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The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, and in Vietnam as the American War, occurred from 1959 to April 30,
1975. The term Vietnam Conflict is often used to refer to events which took place between 1959 and April 30, 1975. The war
was fought between the communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam and its communist allies and the US supported Republic of
Vietnam. It concluded with the defeat and dissolution of South Vietnam. For the United States, the war ended with the withdrawal
of American troops and failure of its foreign policy in Vietnam.
Over 1.4 million military personnel were killed in the war only 6% were members of the United States armed forces), while
estimates of civilian fatalities range up to 2 million. On April 30, 1975, the capital of South Vietnam, Saigon fell to the
communist forces of North Vietnam, effectively ending the Vietnam War.
Various names have been applied to the conflict, and these have shifted over time, although Vietnam War is the most commonly
used title in English. It has been variously called the Second Indochina War, the Vietnam Conflict, the Vietnam War, and,
in Vietnamese, Chin tranh Vit Nam (The Vietnam War), Kháng chin chng M (Resistance War against America) or The American War.
As dictated by the Geneva Conference of 1954, the partition of Vietnam was meant to be only temporary, pending national elections
on July 20, 1956. Much like Korea, the agreement stipulated that the two military zones were to be separated by a temporary
demarcation line (known as the Demilitarized Zone or DMZ). The United States, alone among the great powers, refused to sign
the Geneva agreement. The President of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, declined to hold elections. This called into question
the United States' commitment to democracy in the region, but also raised questions about the legitimacy of any election held
in the communist-run North. President Dwight D. Eisenhower expressed U.S. fears when he wrote that, in 1954,80 per cent of
the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh over Emperor Bao Dai. However, this wide popularity was expressed
before Ho's disastrous land reform program and a peasant revolt in Ho's home province which had to be bloodily suppressed.
In June 1961, John F. Kennedy bitterly disagreed with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev when they met in Vienna over key U.S.-Soviet
issues. Cold war strategists concluded Southeast Asia would be one of the testing grounds where Soviet forces would test the
USA's containment policy - begun during the Truman Administration and solidified by the stalemate resulting from the Korean
War.
Although Kennedy stressed long-range missile parity with the Soviets, he was also interested in using special forces for counter
insurgency warfare in Third World countries threatened by communist insurgencies. Originally intended for use behind front
lines after a conventional invasion of Europe, Kennedy believed that the guerrilla tactics employed by special forces such
as the Green Berets would be effective in a "brush fire" war in Vietnam. He saw British success in using such forces
in Malaya as a strategic template.
On August 2, 1964, the USS Maddox, on an intelligence mission along North Vietnam's coast, started a gunfight with torpedo
boats in the Gulf of Tonkin. However, the Maddox claimed that it was attacked. A second attack was reported two days later
on the USS Turner Joy and Maddox in the same area. The circumstances of the attack were murky. Lyndon Johnson commented to
Under-secretary of State George Ball that "those sailors out there may have been shooting at flying fish." The second
attack led to retaliatory air strikes, prompted Congress to approve the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, and gave the president
power to conduct military operations in South East Asia without declaring war. In the same month, Johnson pledged that he
was not "...committing American boys to fighting a war that I think ought to be fought by the boys of Asia to help protect
their own land."
Escalation of the Vietnam War officially started on the morning of January 31, 1965 when orders were cut and issued to mobilize
the 18th TAC Fighter Squadron from Okinawa to Danang air force base (AFB). A red alert alarm to scramble was sounded at Kadena
AFB at 3:00 a.m. F-105's, pilots and support were deployed from Okinawa and landed in Vietnam that afternoon to join up with
other smaller units who had already arrived weeks earlier. Preparations were under way for the first step of Operation Flaming
Dart. The mission of Operation Flaming Dart, to cross the Seventeenth Parallel into North Vietnam, was already planned and
in place before the attack on Pleiku. The attack on Pleiku occurred on February 6, 1965. On February 7, 1965 forty nine F-105
Thunderchiefs flew out of Danang AFB to targets located in North Vietnam. From this day forward the war was no longer confined
to South Vietnam. It took almost an hour to get all forty nine of the F-105's in the air. On that morning, the continuous
loud roar of the F-105 engines going down the runway, one following another, was described by the ground crew as a "rolling
thunder". At this time the Marines had not landed and Danang AFB was unprotected.
After several attacks, it was decided that U.S. Air Force bases needed more protection. The South Vietnamese military seemed
incapable of providing security. On March 8, 1965, 3,500 United States Marines were dispatched to South Vietnam. This marked
the beginning of the American ground war. U.S. public opinion overwhelmingly supported the deployment. Public opinion, however,
was based on the premise that Vietnam was part of a global struggle against communism. In a statement similar to that made
to the French, almost two decades earlier, Ho Chi Minh warned that if the Americans "want to make war for twenty years
then we shall make war for twenty years. If they want to make peace, we shall make peace and invite them to afternoon tea."
