Critically Analyse the Vietnam War in 1963 Essay Example

French but despite that they were defeated at Dien Bien Phu.

A conference followed at Geneva in the summer of 1954, dividing the whole country into new states: Laos and Cambodia were to be neutralized, and Vietnam was to be sub-divided into North and South, their boundary a demilitarized zone along the 17th parallel. They decided to hold elections to finalize the government in Vietnam in two years to reunite the country. In the meantime Ho and his followers along with the Soviets and China had a stronghold in the North and former Emperor Bai Dai in the South.

From here onwards the role of the Americans became increasingly important. To Eisenhower, and later Kennedy, Vietnam, a border between the communist and the non-communist spheres of influence, a a bastion of the "free world". Both presidents recognized the relevance of the "domino principal" to the situation there. They realized if Vietnam was allowed to be a communist country, then soon this might influence the other South East Asian countries to be communist too. The newly-established Republic of Vietnam, set up in the South under the Catholic aristocrat Ngo Dinh Diem, was increasingly supported by United States money and expertise. Ngo Dihn was a rich aristocrat who hated communism; he was harsh, corrupt and extremely unpopular with the people. The Americans recognized him as the perfect puppet to rule Vietnam. So they started pouring in funds ($ 1 million) into South Vietnam and made every effort to stop the free elections that were going to be held.

The reason why the Americans wanted to stop the elections was clear. For decades the Vietnamese hated the French and Japan, capitalist

rule which treated them unfairly and in an unjust manner. The Americans knew that in the elections, Ho Chi Minh and his communist government would win easily and Vietnam would become a communist state. As described above, the other countries around it would also be influenced to adopt a communist government. They were aware of the fact that like in Vietnam, the conditions in the other South East countries were poor and any reform in some country would encourage them to do the same. This would lead to the winning of communism ideology in a big chunk of the world. Hence they felt the need to stop this spreading of communism which could be done only by stopping the elections.

Backed by the Americans, Dien decided not to hold free elections, so Ho Chi Mihn, who had expected to win them, trained guerrillas to harass the government forces in South Vietnam. These guerrillas were called "Vietcong" meaning Vietnamese Communist. They were extremely popular with the local people because they opened schools, gave land to peasants, solved their domestic problems and were like the protectors of the civilians. They even dressed and mixed closely with the locals. By the late 1950s the Vietcong controlled large parts of South Vietnam. During this time Kennedy, president of United States, gave total support with funds, arms, fuel to the South Vietnamese in their fight against Vietcong. By 1963 substantial numbers of American advisers, arms and equipment were involved in the civil war in South Vietnam. Unlike Berlin and West Germany, however, South Vietnam was no democracy. Diem was killed in a coup in 1963 and succeeded by a hardline army

general called Nguyen Van Thieu.

In 1964 after the assassination of Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson came to power. Unlike Kennedy, who at no cost wanted direct confrontation with the civil war, Johnson attitude was completely different. He wanted the direct and sterner action towards the spreading of communism in Vietnam. All he needed was an excuse to declare war on Ho Chi Minh and Vietcong. He escalated the war by sending in huge numbers of American servicemen to block Vietcong advance. He used the incident in the Gulf Tongking as an excuse. Two American destroyers were said to have been fired upon by North Vietnamese torpedo boats. This which was said to be an accident was overreacted by the Americans. The US Congress passed a special motion - the Tongking Gulf resolution- which gave the President the right "to take all necessary steps to repel the aggressor". Now that Johnson had this approval, he widened the conflict by bombing the North Vietnamese cities of Hanoi and Haiphong. They called it "Operation Rolling Thunder" in retaliation to the North Vietnam. Supply chains in South Vietnam leading to the North were cut and on the 8th March 1965 , 3500 marine troops came ashore on Da Nang and officially announced that Vietnam was in war with USA. When US troops landed in North Vietnam, the guerrilla fighters were outnumbered and outgunned, they were also not trained and were not good at open warfare. However Ho Chi Minh and the fighter did not give up. They soon started implementing their unique guerrilla tactics to wear down the Americans. The worked in small groups and used the forest to their

advantage, to hide, and counter attack. They always attacked suddenly and took the Americans by surprise. They had limited weapons but used them efficiently.

These tactics were a nightmare for the Americans. On top the Guerrillas wore no uniforms and mixed so well with the peasants that it was difficult to differentiate between a guerrilla fighter and a peasant. After the attack they would disperse and just disappear so capturing them was extremely difficult. The Guerrilla aim was "wear down the enemy and damage their morale."

