The war was over long before I was even born, so I have to ask what all the hullabaloo was about. It seems to have something to do with the draft, but there have been drafts before, so that couldn’t have been the whole thing. So, what was the deal with Vietnam?
In a nutshell, the US went into Vietnam to support the South against the communist Viet Cong guerillas. (In the Cold War, it was thought essential to resist anything with the slightest tinge of communishm). It was just a few advisors at first, to support the South Vietnamese army. Then, as it became apparent that South Vietnam was having trouble against the Viet Cong, more U.S. troops were sent until we were quite involved.
As we sent more and more troops, people began to feel the involvement was a mistake and protested the war. There were also protests against the draft, but they were part of the entire antiwar movement of the time. Vietnam was also the first war to be televised, so people saw soldiers being killed, and judged the war an enormous quagmire, and tried to get the U.S. to pull out. The U.S. government was unable to, partially because officials thought we were doing the right thing, and partly because there was no way to pull out with abadoning the South Vietnamese government.
But as time went on, the U.S realized they couldn’t win a military victory (especially due to the domestic protests) and began peace talks. U.S. troops were pulled out and the South Vietnam government fell to the Viet Cong, who then joined North Vietnam (the Viet Cong were mostly from the South, but were strongly allied with the North and wanted a united Vietnam).
Vietnam was a conflict we more-or-less inherited from the French, who ruled Vietnam as a colony named French Indochina until uprisings forced France out and split the colony into a few nations including Vietnam, which split into a Chinese-backed Communist North and an American-backed Capitalist South. Vietnam was very much a war by proxy, with two large powers fighting each other using smaller forces as acceptable `fronts’ to hide a larger, secret war.
At the time, America believed in the Domino Theory: The dominant military thinkers of the time believed that if Communism was ever allowed to spread, even into relatively inconsequential regions, it would cause a casacde of Communist takeovers and, eventually, the invasion of America itself. Thus we spent huge amounts of resources and lives trying to secure a nation of little importance against a dug-in, well-hidden, highly-motivated enemy that could blend with the civilian population.
This blurring of the lines between military and civilian was deeply troubling for American strategists and politicians. Misguided thinking and horrible stresses lead to things like the My Lai massacre, where Lt. Calley massacred as many as 500 unarmed civilians in 1968. Those incidents, plus the general public perception of us throwing thousands of men and millions of bombs into a huge sucking swamp, lead to massive public unrest back home.
In Vietnam, the local population was not as helpful as we’d have liked. The phrase `Hearts and Minds’ sums up the war America failed to win: We, according to some, dropped to many bombs and not enough rice, giving even non-VC and non-NVA Vietnamese no reason to support our efforts to keep South Vietnam independent. By the beginning of our withdrawl the ARVN was massively demoralized and losing soldiers to both battle and desertion.
Public perception ended Vietnam. Shaped by television, which brought images directly from the front lines, and by the growing liberal and ultra-liberal movements, the average American’s patience with Washington’s undeclared war wore thin and snapped. When young men are burning draft cards in the streets, young people of both genders are rioting at party conventions (Democratic Convention, Chicago, 1968, for example), and college students are facing down the National Guard (Kent State University, Ohio, 1970), a nation cannot effectively prosecute a war.
No matter how much of the ground we controlled, no matter how long we could have held out and kept defeating the North militarily, psychologically the war was lost long before it was over.
My memory was that the majority of the population supported the VW according to opinion polls all the way through, though no doubt I could be corrected
It’s also worth remembering that Vietnam was a single country, North and South were purely administrative concepts connected to the defeat of Japan, not nations.
This was used as the basis for the 1954 Geneva Accords after the defeat of the French.
"July 21, 1954 - The Geneva Accords divide Vietnam in half at the 17th parallel, with Ho Chi Minh’s Communists ceded the North, while Bao Dai’s regime is granted the South. The accords also provide for elections to be held in all of Vietnam within two years to reunify the country. The U.S. opposes the unifying elections, fearing a likely victory by Ho Chi Minh.
October 26, 1955 - The Republic of South Vietnam is proclaimed with Diem as its first president. In America, President Eisenhower pledges his support for the new government and offers military aid."
http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/vietnam/index-1945.html
Part of the issue with the draft was that it wasn’t evenly applied to all eligible US citizens. In general it was the poor and disenfranchised that got to carry a gun in the jungle. Those who were wealthy enough (and you didn’t have to be all that wealthy…more that you weren’t poor) managed to avoid the war by a variety of means such as staying in college. Other methods existed as well such as joining the National Guard…it counted as military service but you never went anywhere more dangerous than, say, Texas. There are only so many spots to be filled in the National Guard however so if you were connected you got your kids in there (which is what the senior George Bush did for his son and now President George Bush).
