fall of 1968, and when it was over the North Vietnamese and the NLF had suffered acute losses. The U.
S. Department of Defense estimated that a total of 45, 000 North Vietnamese and NLF soldiers had been killed, most of them NLF fighters. Although it was covered up for more than a year, one horrifying event during the Tet Offensive would indelibly affect Americas psyche. In March 1968 elements of the U. S.
Army's American Division wiped out an entire hamlet called My Lai, killing 500 unarmed civilians, mostly women and children. Promising an end to the war in Vietnam, Richard Nixon won a narrow victory in the election of 1968. Slightly more than 30, 000 young Americans had been killed in the war when Nixon took office in January 1969. The new president retained his predecessors goal of a non-Communist South Vietnam, however, and this could not be ensured without continuing the war. Nixon's most pressing problem was how to make peace and war at the same time.
His answer was a policy called "Vietnamization. " Under this policy, he would withdraw American troops and the South Vietnamese army would take over the fighting. During his campaign for the presidency, Nixon announced that he had a secret plan to end the war. In July 1969, after he had become president, he issued what came to be known as the Nixon doctrine, which stated that U. S. troops would no longer be directly involved in Asian wars. He ordered the withdrawal of 25, 000 troops, to be followed by more, and he lowered draft calls.
On the other hand, Nixon also stepped up the Phoenix Program; a secret CIA operation that resulted in the assassination of 20, 000 suspected NLF guerrillas, many of whom were innocent civilians. The operation increased funding for the ARVN and intensified the bombing of North Vietnam. Nixon reasoned that to keep the Communists at bay during the U. S. withdrawal, it was also necessary to bomb their sanctuaries in Cambodia and to increase air strikes against Laos. The DRV leadership, however, remained committed to the expulsion of all U.
S. troops from Vietnam and to the overthrow of the Saigon government. As U. S.
troop strength diminished, Hanoi's leaders planned their final offensive. While the ARVN had increased in size and was better armed than it had been in 1965, it could not hold its own without the help of heavy U. S. air power. Vice President Johnson had initiated peace negotiations after the first phase of the Tet Offensive.
Beginning in Paris on May 13, 1968, the talks rapidly broke down over disagreements about the status of the NLF, which the Saigon government refused to recognize. In October 1968, just before the U. S. presidential elections, candidate Hubert Humphrey called for a negotiated settlement, but Nixon secretly persuaded South Vietnam's President Nguyen Van Thieu to hold out for better terms under a Nixon administration. Stating that he would never negotiate with Communists, Thieu caused the Paris talks to collapse and contributed to Humphreys defeat as well.
Nixon thus inherited the Paris peace talks, but they continued to remain stalled as each faction refused to alter its position. The United States, on the other hand, insisted that all North Vietnamese troops be withdrawn. In March 1969 Nixon ordered the secret bombing of Cambodia. Intended to wipe out North Vietnamese and NLF base camps along the border with South Vietnam in order to provide time for the buildup of the ARVN, the campaign failed utterly. The secret bombing lasted four years and caused great destruction and upheaval in Cambodia, a land of farmers that had not known war in centuries. Code-named Operation Menu, the bombing was more intense than that carried out over Vietnam.
An estimated 100, 000 peasants died in the bombing, while 2 million people were left homeless. In April 1970 Nixon ordered U. S. troops into Cambodia. He argued that this was necessary to protect the security of American units then in the process of withdrawing from Vietnam, but he also wanted to buy security for the Saigon regime. When Nixon announced the invasion, U.
S. College campuses erupted in protest, and one-third of them shut down due to student walkouts. At Kent State University in Ohio panicky national guardsmen who had been called up to prevent rioting killed four students. Two days later, two students were killed at Jackson State College in Mississippi.
Congress proceeded to repeal the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. Congress also passed the Cooper-Church Amendment, which specifically forbade the use of U. S. troops outside South Vietnam. The measure did not expressly forbid bombing, however, so Nixon continued the air strikes on Cambodia until 1973.
Three months after committing U. S. forces, Nixon ordered them to withdraw from Cambodia. The combined effects of the bombing and the invasion, however, had completely disrupted Cambodian life, driving millions of peasants from their ancestral lands.
The United States began conducting secret bombing of Laos in 1964 and many other areas, targeting both the North Vietnamese forces along sections of the Ho Chi Minh Trail and the Communist Pathet Lao guerrillas, who controlled the northern part of the country. Roughly 150, 000 tons of bombs were dropped on the Plain of Jars in northern Laos between 1964 and 1969. By 1970 at least one-quarter of the entire population of Laos were refugees, and about 750, 000 Laotians had been killed. The success of Vietnamization seemed highly doubtful, since the Communist forces showed that the new ARVN could be defeated. Instead of inhibiting the Communist Pathet Lao, the U.
