THE VIETNAM CONFLICT |
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• What prompted the United States to become involved in Vietnam? • How did the American foreign policy referred to as "containment" apply to Vietnam? • What was the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution? • What was the Tet Offensive? • What various ways did Americans express opposition to United States presence in Vietnam? • What President is associated most with America's failure in Vietnam? • What happened in Vietnam after the United States withdrew? • How did the Vietnam conflict affect post-war America? • Where is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial located? |
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When Japanese forces withdrew from Vietnam following World War II, President Ho Chi Minh declared his country's independence. France quickly moved to reassert the imperial power it once held over Vietnam (French Indochina included Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam). The ensuing colonial war would eventually become a military and political quagmire for the United States. In 1950, President Harry S Truman began sending aid in the form of money, advice, and materiel to the French. Truman's decision to support France was strictly political. The United States actually favored an independent Vietnam, but it needed France's cooperation to establish the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), considered a vital tool in the Cold War struggle against the Soviet Union. The French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 caused France to abandon Vietnam. According to the Geneva Conference peace terms, Vietnam was to be temporarily divided at the 17th Parallel, pending nationwide elections within the next two years to solve the political dispute between communist-dominated North Vietnam and anti-communist South Vietnam. In the meantime, the United States stepped in to fill the French void. But anticipating a communist victory, South Vietnam's President Ngo Dinh Diem aborted the elections. President Dwight D. Eisenhower cautiously backed Diem's action in the name of America's Cold War policy of containment, fearing a communist-controlled Vietnam would usher the fall of its Southeast Asian neighbors like a "row of dominoes set up." Over the next several years, amidst rampant political instability in Vietnam, Eisenhower gradually increased American commitment. Almost 200 American casualties would be suffered during that period, even though the official stance of the United States toward Vietnam remained advisory in nature. President John F. Kennedy significantly increased assistance to South Vietnam. So dramatic was Kennedy's covert combat aid that the New York Times proclaimed the United States involvement amounted to an "undeclared war." In late 1961, army helicopters delivered by aircraft carrier to Saigon marked America's first direct military support for South Vietnam's fight against communism. American backing for Diem, who turned out to be a corrupt and vicious ruler, diminished profoundly. A CIA-assisted coup d'etat resulted in his assassination. The American government feigned surprise over the incident. In 1964, responding to the North Vietnamese attack on the destroyer USS Maddox, which had violated territorial waters, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. The measure granted President Lyndon B. Johnson expanded power in Southeast Asia to "repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression." In effect, Congress issued the President virtual carte blanche in Vietnam; Johnson interpreted the resolution as a broad congressional mandate to expand the war. Hence, the United States entered the war in earnest. Johnson began sustained bombing of North Vietnam (dubbed "Operation Rolling Thunder") in early 1965. Although the President stated his willingness to negotiate an end to the war, conditional to North Vietnamese forces vacating the South, the air attacks would prove to be the foundation for further escalation of America's war involvement. In March, the first official American combat troops arrived in Vietnam. While Johnson assured the public that its young people would not die fighting an Asian war, he acquiesced to the continued requests of General William Westmoreland for additional ground support. That summer, over 100,000 fresh troops were sent to Vietnam; by the end of the year, there were nearly 200,000 American soldiers in the field. In January of 1968, North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces launched a massive series of raids known as the Tet Offensive. Attacking numerous towns and cities, including 39 of the 44 provincial capitals, and every American base as well, the communist forces caused chaos throughout South Vietnam. Even the American embassy in Saigon was under seige for a brief time. Although communist losses were heavy, and American forces soon dislodged the Viet Cong from most of the positions they had captured, the psychological impact on the United States was so devastating that from this point on the war was a political albatross. By the end of 1968, American troop strength well exceeded half a million; casualties suffered in Vietnam were by then grotesquely out of hand, surpassing the 36,000 mark. When Richard Nixon entered the White House, he made resolution of the Vietnam conflict a top priority. However, his proposal for a phased withdrawal of all non-South Vietnamese troops, to be followed by an internationally supervised election in South Vietnam, was flatly rejected by North Vietnam. Nixon responded with a program referred to as "Vietnamization"—an attempt to build up the South Vietnamese armed forces so that American troops could withdraw without the South being overrun by the