The Vietnam War

The Vietnam War

1. Introduction.

I have chose to write about the Vietnam War because it is very exciting, and it have a lot of political and military questions that haven't been cleared out. I would like find out why the US wanted to join the war, and why did they lose the war, and what did the people in the US say about the war.

2. The story of Vietnam

Within the war the U.S had the intention to keep South-Vietnam free for communism, and that was also the intention under the war until 1965, where it more than less was gone. In the mid-nineteenth century, France had the control of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. But in 1954, France was forced out of Vietnam and therefore there were no one left to be the anticommunist in the region, except South-Vietnam.

The American President Dwight D. Eisenhower, came up with the Domino-Theory which says: "If one country becomes communist, the other countries will fall one by one." They thought Asia would become communist too if the USA did not bring its army into action.

But the South-Vietnam didn't have the power to fight a major guerrilla war against the North-Vietnam, but with the assistance of US advisers, the US rebuild the South Vietnamese army.

In 1930-31, the Vietnamese National party was totally wiped out, so the lead in the resistance was taken over by Ho Chi-Minh and his founded Communist party. In 1950 Ho Chi-Minh declared, that only his Government was legal. It came to many violent battles and In Geneva, July 1954, it was decided to part Vietnam in to regions, the South and North-Vietnam, there was never a election for it, because the president, Ngo Diem, rejected it.

After the death of Ho Chi-Minh, a communism party led

by a group called Vietcong started the Guerrilla wars in 1957.

After years of fighting, the North Vietnam army had taken more and more land from the south. After command of the American president Lyndon Johnson the US send their own troops to Vietnam, and then in early in August 1964, a US Navy destroyer were attacked by Vietnamese P-4 torpedo boats, after it had been on patrol, gathering information on North Vietnamese and Chinese military activities.

3. The US Mobilising

After the torpedo attacks, the US increases their funding to the South-Vietnam army with $125million. But the South-Vietnam army didn't still have the power to fight a war against the stronger North-Vietnam army. Therefore the US military sends more than 7.000 troops to Vietnam, now the US force had more than 21.000 soldiers in Vietnam.

4. How did the US population act?

As the war turned by and the casualties went higher and higher the US population reacted more and more against the war and in 1967 the American week tabloid "Life" had 11 pages with names of American soldiers who had died during the Vietnam war, in a period of one week.

It was specially the democrats who were against the war, they hold a huge anti-Vietnam war campaign, and as the time went by, more and more people joined the campaign. It were specially the politics who had problem convincing the public and when the crowd were aware of Lyndon B. Johnson lies in 1964, where he told the congress lies and misleading information about the war, so he could launch the war against the North-Vietnam forces.

5. The scar

The Vietnam War has left a scar on the American soul. It was the longest conflict in America history, and more than 53,000 men were killed in action and also a huge number of men disappeared under the war. The last years of the war US lost from 1965-1969 more than 40.000 soldiers. When the war was at its height in 1968-70, more than 2 million American soldiers were in Vietnam. After the war the new elected president Richard Nixon said:

"No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now. Rarely have so many people been so wrong about so much. Never have the consequences of their misunderstanding been so tragic." (Source: http://www.vhfcn.org/stat.htm)

6. The scenario

The war of Vietnam were not easy for the US soldiers, fighting in the jungle of Vietnam were very hard and very difficult for them. The Vietcong's had a huge advantage by knowing the jungle and its secrets. The jungle wasn't the only problem a major problem was that it was hard to tell who was