As former First Deputy Foreign Minister Tran Quang Co noted, the primary goal of the war was to reunify Vietnam and secure
its independence. The policy of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) was not to topple other non-communist governments
in South East Asia.
During the 1968 presidential election, Richard M. Nixon promised "peace with honor". His plan was to build up
the ARVN, so that they could take over the defence of South Vietnam (the Nixon Doctrine). The policy became known as "Vietnamization",
a term criticized by Robert K. Brigham for implying that, to that date, only Americans had been dying in the conflict. Vietnamization
had much in common with the policies of the Kennedy administration. One important difference, however, remained. While Kennedy
insisted that the South Vietnamese fight the war themselves, he attempted to limit the scope of the conflict. In pursuit of
a withdrawal strategy, Richard Nixon was prepared to employ a variety of tactics, including widening the war.
The Paris Peace Accord, agreed between communist Le Duc Tho, Henry Kissinger and reluctantly signed in January 1973 by President
Thieu, produced a ceasefire and allowed for the exchange of prisoners of war. Later that year the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded
to Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho but the Vietnamese negotiator declined it saying that a true peace did not yet exist in
Vietnam. Gerald Ford took over in 1974 after President Nixon, who resigned the presidency on August 9 due to the Watergate
scandal.
The U.S. midterm elections in 1974 brought in a new Congress dominated by Democrats who were much more willing to confront
the President on the war. Congress immediately voted in restrictions on funding and military activities to be phased in through
1975 and to culminate in a total cutoff of funding in 1976. On December 13, 1974, North Vietnam violated the Paris peace treaty
by attacking into the South. When North Vietnam violated the 1973 cease-fire agreement and invaded the South again in 1975,
Ford desperately asked Congress for funds to assist and re-supply the South before it was overrun. Congress refused. The U.S.
had promised Thieu that it would use airpower to support his government. But, having been forbidden by law to assist South
Vietnam, Ford was unable to act. The balance of power thus shifted decisively in North Vietnam's favor.
On April 30, 1975, VPA troops overcame all resistance, quickly capturing key buildings and installations. A tank crashed through
the gates of the Presidential Palace and at 11:30 a.m. local time with the NLF flag raised above it. Thieu's successor, President
Duong Van Minh, attempted to surrender, but VPA Colonel Bui Quang Than informed him that he had nothing left to surrender.
Minh then issued his last command, ordering all South Vietnamese troops to lay down their arms.
The Communists had attained their goal: they had toppled the Saigon regime. But the cost of victory was high. In the past
decade alone, one Vietnamese in every ten had been a casualty of war. Nearly a million and a half killed, three million wounded.
Vietnam had been a tormented land, and its ordeal was not over.
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In 1950, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and China recognized each other diplomatically. The Soviet Union quickly followed
suit. U.S. President Harry S. Truman countered by recognizing the French puppet government of Vietnam. Washington feared that
Hanoi was a pawn of Communist China and, by extension, Moscow. This flew in the face of the long historical antipathy between
the two nations, of which the U.S. seems to have been completely ignorant. As Doan Huynh commented,Vietnam a part of the Chinese
expansionist game in Asia? For anyone who knows the history of Indochina, this is incomprehensible.Nevertheless, Chinese support
was very important to the Viet Minh's success, and China largely supported the Vietnamese Communists through the end of the
war.
The outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 marked a decisive turning point. From the perspective of many in Washington, D.C.,
what had been a colonial war in Indochina was transformed into another example of communist expansionism directed by the Kremlin.
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In 1956 one of the leading communists in the south, Le Duan, returned to Hanoi to urge the Vietnam Workers' Party to take
a firmer stand on the reunification of Vietnam under Communist leadership. But Hanoi (then in a severe economic crisis) hesitated
in launching a full-scale military struggle. The northern Communists feared U.S. intervention and believed that conditions
in South Vietnam were not yet ripe for a people's revolution. However, in December 1956, Ho Chi Minh authorized the Viet Minh
cadres still in South Vietnam to begin a low level insurgency. In North Vietnamese political theory, the action was a subset
of "political struggle" called "armed propaganda," and consisted mostly in kidnappings and terrorist attacks.
