Failure in the Vietnam War

Failure in Vietnam Draft

The Vietnam War was destined to fail from the very beginning. Motivated by politics alone, the United States interfered with a smaller states’ freedom from colonialism, just as the Patriots vied for during the Revolutionary War. The defeat of American involvement in Vietnam can be attributed to five main factors: the remaining aftereffects of World War II created fear of communism and a motivation based on the ever shifted soil of political favoritism, which led to hasty decision making and US negligence of caring to the needs of the very people they were attempting to save, The American Army remained underprepared for the climate and terrain, massive differences between the two nation’s motivations for the war, which was partly affected by the fifth point of domestic instability within the United States’ own borders

The war was never meant to be won from the beginning. The political climate of any state, let alone the entire globe is subject to change momentarily. The United States committed troops in Vietnam with the hopes to defend and ideal rather than a finite territory. The war in Vietnam was subject to an unfortunate metaphor for American distaste for communism stemming from an even pettier competition for party domination with attempts by the minority Republicans to blame Truman for China’s fall to communism. Events surrounding the Cold War created a dichotomous “us vs. them” mentality between capitalism and communism. Primarily clinging to the fallible Domino Theory , the American mind thought a country identifying as communist is another enemy power against the United States, regardless of its actual intentions in the international arena . During Kennedy’s campaign, the liberal party attempte...

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...Vietnam as recognized by the 1954 Geneva Agreements on Vietnam”, which was the original aim of the Vietcong all along, indirectly admitting US defeat. It stipulated that US and allied forces would be withdrawn from South Vietnam in 60 days. However the Thieu regime refused to accept communist participation in government and this began his own war with the North Vietnamese.

American failure in Vietnam was a failure of egoistical values of a weakened nation acting with juvenile intentions. The loss of life could only be blamed on petty competition over international image on the United States’ part and by doing so the American government soiled their own. Had the United States respected the 1954 Geneva Accord and acted by their own democratic values, countless American and Vietnamese lives could have been spared and a more stable US government could have prevailed.