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| {{Infobox Military Conflict | |||
| |conflict=The Vietnam War | |||
| |partof=the ] | |||
| |image= | |||
| |caption= | |||
| |date=]–] | |||
| |place=] | |||
| |casus= | |||
| |territory= | |||
| |result=Decisive North Vietnam Victory<br>Unification of Vietnam under Communist DRVN rule | |||
| |combatant1=]<br>]<br>]<br>]<br>]<br>]<br>the ] | |||
| |combatant2=]<br>] | |||
| |commander1= | |||
| |commander2= | |||
| |strength1=~1,200,000 (1968) | |||
| |strength2=~420,000 (1968) | |||
| |casualties1=South Vietnamese dead: 1,250,000+<br>US dead: 58,226<br>US wounded: 153,303<br>Civilian (total Vietnamese): c. 2–4 million | |||
| |casualties2=Dead: 1,100,000<br>Wounded: 600,000 <br>Civilian (total Vietnamese): c. 2–4 million | |||
| }} | |||
| The '''Vietnam War''' or '''Second Indochina War''' (also known colloquially as '''Vietnam''' or '''Nam''' as well as the '''American War''' to the Vietnamese) {{fn|1}} was a conflict between the ] (DRVN, or North Vietnam), allied with the Communist World, namely the Soviet Union and China against the ] (RVN, or South Vietnam), and its allies — notably the ] military in support of the South, with US combat troops involved from 1965 until the official withdrawal in 1973. | |||
| After ]'s attempted ] of ] was defeated in 1954 by the ] at the battle of ], an agreement to temporarily partition the country in two with a ] (DMZ) was reached at the ] (1954). The "Vietnam War" ostensibly began as a ] between feuding governments. Being Western-oriented and perceived as less popular than ]'s northern government, the South Vietnam government fought largely to maintain its governing status within the partitioned entity, rather than to "unify the country" as was the goal of the North. Fighting began in 1957 and with ] and ]-] involvement would steadily escalate and spill over into the neighboring Indochinese countries of ] and ]. | |||
| The Geneva partition was not a natural division of Vietnam and was not intended to create two separate countries. But the South government, with the support of the United States, blocked the Geneva scheduled ]s for reunification. In the context of the ], and with the recent ] as a precedent, the U.S. had feared that a reunified Vietnam would elect a ] government under the popular ], either freely or fraudulently. | |||
| South Vietnam and its Western allies portrayed the conflict as based in a principled ] —to deter the ] of Soviet-based control throughout ], and to set the tone for any likely future ] conflicts. The North Vietnamese government and its Southern dissident allies ] viewed the war as a struggle to reunite the country and to repel a ] aggressor —a virtual continuation of the ] for independence against the French. | |||
| After fifteen years of protracted fighting and massive ] and military ], major direct U.S. involvement ended with the signing of the ] in 1973. Fighting between ] (ARVN) forces against the dominant combined ] (PAVN) and NLF forces would soon bring an ] and the war on ], ]. With the Northern victory, the country was reunified as the ] (SRV) with a ] based in ]. | |||
| ==Overview== | |||
| {{History of Vietnam}}A precise timeline of the Vietnam War is difficult to determine. Some consider the Vietnam War to have been a continuous conflict beginning with the French attempt to reestablish ] in 1946 and continuing until the fall of Saigon in 1975. Others divide the conflict into two separate wars, the ''']''' between the French and the ] and the '''Second Indochina War''' between ] on the one side and ] and its allies, most importantly the ], on the other. Many experts consider the Vietnam War to have just been one front in the larger ]. | |||
| The ] may be said to have begun in 1946 with the writing of the Vietnamese ] and to have ended in 1954 with the Geneva Peace Accord. The U.S. involvement in the conflict is less distinct. The United States had supported Vietnamese ] against the ]ese during ], and provided aid to the French in the early 1950s. A US military presence was established in South Vietnam following the 1954 Peace Accord. As US advisors were drawn into battles between North and South Vietnamese forces the US involvement escalated. Many US citizens view the Vietnam War as beginning with the ] in 1964. The Vietnam ] reports American casualties as early as 1957. | |||
| The ground war was fought in South Vietnam and the border areas of Cambodia and Laos (''see'' ]). The ] was fought there and in the ] (''see'' ]) of North Vietnam. Commando raids or secret operations were conducted by US or South Vietnamese forces in the north but there was never any full-scale ground fighting north of the 17<sup>th</sup> parallel (For more details of the events during the war, see: ].) | |||
| A ] of forces fought for South Vietnam, including its army the ] (or ARVN), the United States, ], ], ], ], and the ]. Participation by the South Korean military was financed by the United States, but Australia and New Zealand fully funded their participations. The ] and ] did not participate in the war militarily, although a few of their ]s volunteered to join the US forces and Canada led peace talks between the two countries for years. The ] government sent a small group of military medical personnel from 1966 to 1971. | |||
| The North Vietnamese government directed the fighting against that of South Vietnam, using forces including their People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN, better known in the U.S. as the NVA) and the guerrilla forces of the ], better known as the ]. The ] provided military and financial aid, along with ] to the North Vietnamese as did the ]. ], ], and ] provided minor assistance through provision of supplies and armor. North Vietnamese ]s and other specialized members of the PAVN often received training in the USSR or in North Korea, as did many of their Southern counterparts in ] or ]. | |||
| ==Background== | |||
| {{main|Background to the Vietnam War}} | |||
| France had gained control of Indochina in a series of ] wars beginning in the 1840s and lasting until the 1880s. At the ] Hồ Chí Minh requested participation in the negotiations, in order to arrange more freedom for the Indochinese colonies. However, his request was rejected, and Indochina's status as a colony of France remained unchanged. During ], ] had collaborated with the occupying ]ese forces. Vietnam was under effective Imperial Japanese control, as well as ] Japanese ] control, although the Vichy French continued to serve as the official administrators until 1944. After the Japanese surrender Vietnamese ] hoped to achieve formal independence from France. | |||
| On ], 1945, Hồ Chí Minh spoke at a ] heralding an independent Vietnam. In his speech he cited the US ] and a band played "]." Ho had hoped that the United States would be an ally of a Vietnamese independence movement based on speeches by U.S. President ] against the continuation of European ] after World War II. However, the ], the development of the Cold War, and Ho's ] sympathies led to U.S. support being given to the French. | |||
| ] | |||
| Indochina had been in the ] theater of operations during the war. The French prevailed upon the British to turn control of the region back over to them, setting the stage for the ] in which France attempted to reestablish Vietnam as part of a French overseas colony. In a gradual process—accelerated by the establishment of the People's Republic of China—the Vietnamese nationalist army, the Viet Minh, gradually wrested control of the country from France. | |||
| After the Viet Minh's historic victory over the French at the ] all of Indochina was granted independence, including Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. However, Vietnam was partitioned at the 17<sup>th</sup> parallel, above which the former Viet Minh established a Communist state and below which an anti-communist state was established under the Emperor ]. As dictated in the Geneva Accords of 1954 the division was meant to be temporary pending free elections for national leadership. The agreement stipulated that these two military zones, which were separated by the temporary demarcation line, "should not in any way be interpreted as constituting a political or territorial boundary," and specifically stated "general elections shall be held in July 1956." But such elections were not held as Diem (see below), who had not signed the Geneva Accords, refused to hold them. The U.S. supported this move to maintain its Southern ally, also later claiming that Ho had no intention of holding free elections. The majority of Vietnamese were angered that the scheduled elections for the unification of the country never took place. The United States, fearing a Communist takeover of the region, supported ], who had ousted Bảo Đại, as leader of South Vietnam while Hồ Chí Minh became leader of the North. | |||
| ==The beginning of the war== | |||
| ] | |||
| ===NLF (National Liberation Front) in the South=== | |||
| When Ngo Dinh Diem government refused to have election with the North in 1956, Hanoi proceeded its alternative plan, which had been prepared before the Geneva Accord was signed. Covert communist agents in the South, who were supposed to move to the North according to the Geneva Accord, received order from Hanoi to take up their arms and started an insurgency in order to overthrow the South Vietnam government. The high ranking communist Le Duan, who stayed in South Vietnam as a covert agent, was in charge of this campaign. Le Duan later became General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) after the death of Ho Chi Minh in 1969. When the insurgency was suppressed by the South Vietnam government and had no chance to succeed, Le Duan went back to Hanoi in 1958 to consult with Ho Chi Minh and other communists in the CPV. In December 1959, the Central Commitee of the CPV issued a secret resolution to invade South Vietnam by force. To avoid being accused for violating the Geneva Accord, the CPV established the National Liberation Front and use this organization as a cover to invade South Vietnam. | |||
