CW - The Vietnam War (Lesson)

The Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was a struggle for control of Vietnam.

While the conflict originally began during the French colonial rule in the region, the United States became involved in the 1950s by providing economic and limited military aid.

Then, in the early 1960s, U.S. involvement began to increase throughout the 1960s until 1975.

The democratic government of South Vietnam, supported by the United States, battled communist North Vietnam and a military organization called the Viet Cong.

U.S. policymakers believed that if Vietnam came to be ruled by a communist government, communism would spread throughout Southeast Asia and perhaps beyond.

In 1968, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese army started the eight-month-long Tet Offensive. It was the Viet Cong's largest and most damaging campaign of the entire war.

Ultimately, the Tet Offensive failed to achieve its goal of driving the Americans out of Vietnam, but it did lead many Americans to question how and why Johnson had told them the United States was winning the war.

This revelation led some Americans who had been quiet up until then to protest against the war.

Many college students formed groups to protest American involvement in Vietnam. The goals of these groups differed, but most groups favored ending the draft and removing all American troops from Vietnam.

 

Anti-Vietnam War Movement

Americans against the war in Vietnam became more vocal in their opposition. Many antiwar groups started on college campuses to urge the government to end selective service (the draft) and to bring home all American troops from Vietnam.

They used many of the same tactics as groups fighting for civil rights, including sit-ins, marches, and demonstrations. Over time some protesters became more radical, burning their draft cards, going to prison rather than going to Vietnam and even fleeing to Canada to avoid going to Vietnam to fight a war they didn’t support.

 

1968

The year 1968 was one of social and political turmoil in the United States. Review this list of key events that shocked America and made 1968 a defining moment of the modern era:

 

Background of the Vietnam Conflict

Vietnam is a small nation on the Indochina peninsula in southeastern Asia. The area was colonized by the French from the mid-19th century through the mid-20th century. Japan controlled the region in World War II; and after the war ended, the Vietnamese people looked forward to being free from foreign control. However, France recolonized Vietnam after the war.

Ho Chi Minh, the leader of a resistance movement, increased efforts to resist French colonization in the 1950s. By 1954 the French were defeated in the north and France left Vietnam.

Vietnam was divided in short order at the 17th parallel—North Vietnam was controlled by Communists and South Vietnam was allied with Western nations.

There were rebel fighters called the Vietcong who fought to overthrow the South Vietnamese government that was corrupt and dictatorial.

American government officials believed that the South Vietnamese government could not defend the nation against the North Vietnamese communists and would likely collapse, leaving the entire peninsula under Communist control.

The United States became involved in the region because of the “Domino Theory”--a belief that when a nation becomes Communist, neighboring nations are likely to adopt a Communist form of governance too. The theory presumes that Communism is externally imposed on a country and that it doesn’t occur as a result of internal circumstances.

The United States sent military advisors to support fighters who were resisting the Japanese during World War II. After the country was divided into North and South Vietnam in 1954, the United States began sending resources to South Vietnam to combat anti-government rebels. The United States was worried that South Vietnam would become Communist like its northern neighbor.

 

The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

The United States became involved in the Vietnam War after Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964, giving President Lyndon Johnson a wide latitude to pursue “conventional” military operations in Southeast Asia.

In August 1964 the president announced that United States destroyers had been fired on by North Vietnam’s gunboats in the Gulf of Tonkin off North Vietnam’s coast.

Subsequent reports raised doubts about the validity of the announcement; however, Congress responded to the incident by giving the president a “blank check” to implement military operations in Southeast Asia without a formal declaration of war. (Congress usually has to formally declare war, but that was not so for “military operations.”)

The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution is considered the beginning of the Vietnam War.

 

The Tet Offensive

By January of 1968 the Vietcong and North Vietnamese troops launched an operation that came to be called the Tet Offensive—it was a major attack on South Vietnamese, American, and allied bases and towns.

The Tet Offensive left 9,000 American and 1,600 South Vietnamese and allied troops dead, while the North Vietnamese and Vietcong fighters lost 40,000 people.

The offensive was suppressed, but the operation was evidence of the North Vietnamese people’s ability to plan and execute a coordinated strike across South Vietnam.

 

The My Lai Massacre

Also, in 1968 an American company of troops killed nearly every resident of a Vietnamese village (called My Lai) even though they found no enemy forces in the town.

The U. S. Army administration covered up the massacre for over 12 months. By 1971 an American military tribunal found Lt. William Calley, the company commander, guilty of the attack on My Lai. The event led Americans to question the morality of the war in Vietnam.

Additionally, President Richard Nixon campaigned on the promise that he had a plan for “peace with honor” in Vietnam. However, instead of seeking peace, Nixon expanded the war to Cambodia and implemented a policy known as “Vietnamization” which included replacing American troops with South Vietnamese troops.

Despite Nixon’s efforts to end the war, they didn’t end with American victory.

Finally, in 1973, the United States withdrew from Vietnam and by 1975 South Vietnam was defeated by the North Vietnamese; Vietnam was reunified under the Communist regime.

 

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VIETNAM PROTEST PHOTOGRAPH BY LEENA A. KROHN, CC BY-SA 3.0, VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS