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Essay on How did Vietnam beat France and US?
The reasons for US intervention in Vietnam were tied to the cold war and fears of communism. The domino theory posited that if one nation in a region became communist, others would follow. While many have cited this as justification for meddling in the affairs of other nations, especially Vietnam, what gave the US the right to dictate an economic system for them? For some, there was the specter of Soviet influence gaining power, but not all communist nations were necessarily Soviet allies, for instance China and Yugoslavia. The idea of spreading Soviet influence may have been a mere scare tactic to justify intervention to prevent something the elites in the US really feared: an example of democratic communism being established somewhere. Indeed, a Ho Chi Minh led Vietnam was a likely candidate, given his admiration of the Founding Fathers of the US.
The war raged from the early 60s through 1975, with the level of US intervention escalating through the late 60s. The fighting was mostly a stalemate, the superior fire power of the US and US supplied South Vietnamese forces being balanced by the guerilla fighting tactics of the North and their allies in the south, the Viet Cong. In the US there was considerable opposition to the war. Many opposed US involvement in the war because they saw it for the imperialist effort that it was. Others were total pacifists and still others simply did not want to be drafted to fight in it. All of these are valid viewpoints. There were serious confrontations in the US as the anti-war movement and other related leftist movements surged, including the Kent State Massacre.
Unfortunately, in recent years, this formidable opposition to the Vietnam War of a generation ago, in an Orwellian feat, has been rewritten mostly as opposition to the tactics of the war, and not the war itself......