The US tactics were very different. They relied mainly on intensive bombing, targeted mainly at the industrial bases. This extensive bombing continued till 1975 and extended to even Lao and Cambodia. The more bombs were used in Vietnam than in Germany and Japan put together during the Second World War. For the first time in History, a war was extended to the media and television where the harsh reality was shown. Americans spent almost $400,000 to kill one Vietcong guerrilla, that's how difficult it was to kill them. They were so difficult to find, that on the slightest suspicion the Americans would raid and destroy a whole village full of innocent people. They used several methods to kill. One was Agent Toxic, it was a weed killer and would destroy any forest where Vietcong fighters were assumed to be hiding, nearly 82 million litres were used in the whole course of the war. Another substance Napalm was used. This was extremely dangerous, it was petroleum jelly which would stick to the skin and burn the body to the bone at the slightest spark.

The Americans several times by mistake prayed it even

on civilians. So children and women were also mot spared. One could see children running with fire, trying to extinguish it by stripping off their clothes. Another tactic was the "Search and Destroy" method. This was extremely cruel followed by West Morland, a general to the end. Whenever any sort of information was heard about guerrillas staying at any village, US soldiers would go there and raid the villages eventhough a lot of the times the information in incorrect. On the pretext of search, innocent people got killed, children injured and women raped. The number of dead bodies would have to be reported to the general. All this was shown on television which made the Americans extremely unpopular and the support for Vietcong fighter increased among locals and among the American civilians as well.

This did not halt the advance of the Vietcong. Instead they launched a major campaign in 1968, the Tet Offensive. This was a holiday for the Vietnamese so the Americans did not expect any attack. Hundreds of communists attacked, one of the Vietcong commander was almost successful in taking over the US embassy in Signage. By this time there were over half a million American servicemen stationed in Vietnam, compared with the 50000 or so who were there when Johnson became president in 1963. The fact that the embassy was almost taken over and the offensive after all a political success could not be digested by the Americans. Questions started arising by the public for what the US spent 2 billion dollars. Large number of servicemen were killed in the fighting and this continued escalation of a war which seemed pointless, and

none of America's business in the first place, led to riots and demonstrations throughout the United States. Students taunted Johnson: "Hey Hey! LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?"

Opposition to the war from home front was so bitter that in 1970, four students at Kent State University, Ohio, were killed and many others wounded when National Guardsmen opened fire during a demonstration against US involvement in Vietnam. Even US soldiers who fought in Vietnam were scarred for life by all the inhumane methods of killing. Many went mad. One soldier who fought at the Quang Ngai region in the Search and Destroy method wrote a letter to officials at Washington about the original number of innocent people killed. This was way more than the number that was given to the public by the general. Due to all this 790,000 protested in America in 1969. This was the largest demonstration in the history of America.

After this and the Tet Offensive, Johnson realized how slim the chances of victory was but not there was no way out of this war without looking humiliated. It distracted him from an ambitious programme of domestic reforms, and ultimately it led to his decision to stand down from the presidency in 1968. His successor Richard Nixon, opened peace talks in Paris, and sought to reduce US commitments in the country by a process of Vietnamization, whereby he handed over responsibility for the war to the South Vietnamese themselves. He and his national security adviser started discussing way to pull out of the war without looking defeated which was almost impossible. By now luckily for the Americans China and USSR had

fallen out and both were trying to extend hands of friendship to US. It was a good opportunity for the US to accept their offer of friendship because Nixon knew how both could be used.

He started putting pressure on China to ask North Vietnam to stop the war. With USSR Nixon started having talks of an arms reduction treaty (SALT). Finally in 1973 a cease fire and a peace treaty were agreed upon and rather unconvincingly presented the US people as a victory. As a result, US troops were to leave Vietnam in two months, prisoners were to be exchanged and a UN truce-supervision force was to monitor the new arrangement. It was only a short time before North Vietnam completely overran the South and the country was reunited under communist leadership. Bottom line, it was a communist victory.

The after effects of the war were more. Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, and other neighboring states, did not fall to the Communists, contrary to the expectations raised by the domino theory. The American people felt entitled to know why vast resources had been spent, nearly 60,000 Americans had lost their lives and 150,000 servicemen wounded, in a war which had been fought to stop Vietnam turning Communist. In the eyes of many Americans it was the worst war in the US history. Involvement in the Vietnam War cost the US unfold damage in prestige and loss of influence overseas.