Vietnam War That changed between 1965 and 1967, when the Americanization of the war brought hundreds of thousands of troops and civilians into the country and put an American face on the increasingly widespread destruction wrought by both sides. T: (215) 732-6200. Reporting from Vietnam was indeed uncensored, but during the entire war period there were only a handful of instances in which the MACV found a journalist guilty of violating military security. [26]Interview with Melissa Woodbury, conducted via Skype, March 25, 2017. The North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong assaults in cities across what was then South Vietnam would become a military defeat for the communists. American Those who were not disabled in combat received, as the Veterans Administration today describes it, little more than a $60 allowance and a train ticket home. In 1973, American forces officially pulled out of Vietnam and on April 30th, 1975 Saigon fell to Communist forces. When the war was over France received their "colony" back. Ronald H. Spector. Hamill, Pete. http://blogs.dickinson.edu/hist-118pinsker/files/2017/04/Report-from-Vietnam-1968.mp3. The draft brought men into the ranks of the military who had no wish to fight and the single, one-, American Deaths by Length of Deployment (Courtesy of Thomas C. Thayer). What was important, they argue, was that the Johnson administration and Westmoreland had been promising a victory around the corner for so long, that the sight of enemy soldiers at the U.S. Embassy shocked and disillusioned the American public. I have a question about the draft: how were the young man selected? As the number of Americans in Saigon surged into the tens of thousands, the number of houses of ill repute expanded proportionally, provoking criticism in the United States and South Vietnam. By early 1967, over 1.5 million refugees had drifted into urban slums, where they were susceptible to Viet Cong propaganda. Having been recently married to Ronald Woodbury in 1965 after finishing school at Mount Holyoke College, Vietnam quickly became a common subject of discussion: I was in college from 62-65 and the big push hadnt really started so [my husband, Ronald] and I talked about it a lot. Random killing was permitted in areas designated as free-fire zones, where any unidentified person could be considered an enemy combatant. Karnow, Stanley. Vietnam marks the first time in American history that a war was decided not on the battlefield, but in the minds of the American people. Some gauzy recollections benefit the veterans sense of honor but miss the sordid elements of the war. The McCarthy movement, which both mobilized the right and threatened to fracture it in the 1950s, emerged from a reaction to the Chinese Communist Partys victory in the Chinese Civil War. Was the war in Vietnam a civil war or a global Cold War confrontation? New York: Viking, 1983. My brother eventually died from the effects of his own agent orange exposure. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. But the Americans tasked with carrying out that strategy were ill equipped, linguistically and culturally, to make it work. In 1969, Seymour Hersh broke the story of the massacre in the village of My Lai the year before, when a U.S. Army company that had lost a fifth of its men was sent in search of Vietcong and, finding none, rounded up hundreds of old men, women, and children, herded many of them into a ditch, and slaughtered them. As the senior commander in Vietnam, I was aware of the potency of public opinion and worried about it. -GENWilliam Westmoreland [1]. WebChanging views of the war in the USA Another major reason why the USA could not win the war was the lack of support at home from the American public. Some outside research will be necessary. Casualties: A follow-up, (Analysis Report, May, 1969), 16-17. One caveat to this, however, was that men who were in college could be excused from the draft. Attitudes Toward In August 1964, the US government received word that two North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked US destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin. Direct link to Zob Rombie's post The main reason the war e, Posted 4 years ago. [25] Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History, (New York: Penguin Books, 1997): p. 644-645. What most undermined support for the war was simply the level of American casualties: the greater the increase in casualties, the lower the level of public support for the war. The Veterans Administration has recently expressed concern over the Three decades after the last U.S. troops left what was then South Vietnam, the 10-year conflict that included Laos and Cambodia remains at once a lesson, a caution, and for some, a specter. Although public opinion sided with the government in 1965, and stayed favourable for years, dissent became evident from the outset. Despite being part of Nixons Vietnamization program, which was meant to slowly withdrawal American ground forces in the region while building up the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), domestically they served little more than to trigger more protests (the invasion of Laos in particular was conducted primarily by ARVN units; however, they performed miserably). Required fields are marked *. Vietnam War Conflict and cooperation among social groups, organizations, and nation-states are critical to comprehending society in the United States. Lessons of Vietnam: how war Or would he have gone in a quote better direction based upon how he handled other things as president? All rights reserved. I would like to be able to trust the government and have faith in my electedofficials, stated Melissa Woodbury at the end of her interview, I would like to have fact be recognized as fact, but somehow weve lost all that.