| The NLF was composed of several South Vietnam intellectuals, who dissented with the South Vietnamese government, and communists who had origin from the South. Some of them were Huynh Tan Phat, Nguyen Huu Tho, Nguyen Thi Binh... Those communists did not have an independent status from the CPV but received direct orders from Hanoi for the activities of the NLF. The non-communist members of the NLF did not have any role in decision making but their titles. They were only used as the face of the NLF to make the international believe that the war against the South Vietnam government originated from the people of South Vietnam not from North Vietnam. | |||
| By 1959 the Hanoi government was supplying the NLF via the ] with Russian and Chinese made weapons. A supply route running from North Vietnam through Laos and Cambodia (a violation of neutrality) into South Vietnam. Some supplying boats via China Sea were caught by South Vietnam authority too. Further supplies were sent by sea to Sihanoukville in Cambodia until that outlet was closed by ] in 1970. The Hồ Chí Minh Trail was steadily expanded to become the vital lifeline for communist forces in South Vietnam, which included the North Vietnamese Army in the 1960s when it became a major target of U.S. air operations. | |||
| The Diệm government was initially able to cope with the insurgency with the aid of U.S. advisors, and by 1962 seemed to be winning. Senior U.S. military leaders were receiving positive reports from the U.S. commander, Gen. ] of the ]. Outside Saigon, large areas of the country were infiltrated by communists who were left before the Geneva Accord and newcomers from the North but the South Vietnamese army could still control the local goverments. In 1963, a Communist offensive beginning with the ] inflicted major loss to South Vietnam army units. This was the first battle with a larger scale than assassinations and guerilla activities as before. Ap Bac was the sign that the war was escalating as the result of the increasing supplies of men and weapons from the North. The escalation of war made some policy makers in Washington think the Diem government could not cope with the invasion of communists and lead to the idea of changing the leadership of South Vietnam. But had Ngo Dinh Diem not been replaced by the coup in 1963, would the South Vietnamese have lost to the communists or not is still unknown. What we know for sure is the coup, which overthrew Diem, caused chaos in the security and defense systems of the South Vietnamese and Hanoi took the advantages of this chaos to increase its infiltrations to South Vietnamese society and supports to its forces in the South. | |||
| ==The United States becomes involved== | |||
| ===Dwight D. Eisenhower and Vietnam=== | |||
| Soon after the Korean War, with the intention of preventing South Vietnam from becoming a communist state, ] President ] sent the first of hundreds of American armed servicemen (along with CIA agents ) to Vietnam as military advisers on Feb. 12, 1955. | |||
| At a news conference, Eisenhower stated, "You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is a certainty that it will go over very quickly." Eisenhower and his staff subsequently started a plan for military support of South Vietnam. | |||
| On July 8, 1959 Dale Buis and Charles Ovnand became the first Americans killed in action in Vietnam. | |||
| Others soon followed. | |||
| ===John F. Kennedy and Vietnam=== | |||
| ] | |||
| In June 1961, ] met with Soviet premier ] in ], where they had a bitter disagreement over key U.S.-Soviet issues. Kennedy left the meeting convinced that the Russians were committed to conflict. This led to the conclusion that Southeast Asia would be an area where Soviet forces would test the USA's commitment to the ] policy. | |||
| Although Kennedy's election campaign had stressed long-range missile parity with the Soviets, Kennedy was particularly interested in ]. Originally intended for use behind front lines after a conventional invasion of Europe, it was quickly decided to try them out in the "]" war in Vietnam. | |||
| ] | |||
| The Kennedy administration remained essentially committed to the Cold War foreign policy inherited from the ]. Furthermore in 1961 Kennedy found himself faced with a three-part crisis that seemed very similar to that faced by Truman in 1949–1950. 1961 had already seen the failure of the ], the construction of the ], and a negotiated settlement between the pro-Western government of Laos and the ] Communist movement. Fearing that another failure on the part of the United States to gain control and stop Communist expansion would fatally damage the West's position and his reputation, Kennedy was determined to prevent a Communist victory in Vietnam. 'Now we have a problem in making our power credible', he said, 'and Vietnam looks like the place. | |||
| The Kennedy administration grew increasingly frustrated with Diệm. In 1963 a violent crackdown by Diệm's forces against ] monks protesting government policies prompted ] by monks, leading to embarrassing press coverage. The most famous event is the self-burning of ] to protest the government's violence against Buddhists. Vietnam was a largely Buddhist nation (two-thirds were Buddhist in the Southern half), while Diệm and much of his administration were ], and Diệm was criticized as being out of touch with his citizens. Although the protests of Buddhists came from their sentiments about the discrimation between Catholic and Buddism, covert communist agents also took advantage of the situation to fuel the anger of Buddists in order to create the instability in South Vietnam. The U.S. attempted to pressure Diệm by asking South Vietnamese generals to act against the excesses. The South Vietnamese military interpreted these messages as tacit U.S. support for a '']'' which overthrew and killed Diem on ], ]. | |||
| Initially the death of Diệm made the South more unstable. The new military rulers were ]ly inexperienced and unable to provide the strong central authority of Diệm's rule and a period of coups and countercoups followed. The communists, meanwhile, stepped up their efforts to exploit the vacuum. | |||
| Kennedy himself was assassinated three weeks after Diệm's death, and the newly sworn-in president, former Vice President ], confirmed on ] ], that the United States intended to continue supporting South Vietnam. | |||
| ===The propaganda campaign=== | |||
| The nature and identity of the opposing forces was as always a major political focus of the war. The U.S. depicted a war in which an independent country was fighting international Communist aggression, thus depicting the NLF and even the PAVN as puppet armies. | |||
| The North Vietnamese portrayed the conflict as one between an imperialist United States and an indigenous South Vietnamese insurgency that was receiving the noncombat support of North Vietnam and its allies. This view presented the South Vietnamese as puppets of the U.S. | |||
| These conflicting stances influenced early peace talks in which arguments were made over "the shape of the negotiating table," with each side seeking to depict itself as a group of distinct allies opposing a single entity, ignoring the other's "puppet". | |||
| ===Escalation=== | |||
| The U.S. involvement in the war has been described as an '']''. This is typically meant to refer to the incremental increase in forces in response to greater need, rather than an intentional strategy. However a key element was that there was no traditional ] which would have involved a national commitment to using all available means to secure victory. | |||
| Instead U.S. involvement increased over several years, beginning with the deployment of noncombatant military advisors to the South Vietnamese army, followed by the use of special forces for ]-style operations, followed by the introduction of regular troops for defensive purposes, until regular troops were used in offensive combat. Once U.S. troops were engaged in active combat, escalation meant increasing their numbers. | |||
| The escalation of the war complicated its ambiguous legal status. The treaty agreements between the U.S. and South Vietnam allowed each escalation to be seen as simply another step in helping an ally resist Communist aggression. This allowed the ] to vote appropriations for war operations without requiring the Johnson Administration to meet the ] mandated requirement that Congress declare war. | |||
| Successive U.S. administrations also hoped that by limiting its involvement to defending the South only and not directly invading the North, it could support South Vietnam without provoking a major response from ] and/or the ], as had happened in the Korean War. President Johnson maintained the Kennedy administration's position that South Vietnam's independence was a crucial U.S. defense against Soviet aggression, while at the same time trying to avoid provoking direct participation in the conflict by the ]. | |||
| The situation caused friction between the US armed services and the civilian authorities in Washington. Military officials such as General ] resented the Johnson Administration's restraints on their operations but feared making outspoken policy criticisms lest they suffer the same fate as General ] who had been dismissed by Truman on such grounds during the Korean War. | |||
| The relatively slow process of escalation also tended to mute U.S. political debate, since no individual instance of escalation dramatically increased the level of U.S. involvement. However in 1968 the Joint Chiefs of Staff considered increasing the total number of active reserve troops by 200,000, concerned about having roughly a third of U.S. forces committed to one theater of conflict. The ] asked General Westmoreland, the only military official then commanding U.S. troops in a conflict, to testify to the need to increase. The press portrayed this increase as a need for more troops in Vietnam to reconcile the situation after the Tet Offensive. When this possibility was made public, popular criticism caused the ] Administration to abandon the idea. Presidential candidate ] called for a decrease in U.S. troop levels and by the end of 1969, under his new administration, they were reduced by 60,000 from their wartime peak. | |||
