Have you ever wondered what events, conditions, and leadership decisions caused America to be unsuccessful in the Vietnam War? The way that the war was fought favored the Northern Vietnamese and was a big factor in giving the Viet Cong an edge over the Americans. The tactics that the Northern Vietnamese used, the number of soldiers that the United States sent over plus the conditions they were put into, and the changing of US Presidents part way through the war all play vital roles in making Vietnam unachievable. The Northern Vietnamese Army, NVA, used many war tactics that helped them with the war but the most notable was the use of guerrilla warfare. “By 1961, guerrilla warfare was widespread in South Vietnam” (Anderson). This made
The goal of the air bombings were to weaken the Northern Vietnamese infrastructure. Bombs were dropped on military bases, supply depots, and infiltration routes (Anderson). Each year after the start of ROLLING THUNDER, the number of bombs dropped each year until 1967 when the number of bombs dropped was close to a quarter of a million (Anderson). Since, the bombings were bad enough that it forced the NVA to rethink there strategy for fighting the war (Bringham). This was seen by a sneak attack that caught all of America off
America first sent troops to Vietnam when President Kennedy was still in office to train the Southern Vietnamese soldiers war tactics to help them fight against the Northern Vietnamese soldiers. “Kennedy’s decision to sen over 2,000 military advisers to South Vietnam in 1961 marked the beginning of twelve years of American military combat,” (Anderson). That number would slowly grow over the next year and a half would slowly increase. By the end of 1962 Kennedy had ordered more supplies and equipment to aid the Southern Vietnamese along with a total of 9,000 military advisers (Anderson). To better advise the soldiers in Vietnam President Johnson made General William C. Westmoreland commander, who immediately asked for more troops and at the end of 1964 there were more than 23,000 United States personnel in country (Anderson). The number of soldiers that were sent over to Vietnam increased each year and at the end of 1966 there were over 385,000 troops (Anderson). At the end of the war the total number of troops that served during the Vietnam war was over eight million with over three million of those being shipped to Southeast Asia (“America’s War”). Conditions in Vietnam were anything but perfect. The weather there was like nothing they had ever experienced before. The soldiers would be forced to deal with extreme heat and humidity, as well as having
The US did the same exact thing except there were many people left behind that we could not transport due to the importance of emptying out embassy. Over fifty countries pooled resources together but out of all the United States had a much bigger sacrifice, the ultimate sacrifice, the sacrifice of our young men. These men started coming into Vietnam as early as 1962.
In conclusion, I think that the United States became increasingly involved in the Vietnamese War because of the policies they had made as a promise to fight communism, and because they had sorely underestimated Vietcong’s ability to fight back using Guerrilla warfare. They refused to pull out of the war in fear of losing face before the world, but this pride factor scored them massive losses in the war. In the end, with both side sustaining heavy losses, the US were still seen as mutilators in the war, with advanced showing what their intervention had costed, and Vietnam was still fully taken over by Communism – they had achieved nothing and lost a lot.
A momentous decision would soon follow. On July 1965 175,000 U.S combat troops were to be sent by the end of the year to defend South Vietnam, and again, by the years end in 1966 another 200, 000 to be sent, understanding the likelihood of the wars coming to an end was slim to none, however, the fundamental logic expressed throughout was that Laos is the present Key to the entire area of South East Asia.
Unsanitary hospitals and camps kept the wounded soldiers in large groups, which were ideal places for infection, fevers and disease to spread. Soldiers were not immune to childhood diseases like the measles and smallpox. Medical science has not yet discovered the importance of antiseptics in preventing infection. Water was contaminated and soldiers sometimes ate unripened or spoiled food. There weren’t always clean rags available to clean wounds.
The United States was not capable of winning the War because they realized too late that the real war in Vietnam was not a military one but a political one. Beginning with Eisenhower, They were fully aware that the only way South Vietnam would win is with the support of the United States troops. Kennedy restricted the U.
The Vietnam War was one of the most prolonged wars in US history. Although there were no exact dates, it is believed that US involvement lasted for around 20 years. The US went into this war hoping they could stop the spread of communism and defeat the northern Vietnamese. The battles were like nothing they had seen before and it was very difficult for the soldiers to differentiate between the enemies and civilians. To make it even more difficult for the soldiers, their “information was based on faulty intelligence”. Võ Nguyên Giáp, a northern Vietnamese general, believed that the US and the southern Vietnamese had an unstable relationship. He hoped that through the Tet Offensive the US would believe they were no longer worth defending. Fighting was done using guerrilla warfare which blurred the lines of legitimate and illegitimate killings and this had effect of bringing peoples morales down. Support for the war had always been split but this battle caused even the government to reconsider their involvement. The Tet offensive changed the US's attitude towards the Vietnam war by leading to further anti-war protests, a credibility gap in America, and for President Johnson to negotiate peace and not seek reelection.