[29], [1] WESTMORLAND,The Washington Post,(WP Company: 09 Feb. 1986): https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/magazine/1986/02/09/westmorland/878f7d1c-7619-4a2e-8806-298e5fb7fc6d/?utm_term=.2a72bdd26b12. Would anyone know as to why it is called this? But one truth towers above them all. I had friends who were ready to go to Canada it was a lottery so one of our friends got a really good number and didnt have to go and he celebrated, he got drunk, he was so happy that he didnt have to go. On Feb. 22, CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite, back from a reporting trip to Vietnam, pronounced the war a stalemate and said it was time to negotiate an end. Analyze a primary source for accuracy and bias and connect it to a time and place in United States history, Contrast multiple perspectives of individuals and groups in interpreting other times, cultures, and place. Given the frustrations and failures and mounting casualties of the American war effort, atrocities were perhaps only a matter of time. How Not to Win Hearts and Minds I've read that the Vietnam War is referred to as the 'American War' (in full, War Against the Americans to Save the Nation) in Vietnam. That the anti-war movement gained too much sway over public opinion? [29]Interview with Melissa Woodbury, conducted via Skype, March 25, 2017. After that, all restraints came off. And two days after that, on April 4, while covering a Democratic congressional fundraising dinner in Washington, the word began to spread that Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot in Memphis. Another event that further negatively impacted public opinion were the invasions of Laos and Cambodia. HSP Recipient of Library of Congress Grant, The library is open for research by appoin. According to military analyst Thomas C. Thayer: The Americans couldnt win in Vietnam but they couldnt lose either as long as they stayed.[27] Had U.S. forces had more time to effectively implement Nixons Vietnamization strategy, it is possible that South Vietnam would have been able to hold its own once the American military left, but the nightly news broadcasts depicting scenes of violence like none that most Americans had ever seen before and the public statements of prominent figures such as Walter Cronkite served to shorten the fuse of the public opinion time bomb and ultimately bring the war to its unsatisfactory conclusion. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas fumed that Saigon had become an American brothel. South Vietnamese Catholics and President Nguyen Van Thieu were especially concerned about prostitution, and pleaded with American officials to do something about the suffocating presence of so many troops. Were they correct? She has been in ministry over 30 years; and along with her husband is a Senior Pastor of New Genesis Christian Center, Inc. Brooklyn, NY. The communists, headed by Ho Chi Minh, would govern the northern half, with its capital at Hanoi, while South Vietnam, with its capital at Saigon, would remain non-communist. The early years of the war are ones best categorized as years of indifference. No. It also left Saigon more vulnerable to the urban attacks launched by the Viet Cong during the 1968 Tet offensive. Corrections? VIETNAM WAR There was ABC, NBC and CBS (CNN didnt exist even, certainly not FOX). Hed been working so hard in the anti-war movement that when Nixon upped it again and went into Laos he committed suicide he was so distraught.[26]. Lessons of Vietnam: how war Vietnam War and the Shifting Tides of Public Opinion Vietnam War Still, most Americans arrived in the country without knowledge of the land and the people. Question 1: "did it seem like an utter waste of time and resources?" If the vietnam war was about the north spreading communism articles say that vietnam battled america instead of saying that the south battled the north alongside america , so is it saying that america fought the whole vietnam gov. The two countries were divided along the 17th Parallel, also known as the Line of Demarcation. Within a couple of years, Wright said, people felt sorry for the kids who were forced to fight in a war we shouldnt be involved with., In the third period, news of crimes of warfare tainted the American military. Learn about the war that enmeshed the United States in a battle against communism in Southeast Asia for more than twenty years. Having recently returned home from on-site reporting in Vietnam, Walter Cronkite closed out the nightly CBS news report with the following words: Walter Cronkite was probably the most trusted man in the country, said Melissa Woodbury, When he became convinced that the war was unwinnable and said it, that had a huge impact on his viewers[15] lots of people rethought[16], By November 1968, public support for withdrawal rose from 10% to 19% and public support for escalation dropped from 55% to 34%. Prior to that time, the number of American newsmen in Indochina had been smallfewer than two dozen even as late as 1964. Like everything else about the decade-plus American war effort in Vietnam, Tet has been a focal point of controversy and heated arguments. [22] As anti-war sentiment grew and the draft brought in the wars protesters, incidents of fragging (intentionally killing ones superior officer or NCO) increased drastically. New York: Norton, 1985. Soon after, Tet would turn the course of the war towards an eventual American exit. WebAP.USH: KC8.1.I.B.ii (KC) , Unit 8: Learning Objective I , WOR (Theme) Learn about the war that enmeshed the United States in a battle against communism in Southeast Asia for more than twenty years. Walter Cronkite reported every single night, we got the body count every night and then Westmorland saying just a few more, just a few more, just a few more and more troops went. What were the assumptions underlying the US involvement in Southeast Asia? The experience of the First World War clearly changed attitudes towards war in the developed world. Americans cannot agree amongst themselves on what happened there, on what might have happened had we done one thing or another differently, or on what would have happened if justice and morality had prevailed. Attitudes Toward Vietnam Era Veterans. WebThe process through which the change took place owes much to British war aims and to their efforts to get the United States into the war. Peoples attitudes towards the Vietnam War differed immediately from previous conflicts, where early days were dominated by propaganda and patriotism. Support Intelligent, In-Depth, Trustworthy Journalism. Although U.S. intervention would continue until 1973, the domestic effects of the Tet Offensive sealed the fate of the American mission in Vietnam. Michael D. Mosettig was the PBS NewsHours foreign affairs and defense editor from 1985 to 2012. NVA and VC activity had been on a steady decline since mid-1967 and American military analysts believed that it meant that the communists were rapidly running out of men and material. Unlike triumphalist monuments to war, that engraved and polished stone allows room for every emotion.

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