Is it just a coincidence that the Norths of Vietnam and Korea were communist?
Did the communists prefer to take over the North parts of countries first?
Both Northern Vietnam and Korea border communist China. (map)
North of both of those countries is China and materials could be moved in that way.
I think another thing to remember about Vietnam is that it passed through 4 presidents. A republican, (IKE) then 2 dems (JFK,LBJ) and then back to republican Nixon. During our present conflict many people protest GWB. But it would be more difficult to do that during Viet Nam and people started protesting the military itself. Blaming the war on the military-industrialist complex for continuing the war just to keep defense contract dollars flowing. (something Ike warned us about)
Gjorp, I think that you need to learn more about the war than you can from the answers on this thread. I think you need to read a book about the Vietnam War. I suggest you start with Vietnam: A History by Stanley Karnow. Here’s a good website for you to start by looking at:
Factor A: War of Attrition Many people felt that we weren’t “there to win and get out”: certainly we had weapons and capabilities that we were not using, and apparently it was felt that if we put substantially more into the war, China would escalate on the other side (up to and including nukes). I think they called it a “war of attrition”, meaning that our strategy, such as it was, was to “prevent South Vietnam losing” and eventually China and Ho Chi Minh would get tired of it and quit trying to annex South Vietnam. That’s a hell of a strategy to contemplate when you are of draft age: you young folks are expendable and we’re just gonna keep shoveling you into the war-furnace until it burns out.
Factor B: Bad Faith As has been mentioned already in this thread, the possibility of an open election had already been stomped on by the US, which feared that the election might go the wrong way (electing a communist government for the entirety of Vietnam). Add to that: there was a widespread belief that many of the villagers and other Vietnamese nationals in South as well as North Vietnam supported Ho and/or at least sympathized with the North Vietnamese side. Top that off with: the government of South Vietnam was increasingly viewed as possessing very few redeeming features, especially if you did not view “isn’t communist” as an inherently redeeming feature. In light of the above perceptions that were spreading among the American draft-age and college-age population, it was believed that we were trying to “liberate” a people from themselves against their will, that the South Vietnamese would as soon kill you as look at you and would help shelter the Viet Cong, etc etc, so what in the name of hell were we doing over there?
Factor C: Wag the Dog There was a cultural revolution going on throughout all this. Martin Luther King taking on racism, a war on poverty, a revalorization of non-materialist concerns and a critique of the narrow non-pluralistic conformity-centric aspects of our culture, rock music, experimentation with drugs, feminism, and new life for marxist-socialist ideas in America for the first time since WW II… all of this, many people felt, was being shoved aside and suppressed and barricaded against in the name of patriotism. (Observe a two-way street here: conservative supporters of the war would encounter long-haired young people who liked rock music, did drugs, and resisted the war and, in the name of patriotic support of the war would condemn rock music, long hair, etc.; then subsequently guys who grew their hair long and their sisters who were sexually active and “liberated” and groups of kids listening to rock music would be encountered by angry conservative people accusing them of being unAmerican and obviously against the war and not properly supporting Our Boys, etc). This wasn’t just a problem for right-winger Nixon; it was a problem for LBJ before him, good old LBJ who was gonna bring forth the Great Society and instead got bogged down in this stupid war and loses interest in social change even as a wave of change-hungry kids comes of age.
Derleth:
Maybe I’m just nitpicking your phrasing, but…I’m not aware that the Domino theory has ever been abandoned as disproven. Of course, with the USSR dead and China virtually capitalist these days, it’s pretty much moot, but in purely theoretical terms, I don’t think folks have stopped believing it.
Part of the “hullabaloo” over Vietnam were a number of false or inaccurate statements by the administration or high ranking military leaders, and predictions of victory by a certain date that didn’t pan out.
One of the justifications for increased force and troop deployment was the “Gulf of Tonkin” resolution. At the time, it was believed the North deliberately attacked a US vessel in the gulf. Over time it became known such an event either didn’t happen at all, or it had been betrayed considerably different than actual events.
Some of these statements may have been downright lies or well meaning mistakes but over time, much of the public believed they were being lied to about everything.
Just to correct a couple of very minor inaccuracies/unclear points…
The Viet Cong were the primary Communist combatants in South Vietnam early in the war. However from the post-Tet Offensive period on ( in which the Viet Cong suffered deabilitating casualties ), the burden of combat was increasingly dominated by the regular North Vietnamese Army infiltrating into the south.
Further the final fall of South Vietnam was not brought about by the Viet Cong, but rather by a full-scale conventional invasion of the south by North Vietnam.
