Personal Essay: The Vietnam War

On the 19th of December 1946, The Viet Minh under Ho Chi Minh leadership launched a rebellion against the French authority governing the colonies of French Indochina. The first few years of the war were a low-level rural insurgency against French authority. However, after the Chinese communists reached the Northern border of Vietnam in 1949 the conflict became a conventional war between two armies equipped with modern weapons. These were supplied by the Chinese communist and Russian communist.

Upon the French’s exit, the American involvement and commitment escalated with the use of the political establishments in South Vietnam to assist in the curbing the spread of Communism. This presented America an opportunity for them to significantly integrate themselves in the South Vietnamese government to further delay the reunification election from taking place in 1954. The attacks on the US naval vessels during the Gulf of Tonkin incident provided the U.S, under the Johnson administration, another justification for the escalated involvement of the conflict in Vietnam. In which, the U.S responded with the Gulf of Tonkin resolution to launch a full-scale military effort towards the North until their withdrawal from Vietnam in 1969. The desolate gradual departure of America in Vietnam was summarised by Senator James Buckley as “that damning silence of those who cannot find even a single word of compassion for those under Communist tyranny”. It can be inferred from this context that as the situations in Vietnam continue to evolve, the American’s participation also varied to align with these conditions.

“In August of 1964, in response to the American and GVN espionage along its coast, the DRV launched a local and controlled attack against C. Turner Joy and the U.S.S. Maddox , two American ships on call in the Gulf of Tonkin” (Brigham 2). This resulted in the United States government giving Lyndon Johnson the ability to make war under the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. President Johnson then gave orders to perform air raids on Northern Vietnam pushing the United States further into the war. Compared to 1962 when only 9,000 soldiers supported the South Vietnamese, by June 1965 82,000 soldiers occupied the country. The number only continued to rise exponentially, and by 1966 370,000 soldiers had been sent in to prop their South Vietnam allies. President Richard Nixon withdrew American soldiers from Vietnam and as part of the “vietnamization” of the war. Over and 60,000 American soldiers had been lost in a war to preserve the status quo, not to win.

The Vietnam war did not officially start until the 1950's. This is when the U.S. started sending in troops. Before then the French had been trying to conquer what was then called Indochina. They began their conquest in 1859, by 1888 they had turned the area that is now called Vietnam and Cambodia into the Colony of French Indochina. This was challenged many times by different uprisings but none worked as well as the Viet Minh common front( this was controlled by the Vietnamese communist party). During WWII the French were defeated by the Germans. This severely weakened their authority in Vietnam. In 1940 the Japanese invaded and

In 1960s, the US was faced with another crisis of communist expansion in the war between North and South Vietnam. The Kennedy Administration decided to further pursue their containment strategy out of fear being seen by the international community as weak towards communism. During the Johnson Administration, an attack against American vessels that happened in the Gulf of Tonkin led to President Johnson being granted the ability to conduct broad military operations without congressional approval. The American public began to largely oppose American intervention in Vietnam because the optimistic statements made by the government ran contradictory to the reports of the violent fighting by American news outlets. During the Nixon administration, the US switched to a policy, later known as Vietnamization, where the main goal was to strengthen the South Vietnamese forces and provide them with better armaments so they can better defend themselves. Vietnamization proved to be ineffective as the South Vietnamese forces were unable to hold their own against the North without US air support as proven during Operation Lam Son 719 and the Easter Offensive. The signing of the Paris Peace Accords officially ended US involvement in the Vietnam War. The US followed containment policies during beginning of the war due to the underlying fear of the spread of communism and since the policies were inherited from previous

To get some context the Vietnam War was part of a series of wars known as the Indochina Wars. The Vietnam War was preceded by the first Indochina War around fifteen years earlier. The first Indochina War was a fight for freedom between the Vietnamese (Viet Minh) and the Japanese/French. France had previously occupied Vietnam and Vietnam was known as French Indochina. The Viet Minh were

In Order to combat this rapid spread of Communism the US increase the equipment and the military advisors that these Asian countries, Vietnam in particular. But with eh assassination of Kennedy in 1963, Johnson was left with 16,000 US troops over in South Vietnam. Around six months after Johnson steps up into office there happened to be an attack on U.S. naval ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. In Ordered to resolve the fighting growing concern over the US troops and the people of South Vietnam congress passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, with giving the President to declare war against North Vietnam. By February 1965, President Johnson began “the air war” which ordered sustained bombing of the north. However the North was very good at defined these kind of attacks, with their guerrilla fighting tactics. ABout a month late the first major anti-war demonstration was held in Ann Arbor Michigan. Over the next five year, the nation was becoming deeply divided by the war, and the protest was only growing larger and more hectic. It was during that time on an October day in 1968 that the largest demonstration took place attracting over two million. This brought the US its knees with all this power and light they were going to have to start withdrawing troops from Vietnam. This is not the only front that America was fighting communism on, starting after world war two there was an arms race between the major countries, this included Russia and the US. With the US and Russia having many different political structures Washington looked at the USSR as a threat to the American people. Tensions did have their highs and lows throughout the sixties, examples being Cuba or the race to space it had always seemed that the opposing side had a trick up their sleeve. The takeover of Cuba had led many American in to fear as it was the first time that Russia had the capability to reach the US with