North. Experiencing no success, Nixon waffled between cutbacks and escalation. The American public, growing weary of the government's general indecision and lack of progress in Vietnam, began to openly protest America's presence in Southeast Asia. College campuses, especially, became grounds of furious demonstrations. The most famous occurred at Kent State University in 1970, during which four students were killed by overzealous Ohio National Guardsmen. America was now fighting the war on two fronts—militarily abroad and emotionally at home. In short time, it would manage to divide America more sharply than any other single event since the Civil War a century earlier. By 1970, the United States had clearly lost all enthusiasm for the Vietnam War. The data from several polls indicated the majority of Americans favored a complete withdrawal from Southeast Asia. Senator J. William Fulbright, just three years after introducing the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, called the war "unnecessary and immoral." Even former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, once a hard-liner, voiced profound misgivings about America continuing its actions in Vietnam. In June of 1971, the publication of the so-called "Pentagon Papers," a top-secret official government study of United States decisions regarding Vietnam (leaked to the New York Times by former Pentagon employee Daniel Ellsberg) revealed that past leaders, especially Kennedy and Johnson, had intentionally deceived the American public in order to extend the war. Bowing to stern public pressure, and realizing the war had become a military debacle, Congress halted funds, forcing Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger to negotiate a "peace with honor" cease-fire arrangement in January of 1973. That March, the United States lifted its last combat troops from Vietnam. With the loss of American military aid, South Vietnam was simply too feeble to maintain the burden of fighting. In 1975, the South Vietnamese government collapsed and was absorbed into a unified communist Vietnam. (Washington refused a desperate appeal by South Vietnam's President Nguyen Van Thieu for renewed assistance, whereupon Thieu bitterly denounced the United States as irresponsible and untrustworthy.) As North Vietnamese troops approached Siagon in April, military personnel and government officials were forced to frantically evacuate the United States embassy compound by helicopter. Not only did America fail to accomplish its objective for interfering in Vietnam, the results were tragic—some 58,000 servicemen killed, over 350,000 wounded, and nearly 2,300 missing and presumed dead. Thus, the failure of the Vietnam experience was complete. America's defeat in Vietnam can be attributed to several factors. Some experts claim the military strategy exercised by the United States was simply not aggressive enough to foil the enemy forces. Other authorities point out that American advisers trained the South Vietnamese in conventional warfare not particularly suitable to the existing topography. Furthermore, American troops, forced to contend with the demoralizing guerilla tactics employed by the Viet Cong, became easily frustrated and often disorganized. Consequently, the American will to fight steadily dwindled. Toward the end of the war, many draftees sent to Vietnam either did not agree with the cause, felt a lack of adequate support from the government, or both. Sooner or later, most recruits deemed Vietnam a hopeless situation. Thousands of young men expressed their opposition to the Vietnam War by evading recruitment. By the end of 1972, some 40,000 "draft-dodgers" had fled to foreign soil, primarily Canada. Another 10,000 created false identities to avoid conscription while remaining in the United States. Moreover, an estimated quarter-million men boldly refused to register for the draft; 100,000 others burned their draft cards in protest. President Jimmy Carter was keenly aware of the dire need to relieve the piteous domestic strife caused by America's involvement in Southeast Asia. Accordingly, his first official action upon taking office in 1977 was to issue a blanket pardon for the entire half-million Americans who had eluded the Vietnam-era draft. (The measure did not include deserters.) The Vietnam War was unequivocably the most unpopular war in United States history. Those who survived the Vietnam War itself were thrust into a different sort of war back home. An unprecedented number of returning servicemen suffered physical anguish and emotional trauma. Many were paralyzed or otherwise severly disabled from war wounds. A good share would develop serious medical problems directly linked to their exposure to Agent Orange (a chemical defoliant sprayed extensively on Vietnam jungles during Operation Ranch Hand in the late 1960s). Thousands became addicted to drugs while in Vietnam; additional others found solace in drug use after the war as an artificial means to cope with the horrors of combat. Too often, Vietnam War veterans found it difficult to find gainful employment due to their permanent war injuries coupled with the misdirected animosity of potential employers. Hence, scores became homeless, as pathetically downtrodden as the peasants they encounted in the villages of Vietnam. Sadly, countless men who had managed to avoid the bullets and booby traps of the Viet Cong chose suicide as the only therapy for their ongoing internal Vietnam War. Feeling strangely alienated from family members and unable to bridge the gap, many veterans divorced their wives and shunned other loved ones, thus ironically eliminating some of their most powerful sources of support and healing. Vietnam veterans came home to an America beset with mixed emotions. Instead of being welcomed