| ==Intervention by the USA== | |||
| ===Johnson and the Gulf of Tonkin=== | |||
| {{main|Gulf of Tonkin Incident}} | |||
| Johnson raised the level of U.S. involvement on ], ], when 5,000 additional U.S. military advisors were ordered to South Vietnam. This brought the total number of U.S. forces in Vietnam to 21,000. | |||
| On ], 1964, the US destroyer ] was in international waters conducting a reconnaissance mission in the ]. Critics of President Johnson have suggested the purpose of the mission was to provoke a reaction from North Vietnamese coastal defense forces as a pretext for a wider war. North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked ''Maddox'' and in response, with the help of air support from the nearby carrier ], she destroyed one of the torpedo boats, damaging two others. ''Maddox'' suffered only superficial damage and retired to South Vietnamese waters where she was joined by ]. | |||
| ] | |||
| On ], the Government of the Republic of Vietnam (GVN or South Vietnam) again attacked North Vietnam; the Rhon River estuary and the Vinh Sonh radar installation were bombarded under cover of darkness. | |||
| On ], a new ] patrol to the North Vietnam coast was launched, with ''Maddox'' and ''Turner Joy''. The latter got radar signals later claimed to be another attack by the North Vietnamese. For some two hours the ships fired on radar targets and maneuvered vigorously amid electronic and visual reports of torpedoes. Later, Captain ] admitted that it was nothing more than an "overeager sonarman" who "was hearing the ship's own propeller beat". | |||
| However, the incident was portrayed by Johnson as an act of "unprovoked aggression" on the part of the PAVN. This assertion, that the ''Maddox'' and ''Turner Joy'' had been unlawfully attacked in international waters, was also picked up by the American press. This allowed Johnson to offer to the US Congress a resolution to increase the American involvement in Vietnam, a document that had been crafted earlier in the summer of 1964. | |||
| In consequence the ] approved the ] on ] 1964, which gave broad support to President Johnson to escalate U.S. involvement in the war "as the President shall determine". The resolution passed unanimously in the House of Representatives and was opposed in the Senate only by ] of Oregon and ] of Alaska. In a televised speech, Morse asserted that history would show that he and Gruening were serving "the best interests of the American people". In a separate televised address, President Johnson claimed, "the challenge that we face in South-East Asia today is the same challenge that we have faced with courage and that we have met with strength in Greece and Turkey, in Berlin and Korea, in Lebanon and in Cuba." ] members, including ], ], and ] agreed on ], 1964, to recommend Johnson adopt a plan for a two-stage escalation of bombing in North Vietnam. | |||
| With the decision to escalate its involvement in the conflict, The USA's ] allies, Australia and New Zealand, were pressured to contribute troops and material to the war effort. As a result, in late 1964 the Australian government controversially re-introduced conscription for compulsory military service by eligible males aged 18-25, and many Australian soldiers served alongside U.S. troops. (Without the need for U.S. pressure, a few thousand Canadians would also serve.) | |||
| ===Operation Rolling Thunder=== | |||
| {{main|Operation Rolling Thunder}} | |||
| ] (left) with an attendance on 26 October 1966 in ] with US general ] (2nd from left), Lieutenant General of the ] ] (2nd from right) and with the Prime Minister of South Vietnam ].]] | |||
| Rolling Thunder was the code name for bombing raids in North Vietnam conducted by the United States armed forces during the Vietnam War. Its purpose was to destroy the will of the North Vietnamese to fight, to destroy industrial bases and air defenses (SAMs), and to stop the flow of men and supplies down the Hồ Chí Minh Trail. | |||
| Starting in March 1965 Operation Rolling Thunder gradually escalated in intensity to force the Communists to negotiate. Although half North Vietnam's bridges were destroyed and many supply depots hit, its Communist allies were always able to resupply it. The two principal areas where supplies came from, Haiphong and the Chinese border, were off limits to aerial attack, as were fighter bases. Restrictions on the bombing of civilian areas also enabled the North Vietnamese to use them for military purposes, siting anti-aircraft guns on school grounds. Rolling Thunder's gradual escalation has been blamed for its failure, by giving the North Vietnamese time to adapt. | |||
| In March 1968 Operation Rolling Thunder was suspended after the North agreed to negotiate in the aftermath of the Tet Offensive. | |||
| ===U.S. forces committed=== | |||
| ], Vietnam. A young Marine private waits on the beach during the Marine landing—August 3, 1965]] | |||
| In February 1965 the U.S. base at ] was attacked twice, killing over a dozen U.S. military. This provoked the reprisal air strikes of ] in North Vietnam, the first time a U.S. air strike was launched because its forces had been attacked in South Vietnam. That same month the U.S. began independent air strikes in the South. A U.S. ] team was sent to ], a vulnerable airbase if Hanoi intended to bomb it. One result of Operation Flaming Dart was the shipment of anti-aircraft missiles to North Vietnam which began in a few weeks from the Soviet Union. | |||
| On ], 1965, 3,500 ] became the first US combat troops to land in South Vietnam, adding to the 25,000 US military advisers already in place. The air war escalated as well; on ], 1965, four ]s escorting a bombing raid at ] became the targets of ]s in the first such attack against US planes in the war. One plane was shot down and the other three sustained damage. Four days later Johnson announced another order that increased the number of US troops in Vietnam from 75,000 to 125,000. The day after that, ], the first 4,000 ] paratroopers arrived in Vietnam, landing at ]. | |||
| On ], 1965, ] began as the first major US ground battle of the war when 5,500 US Marines destroyed a Viet Cong stronghold on the ] peninsula in ]. The Marines were tipped off by a Viet Cong deserter who said that there was an attack planned against the US base at ]. The Viet Cong learned from their defeat and tried to avoid fighting a US-style war from then on. | |||
| The North Vietnamese committed regular army troops to South Vietnam beginning in late 1964 to use guerilla and regular forces to wear down and destroy the South Vietnamese Army. However some North Vietnamese officials favored an immediate invasion, and a plan was drawn up to use PAVN forces to split South Vietnam in two at the ], and then to defeat each half. However in the Battle of the ] the PAVN suffered heavy casualties, prompting a return to guerilla tactics. | |||
| ] told President Johnson on ], 1965, that if planned major sweep operations needed to neutralize Viet Cong forces during the next year were to succeed, the number of US troops in Vietnam needed to be increased from 120,000 to 400,000. By the end of 1965, 184,000 US troops were in Vietnam. In February 1966 there was a meeting between the commander of the US effort, head of the ] General ] and Johnson in ]. Westmoreland argued that the US presence had prevented a defeat but that more troops were needed to take the offensive, he claimed that an immediate increase could lead to the "crossover point" in Vietcong and NVA casualties being reached in early 1967. Johnson authorized an increase in troop numbers to 429,000 by August 1966. | |||
| ] | |||
| The large increase of troop numbers enabled Westmoreland to carry out numerous search and destroy operations in accordance with his attrition strategy. In January 1966 during Operation Masher/White Wing in Binh Dinh Province the U.S. 1<sup>st</sup> Cavalry Division killed 1,342 Viet Cong by repeatedly marching through the area. The Operation continued under Thayer/Irving until October where a further 1,000 Viet Cong were killed and numerous others wounded and captured. US forces conducted numerous forays into Viet Cong controlled "War Zone C", an area northwest of the densely populated ] area and near the Cambodian border, in Operations Birmingham, El Paso, and Attleboro. In 1<sup>st</sup> Corp Tactical Zone (CTZ) located in the Northern provinces of South Vietnam North Vietnamese conventional forces entered Quang Tri province. Fearing an assault on Quang Tri city might develop, U.S. Marines initiated ] which caused the North Vietnamese to retreat over the DMZ. Afterwards, a follow-up operation called Prairie began. "Pacification", or the securing of the South Vietnamese countryside and people, was mostly conducted by the ARVN. However, morale was poor in the South Vietnamese army due to corruption and incompetence of generals and hence little was accomplished in the form of pacification other than high desertion rates. | |||
| On ] ], U.S. ] ] stated during a news conference that proposals by the ] for peace initiatives were futile because of North Vietnam's opposition. Johnson then held a secret meeting with a group of the nation's most prestigious leaders ("the Wise Men") on ] and asked them to suggest ways to unite the US people behind the war effort. Johnson announced on ] that, while much remained to be done, "We are inflicting greater losses than we're taking....We are making progress." Following up on this, General William Westmoreland on ] told news reporters: "I am absolutely certain that whereas in 1965 the enemy was winning, today he is certainly losing." Nevertheless it was recognized that although the communists were taking a major beating, true victory could not come until the country was pacified. | |||