So many things influenced our involvement in the Vietnam War, and Lawrence examines the decisions we made in a greater context than just our own. He argues that international pressures controlled the attitudes and ideas of the United States, for the most part.
The Viet Cong (VC) has far better tactics than the US. The VC was told to 'nibble at the enemy' so that he could 'neither eat or sleep'. This worked very well for me. Another demoralizing tactic the VC used was their landmines; they were designed to blow the limbs off the soldiers without killing them. This tied up hospital beds and meant the soldiers had to carry the wounded back to the base.
After Vietnam erupted into civil war, both sides started employing clever tactics and new t...
“The Operation Rolling Thunder bombing campaign began on March 2, 1965, partly in response to a Viet Cong attack on a U.S. air base at Pleiku. The Johnson administration cited a number of reasons for shifting U.S. strategy to include systematic aerial assaults on North Vietnam. For example, administration officials believed that heavy and sustained bombing might encourage North Vietnamese leaders to accept the non-Communist government in South Vietnam. The administration also wanted to reduce North Vietnam’s ability to produce and transport supplies to aid the Viet Cong insurgency.”(History.com,
The Vietnam War tore some families apart (Olson). Some families were getting divorced. Being gone for so long can be hard on families and soldiers. The War lasted up to at least 15 years with United States involved. Loved ones were gone and not being able to take care of their families and loved ones. The deployment of loved ones was hard to comp with some families (Logan). Children were sad to see their dad have to leave and not knowing if he will come back. During the war many terrifying images were being showed (Friedman). The images made families and loved ones worried and scared if their loved ones had died (Friedman). The families with soldiers that had lived had to deal with their loved ones having Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (Logan). Not only do the families have emotions during the war so do the soldiers. Soldiers who had lived were feeling guilt over them living and their friends dying (Friedman). Soldiers were wishing it was them that had died and not one of their brothers. Some soldiers had committed suicide years after war had ended because of the guilt they had felt for living. (Fallstrom). The soldiers didn’t only have emotions after war they had some during war. A war veteran had said “every time I pull the trigger, I was killing a little bit inside me. “ (Friedel).Even knows he wasn’t physically killing a little bit of himself, mentally he was.
The relationship between conventional and guerilla operations was a key element of the Vietnamese communists’ “Dau Tranh” strategy to fight and win the Vietnam War. A brief description of the Dua Tranh (meaning struggle) strategy is appropriate since it was the basis for North Vietnam’s success. The strategy consisted of an armed struggle and a political struggle. The armed struggle began with Stage One hit and run guerilla tactics to “decimate the enemy piecemeal and weaken then eliminate the government’s administrative control of the countryside...
The world’s history is majorly shaped by mega wars that happen both inside and outside the boundaries of individual nations. Almost every sovereign state in the world had to forcefully liberate itself from its colonizers and oppressors mainly through warfare. For instance, America had to fight a long and exhausting revolutionary war against the British before it could attain its independence in 1783, likewise is the fate of many other nations. It is important to understand the two distinct types of wars that exist and their implications. Guerrilla warfare and the conventional military warfare are two types of war that are very different in their execution and military approach. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the similarities and differences existing between the American war in Vietnam and the American Revolution (Vetter, 1997).
JOHN F. KENNEDY IN VIETNAM There are many critical questions surrounding United States involvement in Vietnam. American entry to Vietnam was a series of many choices made by five successive presidents during the years of 1945-1975. The policies of John F. Kennedy during the years of 1961-1963 were ones of military action, diplomacy, and liberalism. Each of his decisions was on its merits at the time the decision was made. The belief that Vietnam was a test of the Americas ability to defeat communists in Vietnam lay at the center of Kennedys policy.
Vietnam was a struggle which, in all honesty, the United States should never have been involved in. North Vietnam was battling for ownership of South Vietnam, so that they would be a unified communist nation. To prevent the domino effect and the further spread of communism, the U.S. held on to the Truman Doctrine and stood behind the South Vietnamese leader, Diem.