with open arms, brass bands, victory parades, and cheering crowds as had past war veterans, Vietnam servicemen faced indifference or even ridicule from those who opposed the war. Only recently has the United States begun to appreciate the living hell thrust upon its Vietnam troops. In its struggle to somehow reconcile the Vietnam War, the country has finally come to realize that blame should not be placed on the soldiers, but rather on a perhaps misguided but certainly inept American government. One of the most significant efforts to heal the internal rift caused by the conflict is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, located on the Mall in Washington, DC. The memorial was realized through the perseverance of Jan Scruggs, himself a Vietnam vet. Scruggs's purpose was not to erect a monument that would vindicate war, but to create a place of honor for those who died fighting it. Scruggs began his crusade by selling his only possession of real value, an inherited plot of land, to establish the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. Joined by fellow veterans Bob Doubek and John Wheeler, private donations gradually increased. The movement soon gathered political support, as well. In 1980, spurred by Senator Charles Mathias (Maryland) and Senator John Warner (Virginia), Congress passed legislation designating a specific site for the memorial, roughly equidistant from the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. On Veterans Day in 1982, over 15,000 Vietnam heroes assembled for the dedication ceremony of "The Wall." The Vietnam Veterans Memorial was designed by Maya Ying Lin, an American of Chinese descent who was an architecture student at Yale University. Her design, unanimously selected by a panel of international architects and sculptors from over 1,400 plans submitted, consists of a V-shaped wall of polished black granite stretching 500 feet in length. The extreme points of the two wings begin at ground level, then gradually decline to a depth of ten feet at the spot they converge, thus forming an embankment with a V configuration. To reach the vertex, visitors descend a gentle slope. Inscribed on the wall is a list of the 58,000-plus Americans who perished in Vietnam. The names do not appear alphabetically or by rank, but in chronological order of when "they were taken from us." Hundreds of people visit the memorial daily, many of whom, by extending a hand or bowing their head, feel its power not only to heal personal wounds but to mend a divided nation, as well. Some early observers felt Lin's untraditional design, more somber than grandiose, denigrated instead of honored Vietnam veterans. Consequently, two sculptures were later added to the memorial grounds. The first piece, by Frederick E. Hart, shows three combat soldiers with an American flag. Known simply as the "Three Servicemen" statue, it was placed in 1984. The Vietnam Veterans Women's Memorial, depicting three female nurses, one of whom is craddling a fallen soldier, was completed in 1993. It is the work of Glenna Goodacre. Two decades after American withdrawal in Southeast Asia, President Bill Clinton extended full diplomatic relations to Vietnam. Even then, Americans expressed their differences over the Vietnam experience—the President's decision drew praise from some and criticism from others. America's first ambassador to Vietnam was Douglas Peterson, a Florida congressman and former Air Force pilot who spent over six years in a Hanoi prison after his plane was grounded by enemy fire. During 2000, in an effort to improve general relations, Clinton became the first President to visit Vietnam. America's interference in Vietnam reflected the Cold War foreign policy known as "containment." The basis of this theory, proposed by scholar George Kennan (anonymously in his article "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" in the July 1947 issue of Foreign Affairs) was the United States attempt to restrain the spread of communism and confine it to its immediate post-World War II boundaries. Kennan stated that "Russian diplomacy moves inexorably along a prescribed path, like a persistent toy automobile wound up and headed in a given direction, stopping only when it meets with some unmovable force." A policy of "long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment" based on the "application of counter-force" was the best means of dealing with Soviet pressures. Admittedly, the Cold War might be "a duel of infinite duration," but could be won if the United States maintained its own strength and convinced the communists that it would resolutely resist territorial aggression in any quarter of the globe. Of the handful of worthwhile movies available about the Vietnam War, the best of the lot is Platoon, starring Charlie Sheen as Chris Taylor, a college drop-out and American soldier sent to join Bravo Company, 25th Infantry "somewhere near the Cambodian border" in 1967. It is through his eyes that the movie's fictional drama shows the true intensity of the nightmarish Vietnam fiasco. His platoon's allegiance is split between two sergeants, played by Tom Berenger (as Barnes) and Willem Dafoe (as Elias). Barnes, a gung-ho fanatic, is bent solely on destroying the Viet Cong. Elias has lost faith in the war, but not in mankind, and prefers to fight the enemy in a different fashion. Friction between Berenger and Dafoe provides most of the film's storyline, supposedly drawn from the personal combat experience of director Oliver Stone. Platoon was awarded Best Picture in 1986. The powerful production is rated R owing to graphic violence and rough language necessary to realistically portray the horrors of the Vietnam War. The widespread use of marijuana and other drugs among the American troops is clearly shown. |