| ] | |||
| Most of the PAVN operational capability was possible due only to the movement of supplies along the Hồ Chí Minh Trail in Laos. In order to threaten this flow of supplies, a firebase was set up just on the Vietnam side of the Laosian border, near the town of ]. The U.S. planned to use the base as a launching point for raids against the trail. Also, the U.S. launched first in its kind, electronic warfare project. This $2.5 billion project involved "wiring" the trail with sensors connected to data processing centers in order to monitor the traffic on the trail. It was one of the most highly classified operations in the war (from "Boyd" by Robert Coram, p. 268). To the PAVN leaders this looked like a wonderful opportunity to repeat their famous victory at the ], and hand the USA a massive defeat. Over the next few months both the PAVN and US Marines added forces to the area, with the ] "officially" starting on January 21<sup>st</sup>, 1968. Every PAVN attempt to take the base was repulsed with heavy casualties, and even their rear areas were under constant attack by U.S. airpower, including ] strikes. When the battle finally petered out in April, the PAVN had lost an estimated 8,000 KIA and many more wounded, while never seriously threatening resupply into the base (an important feature of Điện Biên Phủ) due to the U.S.'s massive resupply ability and helicopter support. In retrospect it appears the PAVN was using the battle to draw U.S. attention away from other operations being developed, but this position appears difficult to support considering the loss of about one-third of the attacking force ] alone. | |||
| ==The Tet Offensive== | |||
| {{main|Tet Offensive}} | |||
| Late in 1967, General Westmoreland had asserted that it was "conceivable" that in "two years or less" US forces could be phased out of the war, turning over more and more of the job to the Vietnamese. <small></small> As a result it was a considerable shock to public opinion when on ], 1968 NLF and PAVN forces broke the ] and mounted the ] (named after ], the lunar new year festival which is the most important Vietnamese holiday) in South Vietnam attacking nearly every major city in South Vietnam. The goal of the attacks was to ignite an uprising among the Vietnamese people which would result in the overthrow of the South Vietnamese government and withdrawal of U.S. forces. To the contrary, no such uprising occurred and it drove some previously apathetic Vietnamese to fight with the RVN government. Attacks everywhere were shortly repulsed except in ] where the fighting lasted for three days and in ] for a month. During the temporary communist occupation of Huế, 2,800 Vietnamese were killed by the Viet Cong in what was the single worst massacre during the war (see ]). Massacre though it was, casualties were immeasurably higher for the Viet Cong than for the South Vietnamese. Within a month General Westmoreland claimed, correctly, that the Tet Offensive had been a military disaster for the Viet Cong and that their backs were essentialy broken. Fighting after this point was left almost entirely to PAVN forces. | |||
| Although the Communists' military objectives had not been achieved, the propaganda effect was considerable and had a profound impact on public opinion. Many U.S. citizens felt that the government was misleading them about a war without a clear end. When General Westmoreland called for still more troops to be sent to Vietnam, ], a member of Johnson's own cabinet, came out against the war. | |||
| ===Tet aftermath=== | |||
| Soon after Tet, Westmoreland was replaced by his deputy, General ]. Abrams pursued a very different approach than Westmoreland's, favoring more openness with the media, less indiscriminate use of air strikes and heavy artillery, elimination of body count as the key indicator of battlefield success, and more meaningful cooperation with ARVN forces. His strategy, although yielding positive results, came too late to influence U.S. public opinion. | |||
| Facing a troop shortage, on ], 1968, the ] announced that the ] and Marines would be sending about 24,000 troops back to Vietnam for involuntary second tours. Two weeks later on ], citing progress with the ] peace talks, U.S. President ] announced what became known as the ] when he ordered a complete cessation of "all air, naval, and artillery bombardment of ]" effective ]. Peace talks eventually broke down, however, and one year later, on ], ], then President ] addressed the nation on ] and ] asking the "silent majority" to join him in solidarity on the Vietnam War effort and to support his policies. | |||
| The credibility of the government suffered when '']'', and later '']'' and other newspapers, published '']''. This top-secret historical study of Vietnam, contracted by ] (the Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and Johnson), presented a pessimistic view of victory in the Vietnam War and generated additional criticism of U.S. policy. | |||
| ==Opposition to the war== | |||
| {{See also|Opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War}} | |||
| ] in left-center, runs down a road near Trang Bang after an ARVN ] attack on villages suspected of harboring NLF fighters in June 1972. Photo by ], which became a symbol of the international movement against U.S. involvement in Vietnam. <small>(© ]/The ])</small>]] | |||
| Small-scale opposition to the war began in 1964 on college campuses. This was happening during a time of unprecedented leftist student activism, and of the arrival at college age of the demographically significant ]. | |||
| ] had existed continually (except for a lapse during 1947-1948) since 1940, when President ] instituted the first peacetime draft in U.S. history. Though ] remained at a low level through much of the Cold War, it increased dramatically in 1964 to provide troops for the Vietnam Conflict. Formal protests against the draft began on ], 1965, when the student-run ] staged the first public burning of a ] in the United States. | |||
| Abuses in the ] were one cause of protest, as local "draft boards" had wide lattitude to decide who should be drafted and who should be granted "deferments" which usually meant escaping military service. The first ] since ] in the United States was held on ] 1969, based on a potential draftee's date of birth. While this had the effect of giving relative certainty to young men as to their chances of being drafted, it also had the effect of dividing those eligible youth who engaged in war protest, as noted by '']'' in a ], 1969 article: "Draft Lottery Changes Views of Eligibles." | |||
| Statistical analysis indicated that the methodology of the lotteries unintentionally disadvantaged men with late year birthdays. This issue was treated at length in a ] ], ''New York Times'' article titled "Statisticians Charge Draft Lottery Was Not Random". | |||
| U.S. public opinion became polarized by the war. Many supporters of the war argued for what was known as the ], which held that if the South fell to communist guerillas, other nations, primarily in Southeast Asia, would succumb like falling dominoes. Military critics of the war pointed out that the conflict was political and that the military mission lacked clear objectives. Civilian critics of the war argued that the government of South Vietnam lacked political legitimacy and that support for the war was immoral. Some anti-war activists were themselves ], as evidenced by the organization ]. Some of the U.S. citizens opposed to the Vietnam War stressed their support for ordinary Vietnamese civilians struck by a war beyond their influence. President Johnson's undersecretary of state, ], was one of the lone voices in his administration advising against war in Vietnam. | |||
| The growing anti-war movement alarmed many in the U.S. government. On ], ] the ] began investigations of U.S. citizens who were suspected of aiding the NLF. Anti-war demonstrators disrupted the meeting and 50 were arrested. | |||
| ] executes NLF Captain ]]] | |||
| On ] 1968, a suspected NLF officer was captured near the site of a ditch holding the bodies of as many as 34 police and their relatives, bound and shot, some of whom were the families of General ]'s deputy and close friend. General Loan, a South Vietnamese National Police Chief, summarily shot the suspect in the head on a public street in front of journalists. The ] was filmed and photographed and provided another iconic image that helped sway public opinion in the United States against the war. | |||
| In Australia, resistance to the war was at first very limited, although the ] (in opposition for most of the period) steadfastly opposed conscription. However anti-war sentiment escalated rapidly in the late 1960s as more and more Australian soldiers were killed in battle. Growing public unease about the death toll was fuelled by a series of highly-publicised arrests of conscientious objectors, and exacerbated by the shocking revelations of atrocities against Vietnamese civilians, leading to a rapid increase in domestic opposition to the war between 1967 and 1970. The Moratorium marches, held in major Australian cities to coincide with the marches in the USA, were among the largest public gatherings ever seen in Australia up to that time, with over 200,000 people taking to the streets in ] alone. | |||
| On ] 1969, hundreds of thousands of people took part in ] antiwar demonstrations across the United States. A second round of "Moratorium" demonstrations was held on ]. | |||
| On ], 1971, ] became the first Vietnam veteran to testify before Congress about the war, when he appeared before a Senate committee hearing on proposals relating to ending the war. He spoke for nearly two hours with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in what has been named the ], after the Chairman of the proceedings, Senator ]. Kerry presented the conclusions of the ], where veterans had described personally committing or witnessing ]. | |||