While this is essentially correct, it is worth keeping in my mind that French Indochina was an amalgamation of several unrelated kingdoms to begin with. Vietnam ( vigorous and expanding before the French protectorate ) and Cambodia ( in decline for some time and, before the French assumption of a protectorate, a vassal of Siam ), both inheritors of fairly ancient traditions as independant states, and Laos, a relatively young ( 1707 ) breakaway section of Siam.
- Tamerlane
For a bit of perspective as well, you might try reading
March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam by Barbara Tuchman. As the title indicates, it is about more than Vietnam, but anyone interested in more than surface information about these historical events would find it very enlightening. And Ms. Tuchman was a marvelous writer.
Here’s my two cents.
Viet Nam was split into North Viet Nam (run by a Communist dictator) and South Viet Nam (run by an American-friendly, i.e., non-Communist) dictator who wasn’t much better. A civil war broke out in South Viet Nam to oust this second dictator.
America, still stung by the loss of China to Communism, and the standoff in Korea (still going on, by the way: who says the Cold War is over?), and believing by way of the domino theory that the only way this could happen is if North Vietnamese Communists (backed, of course by China) were trying to take over, decided to step in. This was flawed logic, inasmuch as Viet Nam and China have hated each other since far in the distant past, as shown by the fact that right after the Viet Nam war ended in the mid-seventies, China and Viet Nam got into a war of their own.
Thus, America managed to turn a South Vietnamese Civil War into a war between America and North Viet Nam. Everyone was behind this (except for many potential draftees) until the body bags started coming home en masse. Once Walter Cronkite, then anchor for CBS News and known as “The Most Trusted Man in America” publicly announced his opposition to continuing the war, public sentiment really began to turn.
America really didn’t know what it was doing in Viet Nam, and even the military leader in charge, Westmoreland, has publicly stated it was one of America’s worst mistakes.
I really can’t point the finger of laughter at those folks back in the forties, fifties, and sixties who believed in the Domino Theory.
Remember, there seemed to be plenty of obvious evidence for it.
[ul]
The disappearance of Russia under Lenin and the gang.
The takeover of the Baltic Republics and Poland by Stalin.
The disappearance of Eastern Europe after World War II, particularly East Germany.
The takeover of China by Mao and the gang.
The almost complete takeover of Corea.
Thriving Communist movements in France and Italy.
The takeover of North Vietnam, and the (silent) invasion of important parts of Laos and Cambodia by that country.
The courting of Russia by India and many nations in Africa, South America, and the Middle East.
[/ul]
It really looked at the time as if the whole world was going crazy, and was bent on becoming Communist.
Yes, it’s true, conditions in many of these benighted countries were so horrible to start with that even the slavery of Communism seemed a refreshing change to the folk involved, partcularly the peasants.
And, besides, it is still a fact that, once in power, it has proven almost impossible to get rid of a Communist government. The collapse of the Soviet Empire and its vassal states must be looked upon as the result of the actions of one extraordinary man: Mikhail Gorbachev.
Communist China and North Corea are still a pain in the ass.
There is a degree of truth to this but I would like to point out it that the poor weren’t entirely the ones who served. Through the 50’s the draft was a fact of life and since there was no war there were certain types of people that were exempt. College students were one classification, but so were those that were married and especially those with children. I joined the Marine Corps in college, because I hated regular ROTC. After graduation I was commissioned. Since I was not married I would have been drafted if I was not already signed up. It did not apply to me anymore and I’m not sure when the draft was stopped. I finished my tour of duty just as the first buildup was starting. Later the draft was brought back and there was a lot of young men that thought “I didn’t think I was going to get drafted, this isn’t fair!” It was not poor people that ran away to Canada, it was “hippies” who had dropped out and tuned in. They had dropped out of college and weren’t married.
Also, the new draft, during the Vietnam War used a lottery system in an effort to make it fair to all. The fact that one could join the National Guard to avoid serving in the regular armed services was available to everyone, not just the wealthy. That is not to say that if you had connections you couldn’t get a sweetheart deal. I was from a well-to-do family, with no connections and there were lots of us in that category. We served and IMHO are better for it.
In Stephen Ambriose’s last book (To America?) there is a mention of Nixon sensing that many of the riots and protests were due to young men not having any sense of certainty regarding their fate. Nixon in turn switched the draft system to something that offered advance warning of being drafted and erased much of the uncertainty present for young men. This put a damper on the protests and the protest movement seemed to lose some of its steam.
Is there any more information/is there truth to this/am I not remembering correctly/etc?
So did the US government have a “coalition” of other nations behind it in the Vietnam war? It seems we were the only nation fighting.