Vietman War

From the 1880s until World War II (1939-1945), France governed Vietnam as part of French Indochina. (Indochina also included Cambodia and Laos, and was ruled by the emperor Bao Dai). During this time, the nations of Indochina fought for their sovereignty. In 1940, the Japanese troops invaded and occupied French Indochina, (causing the United States to step in and demand Japan to leave). In December of that year, Vietnamese nationalists established the League for the Independence of Vietnam, (or Viet Minh), "using the turmoil of the war as an opportunity for resistance to French colonial rule" (Nixon, 24). When Japan would not cooperate, the U.S. and Viet Minh formed an alliance against them. The U.S. sent in militia, and the Viet Minh began guerrilla warfare. The Viet Minh troops rescued downed U.S. pilots, located Japanese prison camps, helped U.S. prisoners to escape, and provided valuable intelligence to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Ho Chi Minh, the principal leader of the Viet Minh, was even made a special OSS agent. Eventually, the Japanese signed their formal surrender (on September 2, 1945), and Ho Chi Minh used the occasion to declare the independence of Vietnam, which he called the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). However, although Emperor Bao Dai resigned the throne, the French refused to acknowledge Vietnam's independence, and later that year drove the Viet Minh into the north of the country.

Ho Chi Minh wrote over eight letters to Truman (while he was president) asking him for the U.S support. However, after the Cold War, the United States and Truman feared support of communism in any form. The United States and Truman therefore condemned Ho Chi Minh as an agent of international Communism and offered to assist the French in recapturing Vietnam.

"In 1946 United States warships ferried elite French troops to Vietnam where they quickly regained control of the major cities, including Hanoi, Haiphong, Hue, and Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), while the Viet Minh controlled the countryside" (Ebert 38). (Although the Viet Minh had only 2000 troops at first, the recruiting increased after the arrival of French troops, and by the late 1940s, the Viet Minh had hundreds of thousands of soldiers). In 1949 the French set up a government to rival Ho Chi Minh's, installing Bao Dai as head of state. In May 1954 the Viet Minh mounted a massive assault on the French fortress at Dien Bien, in Northwestern Vietnam. The Battle of Dien Bien Phu resulted in perhaps the most humiliating defeat in French military history.

Already tired of war, the French public forced their government to reach a peace agreement at the Geneva Conference. During this meeting (in Geneva, Switzerland, from May 8 to July 21, 1954), diplomats from France, the United Kingdom, the USSR, China, and the United States, (as well as representatives from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia) drafted a set of agreements called the Geneva Accords. These agreements "provided for the withdraw of French troops to the south of Vietnam until they could be safely removed from the country" (Ebert, 40). However, as an affect of these agreements, Vietnam became a separated nation. Divided by the 17th parallel (an invisible border), Ho Chi Minh maintained control of North Vietnam, or the DRV, while Emperor Bao Dai remained head of South Vietnam.

After the division of Vietnam, elections were planned to take place, in order to reunite the nation under one ruler. However, under the United States' encouragement, Ngo Dinh Diem (who was chosen to replace Bao Dai) refused to participate in the planned national elections, which Ho Chi Minh and the Lao Dong, or Workers' Party, were 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, but many historians believe these elections were rigged, since 200,000 more people voted in Saigon than were registered. 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" (Schulzinger, 57).

Succeeding to the presidency after Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963, Lyndon B Johnson felt he had to take a forceful stance on Vietnam so that "other Communist countries would not think that the United States lacked resolve" (Lind, 102). Kennedy had begun to consider the possibility of withdraw from Vietnam and had even ordered the removal of 1000 advisors shortly before he was assassinated, but Johnson increased the number of U.S. advisers to 27,000 by mid-1964. He was determined that he would not be held responsible for allowing Vietnam to fall to the Communists. The United States initially backed the South Vietnamese government with military advisers and financial assistance, but more involvement was needed to keep it from collapsing. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution eventually gave President Lyndon B. Johnson permission to escalate the war in Vietnam. Beginning in 1955, the United States created the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) in South Vietnam.

"Johnson believed that the key to success in the war in South Vietnam was to frighten North Vietnam's leaders with the possibility of full-scale U.S. military intervention" (Nixon, 104). In January 1964 he approved top-secret, convert attacks against North Vietnamese territory, including commando raids against bridges, railways, and coastal installations. Johnson also ordered the U.S. Navy to conduct surveillance missions along the North Vietnamese coast. He increased the secret bombing of territory in Laos along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a growing network of paths and roads used by the NLF and the North Vietnamese to transport supplies into South Vietnam. Hanoi concluded that the United States was preparing to occupy South Vietnam and indicated that it, too, was preparing for full-scale war.

"On August 2, 1964, North Vietnamese coastal gunboats fired on the destroyer USS Maddox, which had penetrated North Vietnam's territorial boundaries in the Gulf of Tonkin" (Prados 156). Johnson ordered more ships to the area, and on August 4 both the Maddox and the USS Turner Joy reported that North Vietnamese patrol boats had fired on them. Johnson then ordered the first air strikes against North Vietnamese territory and went on television to seek approval from the U.S. public. (Subsequent congressional investigations would conclude that the August 4 attack almost certainly had never occurred.) The U.S. Congress overwhelmingly passed the Gulf of