| In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson began his reelection campaign. A member of his own party, ], ran against him for the nomination on an antiwar platform. McCarthy did not win the first primary election in ], but he did surprisingly well against an incumbent. The resulting blow to the Johnson campaign, taken together with other factors, led the President to make a surprise announcement in a March 31 televised speech that he was pulling out of the race. He also announced the initiation of the ] with Vietnam in that speech. Then, on ], 1969, U.S. representative ] and North Vietnamese representative ] began secret peace negotiations at the apartment of ] intermediary ] in Paris. This set of negotiations failed, however, prior to the 1972 North Vietnamese offensive. | |||
| ] | |||
| ==Pacification and "hearts and minds"== | |||
| The U.S. realized that the South Vietnamese government needed a solid base of popular support if it was to survive the insurgency. In order to pursue this goal of "winning the hearts and minds" of the Vietnamese people, units of the ] ], referred to as "]" units, were extensively utilized for the first time for this purpose since ]. | |||
| Civil Affairs units, while remaining armed and under direct military control, engaged in what came to be known as "]": constructing (or reconstructing) schools, public buildings, roads and other physical infrastructure; conducting medical programs for civilians who had no access to medical facilities; facilitating cooperation among local civilian leaders; conducting hygiene and other training for civilians; and similar activities. | |||
| This policy of attempting to win the "]" of the Vietnamese people, however, often was at odds with other aspects of the war which served to antagonize many Vietnamese civilians. These policies included the emphasis on "]" as a way of measuring military success on the battlefield, the bombing of villages (symbolized by journalist ]'s famous quote, "it was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it"), and the killing of civilians in such incidents as the ]. In 1974 the documentary ] sought to portray the devastation the war was causing to the South Vietnamese people, and won an ] for best documentary amid considerable controversy. The South Vietnamese government also antagonized many of its citizens with its suppression of political opposition, through such measures as holding large numbers of political prisoners, torturing political opponents, and holding a one-man election for President in 1971. Despite this, a high percentage of Vietnamese participated and the government captured a large percentage of the votes. | |||
| ==Vietnamization== | |||
| ] was elected President and began his policy of slow disengagement from the war. The goal was to gradually build up the South Vietnamese Army so that it could fight the war on its own. This policy became the cornerstone of the so-called "]". As applied to Vietnam, the doctrine was called "Vietnamization". The stated goal of Vietnamization was to enable the South Vietnamese army to increasingly hold its own against the NLF and the North Vietnamese Army. The unstated goal of Vietnamization was that the primary burden of combat would be returned to ARVN troops and thereby lessen domestic opposition in the U.S to the war. | |||
| During this period, the United States conducted a gradual troop withdrawal from Vietnam. Nixon continued to use air power to bomb the enemy, along with a U.S. troop incursion in Cambodia. Ultimately more bombs were dropped under the Nixon Presidency than under Johnson's, while U.S. troop deaths started to drop significantly. The Nixon administration was determined to remove U.S. troops from the theater while not destabilizing the defensive efforts of South Vietnam. | |||
| Many significant gains in the war were made under the Nixon administration, however. One particularly significant achievement was the weakening of support that the North Vietnamese army received from the ] and ]. One of Nixon's main foreign policy goals had been the achievement of a "breakthrough" in U.S. relations with the two nations, in terms of creating a new spirit of cooperation. To a large extent this was achieved. China and the USSR had been the principal backers of the North Vietnamese army through large amounts of military and financial support. The eagerness of both nations to improve their own U.S. relations in the face of a widening breakdown of the inter-Communist alliance led to the reduction of their aid to North Vietnam. | |||
| ].]] | |||
| The morality of U.S. conduct of the war continued to be a political issue under the Nixon Presidency. In 1969, US investigative journalist ] exposed the My Lai massacre and its cover-up, for which he received the ]. It came to light that Lt. ], a platoon leader in Vietnam, had led a massacre of several hundred Vietnamese civilians, including women, babies, and the elderly, at My Lai a year before. The massacre was only stopped after three US soldiers (], ] and ]) noticed the carnage from their helicopter and intervened to prevent their fellow soldiers from killing any more civilians. Calley was given a life sentence after his ] in 1970, but was later pardoned by President Nixon. Cover-ups may have happened in other cases, as contended in the ]-winning article series about the ] by the '']'' in 2003. | |||
| In 1970, Prince Sihanouk was deposed by Lon Nol in Cambodia, who became the chief of state. The ] guerillas with North Vietnamese backing began to attack the new regime. Nixon ordered a military incursion into Cambodia in order to destroy NLF sanctuaries bordering on South Vietnam and protect the fragile Cambodian government. The ] prompted even more protests on U.S. college campuses. Several students were ] during demonstrations at ]. | |||
| One effect of the incursion was to push communist forces deeper into Cambodia, which destabilized the country and resulted in the rise of the ], who seized power in 1975. The goal of the attacks, however, was to bring the North Vietnamese negotiators back to the table with some flexibility in their demands that the South Vietnamese government be overthrown as part of the agreement. It was also alleged that U.S. and South Vietnamese casualty rates were reduced by the destruction of military supplies the communists had been storing in Cambodia. All U.S. forces left Cambodia by ]. | |||
| In an effort to help assuage opposition to the war, Nixon announced on ], ], that the United States would withdraw 40,000 more troops before ]. Later that month on ], the worst ] to hit Vietnam in six years caused large ]s, killed 293, left 200,000 homeless and virtually halted the war. | |||
| Backed by U.S. air and artillery support, South Vietnamese troops invaded ] on ] ]. On ] of that year, ] and ] decided to withdraw their troops from Vietnam. The total number of U.S. troops in ] dropped to 196,700 on ] 1971, the lowest level since January 1966. On ], 1971, Nixon set a ] ] deadline to remove another 45,000 U.S. troops from Vietnam. | |||
| By this time, facilitated by general instability in the region and the U.S.-backed ousting of Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia, the opium and heroin trade that had arisen in the infamous ] region was also beginning to escalate. Significant amounts of heroin started to flow into Vietnam during 1970 and this was followed soon after by the first large-scale seizures of Asian heroin in the United States and Europe. Historian and expert on the drug trade ] claims that there was significant covert US involvement in the drug trade which, he alleges, was the result of what he calls the CIA's policy of "radical pragmatism". | |||
| McCoy claims that this policy led to the creation of a new Asian-based heroin trade, organised as a collaboration between the Sicilian-U.S. and Corsican-French ], with assistance from elements of the CIA. Although McCoy's broader claims remain controversial, the indisputable fact was that by late 1970 heroin use was emerging as a major health issue among U.S. servicemen, with some medics reporting that as many as 10% of GIs in some units were regular heroin users by the end of 1970. The penetration of drugs into U.S. military in Vietnam also led to a rapid increase in drug importation into Australia, thanks in part to the thriving ] circuit, with some U.S. personnel sent to Sydney on R&R leave being used as drug "mules". Around this time, U.S. journalists also began to report allegations that South Vietnamese politicians were using money from the drug trade to finance their election campaigns, and that senior intelligence personnel were directly involved in drug running operations. | |||
| In the 1972 election, the war was once again a major issue in the United States. An antiwar candidate, ], ran against President Nixon. Nixon's Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, declared that "peace is at hand" shortly before election day, dealing a death blow to McGovern's campaign, which was already far behind in opinion surveys. However, the peace agreement was not signed until the next year, leading many to conclude that Kissinger's announcement was just a political ploy. Kissinger's defenders assert that the North Vietnamese negotiators had made use of Kissinger's pronouncement as an opportunity to embarrass the Nixon Administration to weaken it at the negotiation table. ] Press Secretary ] on ] 1972, told the press that there would be no more public announcements concerning U.S. troop withdrawals from Vietnam due to the fact that troop levels were then down to 27,000. The U.S. halted heavy bombing of North Vietnam on ], 1972. | |||
| ==The end of U.S. involvement== | |||