“The war in vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit.” Martin Luther King, Jr. once said. The Vietnam War was considered one of America’s greatest defeats of all time. Not only did the US failed to stop the spread of communism, but they also embarrassed this country as a whole with the outcome of this war. The overall outcome from this war will be remembered for years to come. In this essay, I will be talking about how the United States would have won the Vietnam war if the home front was for the war, if the the US was more familiar with the land, and the U.S.’s goal was not successful.

This is the end, i’m sorry I have to leave you. You have grown so much since the first time I had seen you. I will miss you. At that moment, I realized that I won’t get to see America grow even more than it already has... Ok, before I give away anything else, let’s go to this morning, before all of this happened. It was Friday, April 14, 1865, 7:08am when my wife Mary came into my bedroom and made me the usual breakfast in bed. She got me 1 egg and a cup of coffee. After I got out of bed I went to my office and worked for a while.

North Vietnam seemed to be winning the war, and the Soviet Union and China started to supply and backup the communist north. Then on August 2, 1964, North Vietnamese torpedo boats targeted and attacked a U.S destroyer named the USS Maddox. President Johnson asked congress to pass an authorization for him to do whatever was needed to protect the U.S or it’s Asian allies in the threat of another attack. Johnson did this to allow the United States to send troops into Vietnam without congress officially declaring war. This was a very unpopular war, and by the end of the war the casualties were heavy on both sides. The U.S lost over 58,000 troops, and the winner of such war is one debated even to this day. Many say that since the U.S lost so many troops and failed to stop the spread of communism, we lost. Others debate that because a peace treaty was signed between the U.S and Vietnam, the United States was

The U.S. gradually entered the Vietnam War during the 1950 to 1965 due to their belief in the communist spread. Towards the beginning of 1961, the number of U.S. troops dropped from 543,000 to 157,000. This eventually led to the activeness in South Vietnam. The decrease in the number of American troops was indeed a set back for the U.S. army because this

From the 1880s until World War II, France governed Vietnam as part of French Indochina, which also included Cambodia and Laos. The country was under the formal control of an emperor, Bao Dai. From 1946 until 1954, the Vietnamese struggled for their independence from France during the first Indochina War. At the end of this war, the country was temporarily divided into North and South Vietnam. North Vietnam came under the control of the Vietnamese Communists who had opposed France and aimed for a unified Vietnam under Communist rule. Vietnamese who had collaborated with the French controlled the South.

---After WWII and until 1955, France fought hard to regain their former territories in the region, but with a poorly organized army and little determination among the troops, their efforts soon collapsed. The French were finally defeated at Dien Bien Phu on the 8th of May 1954 by the communist general Vo Nguyen Giap. The French troops withdrew, leaving a buffer zone separating the North and South and set up elections in order to form a government in the South. The communist regime set up its headquarters in Hanoi under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh. Many North Vietnamese left the country and fled south where the self-proclaimed president, Ngo Dinh Diem had formed the Republic of Vietnam.

United States Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy had spent millions of dollars to aid the non-communist South Vietnamese. Before 1964 thousands of American military advisers were training and assisting the South Vietnamese army. President Lyndon B. Johnson’s decision to bomb North Vietnam put the United States in the center of the longest war in the nations history. The Vietcong (North Vietnamese) grew more aggressive after the incident at the Gulf of Tonkin. On November 1964, they attacked the American base at Bien Hoa and destroyed five B-57 jets while damaging twenty more. Since the increase of tension with the Vietcong continued, draft calls had increased substantially in the United States and American casualties were being felt across the country.

This began the conflict procedures involving the French and Viet Minh known as the First Indochina War. Fought mainly in northern Vietnam, this conflict ended when the French were defeated decisively at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. War was finally settled by the Geneva Accords of 1954, which temporarily divided country section in parallel with the 17 with Minh Nam in control in the north and the non-communist state to be formed in the South under the leadership of Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem. This division was to last until 1956, when national elections will be held to decide the future of the