Introduction:
The purpose of this thesis is to show my classmates and teacher that the
horror of Vietnam War still has lingering effects in the minds of people.
The policies of President Diem and the reforms of US administration have a
bitter effect in the annals of American history. From his first days in
power, Diem confronted stubborn opposition from his opponents. He urged the
United States to support his counter-revolutionary course, revealing that
the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, or North Vietnam, wanted to take South
Vietnam by power. In late 1957, with American aid, Diem began to
counterassault. He used the help of the American Central Intelligence Agency
to identify those who sought to bring his government down and arrested
thousands.
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In 1959, Diem passed
a series of acts known as “Law 10/59” that made it legal to detain someone
in jail if they were suspicious Communist without bringing precise charges.
From the moment he took power, Diem encountered immense retaliation from
people of all walks of life. Students, intellectuals, Buddhists and others
joined the Communists in objection to Diem's administration. The more these
forces attacked Diem's troops and secret police, the more he tried to
control their protests. The president maintained that South Vietnam was a
peace-loving democracy and that the Communists were out to overthrow his
rule. The US administration looked split on how peaceful or democratic the
Diem rule really was. Some believed Diem had not incorporated sufficient
social and economic reforms to continue as a potential leader in South
Vietnam. Others disputed that Diem was the better in the bad bunch. As the
White House met to resolve the prospective of its Vietnam policy, a shift in
strategy took place at the top level.
The paper contains discussions of the US occupation of Vietnam in the 1940s,
and the role of US air power in the Vietnam War. The American interference
in Vietnam began in 1963 with the evident objective of stopping the South
falling into communist hands. In August of that year, Lyndon Johnson, who
had taken over the American presidency in the wake of the assassination of
John F. Kennedy ordered the first air strikes on the North. The United
States displayed much more determination to win in Vietnam than the Soviet
Union did in Afghanistan. Consider the fact that no other nation in history
has exhausted as much blood or as much treasure in a war so distant, and in
which the real gains to be accomplished through victory was so small.
Consider the fact that while no nation other than the United States has ever
fought so severely under such circumstances just this once, but the United
States has done it twice, first in Korea and then in Vietnam. Why did the
United States showed so much determination to win in Vietnam than the Soviet
Union did in Afghanistan? A complete answer requires lengthy analysis of
differences between American and Russian approach toward war. Presenting a
history of the role America played into the Vietnam, this document probes
how the consequences had affected the changed American culture and society.
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The Vietnam War took
place at the same time with the civil rights movement; women's liberation
and youth culture movements. For decades, investigators of American foreign
policy have disputed the victories that communist guerrillas had in handling
operating in Southeast Asia in the 1960s and 70s. Generalizations to the
effect that the United States did not dedicate its full resources to the
battle are not overstated; in fact they are far truer than most Americans
conceive. One of the things on which Democratic and Republican
administrations agreed was that the American people would tolerate the war
in Vietnam only so long as not too many of them had to go and fight it.
Government policy was to make the draft somewhat easy to contrive.
The Vietnam War was the longest and most lonely war, which Americans ever
fought. And there is no computation of the cost. The toll in suffering,
sorrow, in ill-natured national chaos can never be tabulated. Fifty-eight
thousand American soldiers lost their lives. The losses to the Vietnamese
people were horrifying. The United States publicly abandoned the idea of
winning an old-fashioned victory, accomplishing the smash or surrender of
the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The US only wanted to make sure that
Hanoi improve its ways and stop intervening in South Vietnam. The United
States placed stingy limits on the extent to which its troops could abuse
Vietnamese civilians. It would be fair to explain such a difference by the
fact that the United States is a democracy with a free press, and that the
government, needing to entice the public that the war was justifiable and
knowing that widespread inhumanity could not be covered from the public,
felt much more need to prevent such atrocities than the government of the
Soviet Union did. Massacres and other abuses of civilians, nonetheless, are
not highly worthwhile tactics in a guerrilla war, and eagerness to do such
things is not a very good indicator of determination to win in a war. South
Vietnam is an excellent example of the American habit of committing to the
defense of places having little economic or strategic importance.
The Vietnamese government had a goal of the total obliteration of the
anti-Communist government in South Vietnam; the US correspondingly had as a
goal the absolute smudge of the Communist organization in South Vietnam that
Americans called the Viet Cong. The goals were absolutely symmetrical;
indeed the propaganda statements with which Hanoi concealed its goal of
totally eliminating the Saigon government behind words about coalition
government were in equilibrium with the statements with which the US
concealed its goal of totally eliminating the Viet Cong behind words about
peaceful political resolution. The difference was that Hanoi concerned far
more about fulfillment of its goal than Washington did. This was only
impulsive. South Vietnam after all sounded like a far more important place
if you are a Vietnamese than if you are an American, but the upshot was that
Hanoi was eager to spend enough resources and especially enough lives in the
fight to achieve its limited goal, while Washington was not.
To a whole new generation of young Americans today, it sound likes a story
from the olden days. Through concerned years of controversy and severity, US
casualties ascended, victory remained ambiguous, and American opinion moved
from general consent to general frustration with the Vietnam War. The rise
and fall of an American Army, found its distressing counterpoint in Vietnam;
no matter how bravely or how well the soldiers on the point did their job;
the plans and strategies were flawed; all the courage and bloodshed were for
nothing. Vietnam is still inside the American people. It has actualized
reservation about American wisdom, about American sincerity, and about
American power not only at home, but also all over the world. It has
contaminated our national point of view. The Unites States of America paid
an excessive price for the decisions that were made in virtuous confidence
and for good expectation. The presence of war effects is evident in the
large population of American children and Vietnamese refugees now at home in
the United States and in our huge budget deficit. The impact the war still
makes on our foreign policy decision, in our bearing toward political
candidates and institutions, and in our popular culture. Vietnam still bears
the burden of the effects of the war, particularly in its wrecked
infrastructure, its distorted victims of war, and its hundreds of thousands
of missing and wounded.
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