| On ] ], citing progress in peace negotiations, President Nixon announced the suspension of offensive action in North Vietnam which was later followed by a unilateral withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam. The ] were later signed on ] 1973, which officially ended U.S. involvement in the Vietnam conflict. This won the 1973 ] for Kissinger and North Vietnamese Politburo member and lead negotiator ] while fighting continued, leading songwriter ] to declare that '] had died'. However, five days before the peace accords were signed, Lyndon Johnson, whose presidency was marred by the war, died. The mood during his ] was one of intense recrimination because the war's wounds were still raw. However, there was relief that not only U.S. involvement in Vietnam ended, but also the chapter on one of the most tragic and divisive eras in America came to a close. | |||
| The first U.S. prisoners were released on ] and all U.S. soldiers were ordered to leave by ]. In a break with history, soldiers returning from the Vietnam War were generally not treated as heroes, and soldiers were sometimes even condemned for their participation in the war. The peace agreement did not last. U.S. soldiers were consequently faced with the prospect of having won most of the battles of the war, but having "lost the peace". | |||
| Nixon had promised South Vietnam that he would provide military support to them in the event of a crumbling military situation, or a military offensive from North Vietnam, to convince the Thieu regime to sign the 'peace agreement'. But Nixon was fighting for his political life in the growing ] at the time, facing an increasingly hostile Congress, which held the power of appropriations, and a hostile public, sick of the Vietnam War. Thus, Nixon broke his promises to South Vietnam. Economic aid to South Vietnam continued (after being cut nearly in half), but most of it was siphoned off by corrupt elements in the South Vietnamese government, and little of it actually went to the war effort. At the same time, aid to North Vietnam from the USSR and China began to increase, and with the U.S. out, the two countries no longer saw the war as significant to their U.S. relations. The balance of power had clearly shifted to the North, and North Vietnam subsequently launched a major military offensive against the south. | |||
| In December 1974, Congress completed passage of the ], which cut off all military funding to the Saigon government and made unenforceable the peace terms negotiated by Nixon. It was believed that any new military equipment shipped to South Vietnam would quickly fall into the hands of the victorious communists. | |||
| By 1975, the South Vietnamese Army stood alone against the well-organized and highly-determined North Vietnamese. Despite having a military force of more than one million men with modern equipment, the ARVN was plagued with corruption and desertion. Then in early March, the PAVN launched a powerful offensive into the poorly-defended Central Highlands, splitting the Republic of Vietnam in two. President Thieu was fearful that ARVN troops in the northern provinces would be isolated due to a PAVN encirclement. He decided on a redeployment of ARVN troops from the northern provinces to the Central Highlands. But the withdrawal of South Vietnamese forces soon turned into a bloody retreat as the PAVN crossed the DMZ. While South Vietnamese forces retreated from the northern provinces, splintered South Vietnamese forces in the Central Highlands fought desperately against the PAVN. | |||
| On ], ] Ban-Me-Thuot fell to the PAVN. PAVN's 3<sup>rd</sup> Army Corps (Tay Nguyen) began its attack in the early morning hours. After a violent artillery barrage, the 4,000-man garrison defending the city retreated with their families. On ], President Thieu ordered the Central Highlands and the northern provinces to be abandoned, in what he declared to 'lighten the top and keep the bottom'. General Phu abandoned the cities of ] and ] and retreated to the coast in what became known as the "column of tears". General Phu led his troops to Tum Ky on the coast, but as the ARVN retreated, the civilians also went with them. Due to already-destroyed roads and bridges, the column slowed down, as the PAVN closed in. As the column staggered down mountains to the coast, PAVN shelling attacked. By ], the column ceased to exist after 60,000 ARVN troops were killed. | |||
| On ], Thieu reversed himself and ordered Huế, Vietnam's 3<sup>rd</sup>-largest city be held out 'at all cost'. But as the PAVN attacked, a panic ensued, and South Vietnamese resistance collapsed. On ], the PAVN launched a siege on Huế. The civilians, remembering the 1968 massacre, jammed into the airport, seaports, and the docks. Some even swam into the ocean to reach boats and barges. The ARVN were routed along with the civilians, and some South Vietnamese shot civilians just to make room for themselves to retreat. On ], after a 3-day siege, Huế fell. | |||
| As Huế fell, PAVN rockets hit downtown Da Nang and the airport. By ], 35,000 troops of PAVN's 2<sup>nd</sup> Corps (Huong Giang) were poised in the suburbs. On ], a World Airways jet led by Edward Daley landed in ] to save women and children, instead 300 men jammed onto the flight, mostly ARVN troops. On ], 100,000 leaderless ARVN troops surrendered as the PAVN marched victoriously through Da Nang on that ] Sunday. With the fall of Da Nang, the defense of the Central Highlands and northern provinces collapsed. With the northern half of South Vietnam under their control, PAVN prepared for its final phase in its offensive, the Hồ Chí Minh campaign, the plan: By ], capture Saigon before South Vietnamese forces could regroup to defend it. | |||
| The PAVN continued its attack, as South Vietnamese forces and the Thieu regime crumbled before their onslaught. On ], 3 PAVN divisions of the 4<sup>th</sup> Army Corps (Cuu Long) attacked ], 40 miles east of Saigon , where they met fierce resistance from the ARVN 18<sup>th</sup> Infantry division. For 2 bloody weeks, severe fighting raged in the city as the ARVN defenders, in a last-ditch effort tried desperately to save South Vietnam from military and economic collapse. Also, hoping US forces would return in time to save them, the ARVN 18<sup>th</sup> Infantry division used many advanced weapons against the PAVN, and it was in the final phase in which Saigon government troops fought well. But on ], the exhausted and besieged army garrison defending Xuan-loc surrendered. A bitter and tearful Nguyễn Văn Thiệu resigned on April 21, saying the USA had 'betrayed South Vietnam', and then displayed the 1972 document claiming the USA would retaliate against North Vietnam should they attack. Thiệu left for ] on ], leaving control of the doomed government to General ]. | |||
| By now, PAVN tanks had reached ]. They turned towards Saigon, clashing with few South Vietnamese units on the way. The end was near. | |||
| ===Fall of Saigon=== | |||
| ] | |||
| {{main|Fall of Saigon}} | |||
| By April, the weakened South Vietnamese Army had collapsed on all fronts. The powerful PAVN offensive forced South Vietnamese troops on a bloody retreat that ended up as a hopeless siege at Xuan-loc, a city 40 miles from Saigon, and the last South Vietnamese defense line before Saigon. On April 21, the defense of Xuan-loc collapsed and PAVN troops and tanks rapidly advanced to Saigon. On ], 100,000 PAVN troops encircled Saigon, which was to be defended by 30,000 ARVN troops. On ], the U.S. launched ], the largest helicopter evacuation in history. Chaos, unrest, and panic ensued as hectic Vietnamese scrambled to leave Saigon before it was too late. Helicopters began evacuating from the U.S. embassy and the airport. Evacuations were held to the last minute because U.S. Ambassador Martin thought Saigon could be held and defended. The operation began in an atmosphere of desperation as hysterical mobs of South Vietnamese raced to takeoff spots designated to evacuate, many yelling to be saved. Martin had pleaded with the U.S. government to send $700 million in emergency aid to South Vietnam in order to bolster the Saigon regime's ability to fight and to mobilize fresh South Vietnamese units. But the plea was rejected. Many U.S. citizens felt the Saigon government would meet certain collapse. President ] gave a speech on ], declaring the end of the Vietnam War and the end of all U.S. aid to the Saigon regime. The helicopter evacuation continued all day and night while PAVN tanks reached the outskirts of Saigon. In the early hours of ], the last U.S. Marines left the embassy as hectic Vietnamese breached the embassy perimeter and raided the place. PAVN ]s moved into Saigon. The South Vietnamese resistance was light. Tank skirmishes began as ARVN ]s attacked the heavily armored Soviet ]s. PAVN troops soon dashed to capture the U.S. embassy, the government army garrison, the police headquarters, radio station, presidential palace, and other vital targets. The PAVN encountered greater than expected resistance as small pockets of ARVN resistance continued. By now, the helicopter evacuations that had evacuated 7,000 U.S. and Vietnamese had ended. The presidential palace was captured and the NLF flag waved victoriously over it. President Dương Văn Minh surrendered Saigon to PAVN colonel ]. The surrender came over the radio as Minh ordered South Vietnamese forces to lay down their weapons. Columns of South Vietnamese troops came out of defensive positions and surrendered. Saigon fell on ], 1975. As for the people of South Vietnam, many stayed in South Vietnam but by ], 1975 most U.S. citizens had fled, leaving the city of Saigon forever. Finally, despite the fact that the United States military had decisively won most major engagements, and had withdrawn troops from the country two years earlier following a peace accord, the Vietnam War is widely considered the USA's first defeat, with over 58,000 dead and many left severely injured. As for the people of South Vietnam, over a million ARVN soldiers died in the 30-year conflict. Three million communist soldiers and Vietnamese civilians also died. | |||