S. attacks on Laos promoted their rise. In 1958 the Pathet Lao had the support of one-third of the population; by 1973 a majority denied the legitimacy of the U. S. -supported Royal Lao Government. 1975 established a Communist government in Laos. In the spring of 1972, with only 6000 U.
S. combat troops remaining in South Vietnam, the DRV leadership decided the time had come to crush the ARVN. On March 30 over 30, 000 North Vietnamese troops crossed the Demilitarized Zone, along with another 150, 000 PRG fighters, and attacked Quang Tr Province, easily scattering ARVN defenders. The attack, known as the Easter Offensive, could not have come at a worse time for Nixon and his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger. A military defeat of the ARVN would leave the United States in a weak position at the Paris peace talks and would compromise its strategic position globally.
Risking the success of the upcoming Moscow summit, Nixon unleashed the first sustained bombing of North Vietnam since 1969 and moved quickly to mine the harbor of Haiphong. Between April and October 1972 the United States conducted 41, 000 sorties over North Vietnam, especially targeting Quang Tr. North Vietnam's Easter Offensive was crushed. At least 100, 000 Communist troops were killed. The ailing Vo Nguyen Gay, founder of North Vietnam's army, was forced into retirement and succeeded by Van Tien Dung, who counseled the renewal of negotiations with the United States. Further negotiations were held in Paris between Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, who represented North Vietnam.
Seeking an end to the war before the U. S. presidential elections in November, Kissinger made remarkable concessions. The United States would withdraw completely, while accepting the presence of 14 North Vietnamese divisions in South Vietnam and recognizing the political legitimacy of the PRG. Hanoi would drop its insistence on the resignation of Nguyen van Thieu, who had become president of South Vietnam in 1967. Kissinger announced on October 27 that "peace was at hand. " Thieu, however, accused the United States of selling him out and Nixon refused to sign the agreement.
After the 1972 elections, Kissinger attempted to revise the agreements he had already made. North Vietnam refused to consider these revisions, and Kissinger threatened to renew air assaults against North Vietnam unless the new conditions were met. Nixon then unleashed at Christmas the final and most intense bombing of the war over Hanoi and Haiphong. While many U. S. officials were convinced that Hanoi was bombed back to the negotiating table, the final treaty changed nothing significant from what had already been agreed to by Kissinger and Tho in October.
Nixon's Christmas Bombing was intended to warn Hanoi that American air power remained a threat, and he secretly promised Thieu that the United States would punish North Vietnam should they violate the terms of the final settlement. Nixon's political fortunes were about to decline, however. Although he had won reelection by a landslide in November 1972, he was suffering from revelations about the Watergate scandal. The presidents campaign officials had orchestrated a burglary at the Democratic National Committee headquarters, and Nixon had attempted to cover it up by lying to the American people about his role.
The president made new enemies when the secret bombing of Cambodia was revealed at last. Congress was threatening a bill of impeachment and in early January 1973 indicated it would cut off all funding for operations in Indochina once U. S. forces had withdrawn.
In mid-January Nixon halted all military actions against North Vietnam. On January 27, 1973, all four parties to the Vietnam conflict the United States, South Vietnam, the PRG, and North Vietnam signed the Treaty of Paris. The final terms provided for the release of all American prisoners of war from North Vietnam; the withdrawal of all U. S.
forces from South Vietnam; the end of all foreign military operations in Laos and Cambodia; a cease-fire between North and South Vietnam; the formation of a National Council of Reconciliation to help South Vietnam form a new government; and continued U. S. military and economic aid to South Vietnam. In a secret addition to the treaty Nixon also promised $ 3. 25 billion in reparations for the reconstruction of ravaged North Vietnam, an agreement that Congress ultimately refused to uphold.
In my introduction I stated that I know a person who was involved in the war. The person I know is my employer. He was in the war however I never really talked to him about it. Sometime in the near future I do want to talk to him and see what experiences he actually had. When I chose to do a report on the Vietnam War, I had no idea how much really took place during these times.
I basically had an important choice to make about how I would approach the report. I could have just briefly explained how the war started and how it ended or I could do my best to explain most of the details. I hope you realized that I did my best to include as many details as possible. Like I said, when I started the research I had no idea what was in store for me.
There is just so much to this war that it is hard to explain everything. I hope that you enjoyed my report and I hope you learned just as much as I did.
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Research essay sample on American Involvement In The Vietnam War
