Why Did The Us Lose In Vietnam Essay

?The Vietnam War was fought during 1960 to 1975. It began as an attempt by Communist guerrillas?in the South to overthrow the ?government of South Vietnam. The struggle widened into a war between South Vietnam and North Vietnam and ultimately led to a international conflict. The United States and some 40 other countries supported South Vietnam by supplying troops and the?USSR and the People's Republic of China furnished munitions to North Vietnam and the Vietcong. ?Despite the massive American aid, the VC numbers continued to increase. By November 1961, the VC fighting forces had grown from the ?2,000 fighters that had been left after Diem's ruthless anti-Communist ?campaign in 1957, to nearly 16, 000. Regardless of American weapons and

On the other hand the North Vietnamese had a “people’s will to resist” . As Nguyen Co Thach described, “You (America) have your nuclear weapons. We have our secrecy.” Most importantly the Vietnamese had a common purpose which Giap proclaimed, “Our objective was national independence.” Kolko briefly describes the conduct of the North Vietnamese, “The night virtually became the NLFs property, since it deprived the enemy of freedom to use most of his firepower. The exploitation of the rainy season was another method. The alteration and improvisation of tunnels and mines became a fine art.” The resistance that Americans met proved to be too strong- technology and attrition were no match for

from VC "You never knew who was the enemy and who was the friend. They

United States' Involvement in Vietnam The end of World War Two was the beginning of America's worries about Communism. They feared that it would spread throughout the countries of the world. Because of this President Truman made the Truman Doctrine. This said that America would help any nation threatened by Communism.

The United States became increasingly involved with the War in Vietnam mostly thanks to their enmity with Russia due to the fact they were Communist, and how the USSR spread claiming countries that could’ve been turned democratic and become trading partners of the US. While Russia, Britain and the USA were all allies in WW1, they disagreed on many things, especially on how Germany should be punished and how should Europe be handled.

In reality, as a direct result of the bombing the North was able to instill an energetic war mentality in its population which provided it with more benefits than draw backs”- By James Ferns (International Socialist Group). The Vietnamese learned from that attack, they built bigger tunnels to transport the supplies and they built a very effective anti-air craft system which resulted in many casualties in the Americans side and many damaged air crafts valued at approximately $10 Billion,

Why did the United States lose the war in Vietnam? Could the US have won?

This is very different to the Vietcong's approach to winning over the people of southern Vietnam, which was to treat the peasants with respect, and helping with their daily procedures, keeping to the promises they made and gaining the peasants trust which lead to the peasants helping the Vietcong when they needed to be hidden from the Americans, which was very successful for them, and a factor of the Vietcong's was that they had very good fighting techniques, which were very effective against the U.S troops and the ARVN; this was another factor which lead to the withdrawal of the America, as they had severe losses in there troop numbers, the Vietcong tactics were very effective and were only changed once, the Tet offensive, which gave the Vietcong a severe blow as they were not prepared for that sort of combat but quickly changed back to guerrilla warfare. The Vietcong used guerrilla tactics, this comes from the Spanish meaning 'little war' these tactics were used against napoleon in the peninsular war (1807-1814) by

The events that led to the United States entering the Vietnam War began when the French conquered Vietnam in the late nineteenth century. After Vietnam was conquer, they formed the League for the Independence of Vietnam in hopes of seeking independence from the French. With great effort on September 2, 1945 Ho Chi Minh proclaimed their independence from France. However, the French opposed Vietnam’s independence for approximately nine years and wanted to reestablish their rule over them. However the French were beaten at the battle of Dien Bien Phu because they were not careful and allowed the Vietnam to cut off their airway to Hanoi. After a fifty-five day siege, the French surrendered.

The Vietnam War was a horrible war caused by the division between the communist government of North Vietnam and South Vietnam. Brave U.S. troops were sent to prevent areas of the world falling under Communist influence. Many Americans were holding their breaths, hoping for a good outcome, but they know that even if they won the war, the troops that came back would never be the same. This war had changed them for the worst. They saw horrible things than ever imaginable. Every single time someone grabbed a 75 cent newspaper, the headlines would scream in big, black letters, “Thousands More Dead and 50 More Bombs Dropped on U.S. Troops Since Yesterday.”

During a six month period, the allied forces would fly over 15,000 sorties, while dropping over 14,000 tons of bombs on targets in North Vietnam, in order to take out their “primary lines of communication and military facilities.” Also the United States would be using airpower to fight against guerilla warfare and this would be difficult knowing that the enemy would use the jungle as a sanctuary. The Viet Cong ability to conduct raids and ambushes would be hindered after the United States would use aircrafts to spray industrial weed killer, in order to destroy the Viet Cong’s ability to hide in trees and brush. The effects of the defoliation tactic caused havoc on the Viet Cong’s operation and morale. The Viet Cong was believed to not be able to overrun or defeat the South Vietnamese government, due to the use of airpower and other tactics.

One of the main reasons why the war began was: North Vietnam wanted to unite the country under their control. However, the South Vietnam refused to sing in a treaty and declared itself a republic. Consequently, there was no way of uniting the state, except taking over the South Vietnam. The Vietnamese War began with terror against the representatives of South. Many communist-opposition groups were created such as Viet Cong or NFRU. Later USA became quite concerned about the success of communists, so they decided to intervene into the war. American involvement began to escalate under President J.F. Kennedy. Therefore, J. F. Kennedy’s administration decided to increase the military and bilateral aid to South Vietnam. As they were afraid of wide spread of communism, the USA endeavoured to train the Army of the Republic of Vietnam. President Kennedy was quiet confident that the war will end in favour of capitalism. South Vietnam became depended on America’s intervention, because people were incapable of defending their republic on their own. This kind of situation is called Americanisation of the war. At the beginning the fights and bombings were taking place on a territory of South Vietnam. However, after the American aircraft was attacked by Viet-Cong, as a response to

By 1965, North Vietnamese were fully supported by the Soviet Union and China making the American army to take out even more air support and ground forces into the South Vietnam. This cost American government tremendous amount of money and lives. North Vietnam, along with the help from Soviet Union and China, fully committed itself to defeating the United States and forces of South Vietnam. American people questioned how did their army even fought against North Vietnam when there was no realistic change for the Americans to trouble the North

Thesis: What did the United States lose in the Vietnam war? The Vietnam War caused the loss of almost sixty thousand U.S. Troops in a war that wasn’t ours to fight along with one hundred sixty eight billion dollars that we didn’t have to spend.

During the time of the war the Vietnam came about war a different way than the Americans. The Americans used the same strategy they used in WW2 which seemed to be very successful for us and the Vietnamese used an all out, no grudge strategy known as guerilla warfare. This strategy had no petty on mankind. A group of people sprayed trees, houses, grass and etc with a chemical called herbicides. They sprayed over 19 million gallons of it across about 4.5 million acres of land.