| North Vietnam united both North and South Vietnam on ] ], to form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Saigon was renamed ] in honor of the former president of North Vietnam. Thousands of supporters of the South Vietnamese government were rounded up and sent to "re-education" camps. Communist rule continues to this day. | |||
| On ] ], U.S. President ] pardoned nearly all Vietnam War draft evaders. | |||
| In 1995 Vietnam and the USA established diplomatic and trade relations. Direct flights between USA and Vietnam resumed in 2005 when ] started daily service between ] and Hồ Chí Minh City via ]. | |||
| ==Casualties== | |||
| ''Main article: ] | |||
| Estimating the number killed in the conflict is extremely difficult. Official records from North Vietnam are hard to find or nonexistent and many of those killed were literally obliterated by bombing. For many years the North Vietnamese suppressed the true number of their casualties for propaganda purposes. It is also difficult to say exactly what counts as a "Vietnam war casualty"; people are still being killed today by ], particularly ]. More than 40,000 Vietnamese have been killed so far by landmines and unexploded ordnance. | |||
| Environmental effects from chemical agents and the colossal social problems caused by a devastated country with so many dead surely caused many more lives to be shortened. | |||
| The lowest casualty estimates, based on North Vietnamese statements which are now discounted by Vietnam, are around 1.5 million Vietnamese killed. Vietnam's Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs released figures on ], 1995, reporting that 1.1 million fighters—Viet Cong guerrillas and North Vietnamese soldiers—and nearly 2 million civilians in the north and the south were killed between 1954 and 1975. Other figures run as high as 4 million civilian casualties with 1 million casualties being NVA or VC fighters. ], in his regretful memoir of the war, references a figure of 3.2 million. The number of wounded fighters was put at 600,000. It remains even more unclear how many Vietnamese civilians were wounded. | |||
| Of the U.S. military, 58,226 were killed in action or classified as missing in action. A further 153,303 US military personnel were wounded to give total casualties of 211,529. The United States Army took the majority of the casualties with 38,179 killed and 96,802 wounded; the Marine Corps lost 14,836 killed and 51,392 wounded; the Navy 2,556 and 4,178; the Air Force lost 2,580 killed and 931 wounded; with the lowest deaths in terms of numbers and percentages among the branches being the ], with seven dead and 60 wounded. | |||
| U.S. allies took casualties as well. South Korea provided the largest outside force and suffered between 4,400 and 5,000 killed full details including ] and ] appear difficult to find. Australia lost 501 dead and 3,131 wounded out of the 47,000 troops they had deployed to Vietnam. New Zealand had 38 dead and 187 wounded. Thailand had 351 casualties. It is difficult to locate accurate figures for the losses of the Philippines. Although Canada was not involved in the war, thousands of Canadians joined the U.S. armed forces and served in Vietnam. The US fatal casualties include at least 56 Canadian citizens. It is difficult to estimate the exact number because some Canadians crossed the border to volunteer for service under false pretenses whereas others were permanent residents living in the United States who either volunteered or were drafted. See also ]. | |||
| In the aftermath of the war many U.S. citizens came to believe that some of the 2,300 US soldiers listed as ] had in fact been taken prisoner by the DRV and held indefinitely. The Vietnamese list over 200,000 of their own soldiers missing in action. | |||
| Both during and after the war, significant ] violations occurred. Both North and South Vietnamese had large numbers of ], many of whom were killed or ]. In 1970, two U.S. congressmen visiting South Vietnam discovered the existence of "tiger cages", which were small prison cells used for torturing South Vietnamese political prisoners (see ]). After the war, actions taken by the victors in Vietnam, including firing squads, torture, ] and "reeducation," led to the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese. Also war, economic problems in Vietnam led to the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese. Many of these refugees fled by boat and thus gave rise to the phrase "]." They immigrated to Hong Kong, France, the United States, Canada, Australia, and other countries, creating sizable expatriate communities, notably in the ]. | |||
| Among the many casualties of the war were the people of the neighboring state of ]. Approximately 50,000–300,000 died as a result of U.S. bombing campaigns. The bombing campaigns also drove some Cambodians into the arms of the nationalist and communist ], who took power after the USA cut off funds for bombing them in 1973, and continued the slaughter of opponents or suspected opponents. About 1.7 million Cambodians were murdered or fell victim to starvation and disease before the regime was overthrown by Vietnamese forces in 1979. | |||
| ==Domestic effects and aftermath in Indochina== | |||
| ===Vietnam=== | |||
| Virtually every Vietnamese, especially South Vietnamese, was affected by the war, having endured large scale bombardments and targeted killings. During the war's height in the late 1960s, about half of South Vietnam's population of 20 million people have been displaced. To the northerners, fighting and hostility continued on with neighboring countries until 1989. Many Vietnamese lost relatives as a result of the war in general. The end of the war marked the first time that Vietnam was not engaged in substantial civil war or active military conflict with an external opponent in many years. North and South Vietnam were reunified under the Socialist Republic of Vietnam following the war. | |||
| Fear of persecution caused many highly skilled and educated South Vietnamese connected with the former regime to flee the country during the ] and the years following, severely depleting ] in Vietnam. The new government promptly sent people connected to the South Vietnam regime to concentration camps for "reeducation", often for years at a time. Others were sent to so-called "new economic zones" to develop the undeveloped land. Furthermore, the victorious Communist government implemented land reforms in the south similar to those implemented in North Vietnam earlier. However, it is as well to remember that large areas of land in South Vietnam had already been appropriated by the communists well before the end of the war—and their owners compensated for the loss by the South Vietnamese government. Persecution and poverty prompted an additional two million people to flee Vietnam as ] over the 20 years following unification. The problem was so severe that during the 1980s and 1990s the UN established refugee camps in neighboring countries to process them. Many of these refugees resettled in the United States, forming large ] emigrant communities with a decidedly anti-communist viewpoint. | |||
| The newly established ] promptly implemented currency reforms. The ] previously used in South Vietnam was converted to the "liberation dong" at a rate of 500 old dongs to 1 liberation dong, essentially rendering much of the South Vietnamese money worthless. After unification in 1976, the liberation dong was abandoned in favor of a new unified dong. While the north exchanged at the 1:1 rate, the south had to exchange 10 liberation dong for each 8 unified dong. Private enterprises in the South were socialized. During much of the late 1970s and early 1980s, Vietnam underwent an economic depression and came close to famine. | |||
| The large number of people born after 1975 may be indicative of a postwar ], and despite the devastating effect of the civil war on their parents' generation, a general disinterest in politics and recent history among this postwar generation of Vietnamese is notable. | |||
| The ] in 1991 left Vietnam without its main economic and political partner, and thus it began to seek closer ties with the West. After taking office, U.S. President ] announced his desire to heal relations with Vietnam. His administration lifted economic sanctions on the country in 1994, and in May 1995 the two nations renewed diplomatic relations, with the U.S. opening an embassy on Vietnamese soil for the first time since 1975. | |||
| The economic reforms known as '']'' (renovation), instituted by the government since the late 1980s, have been producing spectacular results. Today, Vietnam is one of the fastest growing economies in the world, fueled by exports and foreign direct investment. In less than two years after the signing the bilateral trade agreement in 2001, the U.S. became the largest export market for Vietnam. | |||
| ===Cambodia=== | |||
| In 1975, shortly before the end of the war, the Communist ] seized power in ] after a bloody civil war. This led to a genocide known as the "]" that collectively killed some 1.7 million people, one-fifth of the country's population. A month after taking power, Khmer Rouge soldiers seized the SS ''Mayaguez'', a U.S. merchant ship, which resulted in a tough response from President Ford, who ordered air strikes on Cambodian oil installations and the landing of troops at Kok Tang Island which resulted in the recapture of the ship and the freeing of the crew (see ]). The ] were driven from power in 1979, when Vietnam invaded and installed a pro-Vietnam 'puppet' government. | |||
| ==Domestic effects in the U.S.== | |||
| The Vietnam war had many long term repercussions for U.S. society and foreign policy. | |||
| ===War Powers Resolution=== | |||