Four hundred government officials were assassinated in 1957 alone, and the violence gradually increased. While the terror
was originally aimed at local government officials, it soon broadened to include other symbols of the status quo, such as
school teachers, health workers, agricultural officials, etc. One estimate purports that by 1958, 20% of South Vietnam's village
chiefs had been murdered by the insurgents. What was sought was a method of completely destroying government control in South
Vietnam's rural villages in order to be replaced by an NLF shadow government. Finally, in January 1959, under pressure from
southern cadres who were being targeted by Diem's secret police, the north's Central Committee issued a secret resolution
authorizing an "armed struggle." This authorized the southern Viet Minh to begin large scale operations against
the South Vietnamese military. In response, Diem enacted tough new anti-communist laws. However, North Vietnam supplied troops
and supplies in earnest, and the infiltration of men and weapons from the north began along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
The Kennedy administration remained essentially committed to the Cold War foreign policy inherited from the Truman and Eisenhower
administrations. In 1961, Kennedy faced a three-part crisis - the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion, the construction of
the Berlin Wall, and a negotiated settlement between the pro-Western government of Laos and the Pathet Lao communist movement
made Kennedy believe another failure on the part of the United States to gain control and stop communist expansion would fatally
damage U.S. credibility with its allies and his own reputation. Kennedy determined to 'draw a line in the sand' and prevent
a communist victory in Vietnam saying, "Now we have a problem making our power credible and Vietnam looks like the place"
to James Reston of the New York Times (immediately after meeting Khrushchev in Vienna)
The National Security Council recommended a three-stage escalation of the bombing of North Vietnam. On March 2, 1965, following
an attack on a U.S. Marine barracks at Pleiku, Operation Flaming Dart and Operation Rolling Thunder commenced. The bombing
campaign, which ultimately lasted three years, was intended to force North Vietnam to cease its support for the National Front
for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF) by threatening to destroy North Vietnam's air defenses and industrial infrastructure.
As well, it was aimed at bolstering the morale of the South Vietnamese. Between March 1965 and November 1968, "Rolling
Thunder" deluged the north with a million tons of missiles, rockets and bombs. Bombing was not restricted to North Vietnam.
Other aerial campaigns, such as Operation Commando Hunt, targeted different parts of the NLF and People's Army of Vietnam
(PAVN) infrastructure. These included the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which ran through Laos and Cambodia. The objective of forcing
North Vietnam to stop its support for the NLF, however, was never reached. As one officer noted "this is a political
war and it calls for discriminate killing. The best weapon would be a knife The worst is an airplane." The Chief of Staff
of the United States Air Force Curtis LeMay, however, had long advocated saturation bombing in Vietnam and wrote of the Communists
that "we're going to bomb them back into the Stone Age"
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The anti-war movement was gaining strength in the United States. Nixon appealed to the "Silent Majority" of Americans
to support the war. But revelations of the My Lai Massacre, in which U.S. forces went on a rampage and killed civilians, including
women and children, provoked national and international outrage.
The civilian cost of the war was again questioned, when the U.S concluded operation Speedy Express with a claimed bodycount
of 10,889 NLF (vietcong) guerillas with only 40 U.S losses, Kevin Buckley writing in newsweek estimated that perhaps 5,000
were civilians.
The invasion of Cambodia sparked nationwide U.S. protests. Four students were killed by National Guardsmen at Kent State
University during a protest in Ohio, which provoked public outrage in the United States. The reaction to the incident by the
Nixon administration was seen as callous and indifferent, providing additional impetus for the anti-war movement.
In 1971 the Pentagon Papers were leaked to the New York Times. The top-secret history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam,
commissioned by the Department of Defense, detailed a long series of public deceptions. The Supreme Court ruled that its publication
was legal.
The ARVN launched Operation Lam Son 719, aimed at cutting the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos. The offensive was a clear violation
of Laotian neutrality,[104] which neither side respected in any event. Laos had long been the scene of a Secret War. After
meeting resistance, ARVN forces retreated in a confused rout. They fled along roads littered with their own dead. When they
ran out of fuel, soldiers abandoned their vehicles and attempted to barge their way on to American helicopters sent to evacuate
the wounded. Many ARVN soldiers clung to helicopter skids in a desperate attempt to save themselves. U.S. aircraft had to
destroy abandoned equipment, including tanks, to prevent them from falling into enemy hands.
Chaos, unrest, and panic ensued as hysterical South Vietnamese officials and civilians scrambled to leave Saigon. Martial
law was declared. American helicopters began evacuating South Vietnamese, U.S. and foreign nationals from various parts of
the city and from the U.S. embassy compound. Operation Frequent Wind had been delayed until the last possible moment, because
of U.S. Ambassador Graham Martin's belief that Saigon could be held and that a political settlement could be reached. "Frequent
Wind" was arguably the largest helicopter evacuation in history. It began on April 29, in an atmosphere of desperation,
as hysterical crowds of Vietnamese vied for limited seats. Martin pleaded with Washington to dispatch $700 million in emergency
aid to bolster the regime and help it mobilize fresh military reserves. But American public opinion had long soured on this
conflict halfway around the world.
In the U.S., South Vietnam was perceived as doomed. President Gerald Ford gave a televised speech on April 23, declaring
an end to the Vietnam War and all U.S. aid. "Frequent Wind" continued around the clock, as North Vietnamese tanks
breached defenses on the outskirts of Saigon. The song "White Christmas" was broadcast, as the final signal for
withdrawal. In the early morning hours of April 30, the last U.S. Marines evacuated the embassy by helicopter, as civilians
swamped the perimeter and poured into the grounds. Many of them had been employed by the Americans and were left to their
fate.
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