| Criticism of the Vietnam War's planning and its enabling legislation led the U.S. Congress to reconsider how military deployments were authorized. After the U.S. withdrawal Congress passed the ] of 1973, which curtailed the President's ability to commit troops to action without first obtaining Congressional approval. | |||
| ===Social impact=== | |||
| The Vietnam War had a powerful impact on U.S. sociopolitical opinion, especially that of the young U.S. citizens of the ]. For both supporters and critics these opinions generated political positions regarding US foreign and domestic policy. The Vietnam War was also significant in encouraging the belief that mass mobilization and protest can influence government policy. | |||
| The war and the Communist victory led to a mass emigration from Vietnam, primarily to six countries: the ], ], ], ], ], and ]. During the postwar period over 1 million refugees arrived in the United States (see ]). They included Cambodians and Vietnamese of many ethnicities (such as the ]) as well as ], the offspring of Vietnamese and U.S. citizens. The integration of these groups, particularly Vietnamese ethnic minorities, generated further social issues in the U.S. | |||
| The vast increase in ] trafficking and use in the United States, which escalated rapidly and dramatically in the early 1970s, is widely seen as stemming from the US military presence in Vietnam. Commentators such as historian ] cite the virtual epidemic of heroin use in the U.S. forces in Vietnam ca. 1970-71, and the alleged connections between the CIA, the Mafia and local Asian drug lords, as a major causal factor in the subsequent massive expansion of the hard drug trade into The USA and other western nations. | |||
| ===Social attitudes and treatment of veterans=== | |||
| Service in the war was unpopular and opposition to the war generated negative views of veterans in some quarters. Some Vietnam veterans experienced social exclusion in the years following the war and some experienced problems readjusting to society. Negative stereotyping of veterans in popular culture was common in the 1970s. Eventually, however, a greater understanding of ], previously known as battle fatigue, together with the development of Vietnam veterans' associations, generated more sympathy for Vietnam veterans. | |||
| In contrast to the generous benefits afforded veterans of ], Vietnam veterans received benefits no better than those in the prior ]time service period. | |||
| Many veterans who had been exposed to the defoliation agent known as ] later developed health problems, resulting in ] lawsuits against the government. The U.S. department of Veterans Affairs awarded compensation to 1,800 of some 250,000 claimants. | |||
| Another important contrast to the post–World War II period is that the acceptability of avoiding service during the Vietnam War has resulted in an increasing majority of U.S. officials, including those elected to major positions, not being war, or even military service, veterans. Every president from 1945 to 1992 was a war veteran - even ], the ] Democratic candidate in 1972, was a highly decorated B-24 bomber pilot. Many who did perform military service during this period did not serve in the war itself, including U.S. President ] who served stateside in the ]. Former President ], after enrolling in the ], successfully withdrew his commitment and did not serve in the military at all. | |||
| In 1982, construction began on the ] in ] (also known as 'The Wall') designed by ]. It is located on the ] adjacent to the ]. ] statue was added in 1984. | |||
| Popular opinion regarding the war and its veterans changed slowly through the late 1970s and 1980s. Vietnam service has become more respected and has been an important feature of several election campaigns, notably U.S. Senators ] and ]. Kerry, the first Vietnam combat veteran to be nominated as a presidential candidate by a major party, made his service record a major issue in the ]. Although the specifics of his record proved controversial, the fact that he had actually served in combat in Vietnam was viewed as a major political asset. | |||
| ==Common military medals of the Vietnam War== | |||
| {{main|Awards and decorations of the Vietnam War}} | |||
| During the war, a wide array of ]s for bravery, meritorious actions, and general service were created by both nations of Vietnam. The United States began issuing combat decorations which were last bestowed in the ] as well as several new service medals. | |||
| Most South Vietnamese decorations were issued to both members of the South Vietnamese military and the United States armed forces. As such, several of the current U.S. senior military officers, who served during the Vietnam War, can today still be seen wearing South Vietnamese medals on active duty uniforms. Since South Vietnam as a country no longer exists, such medals are in fact considered obsolete and may only be privately purchased. | |||
| ==See also== | |||
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| ==Notes== | |||
| {{fnb|1}} | |||
| ====Names for the war==== | |||
| Various names have been given to the war, and these have shifted over time, though '''Vietnam War''' is the dominant standard in English. It has been called the '''Second Indochina War''', the '''Vietnam Conflict''', the '''Vietnam War''', and, by the victors, '''the American War''' (] '''Kháng Chiến Chống Mỹ Cứu Nước''', "Resistance War Against the Americans to Save the Nation"). | |||
| The usage of these names may represent a particular viewpoint. | |||
| #'''Second Indochina War:''' puts the conflict into context with other distinctive but related and contiguous conflicts in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, the prior ending in 1954 and the subsequent beginning in 1979. | |||
| #'''Vietnam Conflict:''' largely a US term, it acknowledges that the US never declared war on any other party in it. Legally, the US was not at war and certain wartime legal measures, such as soldiers serving for "the duration" never came into effect. | |||
| #'''Vietnam War:''' the most commonly-used term in English, it implies that the location was chiefly within the borders of the nation (which is disputed, as many regard the scope as including at least Cambodia); it sidesteps the issue of the lack of a US ]. | |||
| #'''Resistance War Against the Americans to Save the Nation:''' the term favored by North Vietnam (and after its victory, Vietnam); it is more of a slogan than a name, and its meaning is self-evident. Its usage had waned in recent years as the Vietnamese government seeks better relations with the United States. Official publications now increasingly refer to it generically as "Chiến tranh Việt Nam" (Vietnam War). | |||
| In ], the conflict is usually referred to as '''The American War''' (]: Kháng chiến chống Mỹ, literally ''Resistance War Against America'') to distinguish it from other conflicts that occurred in Vietnam (], The Japanese War, The Chinese Wars, ], etc.) Some Vietnamese speakers oppose this terminology because it does not reflect the civil war nature of the conflict, while others oppose calling it the "Vietnam War" because it reflects a Western viewpoint, not a Vietnamese one. | |||
| <!-- | |||
| {{fnb|2}} | |||
| ====North and South==== | |||
| While the terms "North" and "South" are commonly used, they are often misnomers when applied in context. Regardless of the geographical boundary set by the ], or the ideological differences between ] and "]", or the political labels of "communist" and "anti-communist" forces, the terms "North" and "South" refer almost exclusively to the ''governments'' of each—ethnicity, not ideology, was the primary boundary in defining who was allied with which government. | |||
| {{fnb|3}} | |||
| ====Ideology==== | |||
| Most Vietnamese, regardless of the Geneva partition of North and South, were "pro-independence," as the ] occupation was unpopular and the object of popular revolt, which was ultimately successful. In the context of the U.S. allied South Vietnam government, being "pro-independence" was naturally synonymous with "anti-colonialist," "anti-Diem," and by default "communists" according to Diem and the U.S. From the U.S. point of view, "the ]" were largely Southern-native "communist" (ie. anti-colonialist) ]s, referred to as "]" —in addition to ] forces in uniform. | |||
| {{fnb|4}} | |||
| ====Democracy==== | |||
| While the ] had hoped South Vietnam could be referred to (at least in political ]) as a "democracy" ]s regime made this terminology difficult, and term "anti-communism" became a substitute. While this shift in rhetoric appeared to be substantial, it in fact did not have any bearing on the support the U.S. showed for South Vietnam, and hence became a central aspect for criticism during and after the war, as an example of where rhetorical claims of a "]" agenda, are alleged to have been a disguise for political and tactical strategies. (See ]) | |||
| {{fnb|5}} | |||
| ====Communism==== | |||
| placeholder | |||
| ===="Anti-war"==== | |||
| It should be noted that the term "anti-war" should be viewed in this context as "anti-U.S. involvement in the war" as "anti-war" protesters in the U.S. (the only major combatant with freedom of speech) generally did not protest to the military actions of the NLF and North Vietnam but solely the actions of South Vietnam and the United States. To the contrary, many prominent protesters publicly supported a Communist military victory in Vietnam while continuing "anti-war" rhetoric at the same time. | |||
| ===="Independence"==== | |||
| Throughout this article the term "independence" is used generally from the communist perspective, of whom viewed territory not under there control as "imperialistic" "colonial" and other rhetorical terms. Thus many communist movements were called "liberation" or "pro-independence" which was valuable for the propaganda effects during the war as it linked the struggle with the French to the struggle with the US rather than an invasion of a sovereign, non-communist Vietnamese state. --> | |||
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