Dishonorable Disregard How Dishonor and Disregard Led to the First American Loss in War Jacob Charny U.S. History May 24, 2024. Prior to U.S. intervention, the Vietnam War took place between the Vietnamese and the French, who colonized Vietnam for the decades leading up to WWII and fought against Vietnamese independence movements throughout the latter half of the 1940s. During WWII, German occupation greatly weakened the French, allowing the Vietnamese to overthrow their colonizers and achieve political independence. However, following the end of WWII, the French wanted their colony back, turning to the United States for help and marking the beginning of U.S. involvement in Vietnam in the mid-to-late 1950s, with the beginning of direct, …show more content…
However, this is not to say that the Vietnamese people preached communist ideology, as foremost, they wanted political freedom from colonial parasites. During the Vietnam War, the United States failed to abide by honorable American values, exemplified in their suppression of the Vietnamese revolution for European support of NATO, their attempt to demonstrate their perceived international power by elongating war, and in the process, their practice of inhumane attrition tactics, ultimately failing to unite the American people and leading to domestic distrust of government practices. Furthermore, throughout each step in their dishonorable failure, the U.S. disregarded the strength and will of the Vietnamese people in light of their larger anti-Communist agenda, backfiring when the powerful Viet Cong forces confronted them head-on, leading to the first-ever U.S. loss in war. The United States implemented flawed foreign policy going into the Vietnam War, focusing its anti-communist agenda on Europe by seeking support for NATO, garnering that support by helping their French allies suppress the Vietnamese revolution, while ignoring Ho Chi Minh’s …show more content…
policymakers would further ignore the will of the Vietnamese in pursuit of global recognition regarding their power. As the United States transitioned to the main external fighting force in the Vietnam War, their initial foreign policy was complicated, focusing on preserving America’s globally perceived power by waging a proxy war within Vietnam for recognition over their Communist adversaries, continuing to ignore the will of the Vietnamese people by extending their stay and disregarding the consequences war posed to their lives. Following France’s departure from Vietnam, the United States opted to elongate its war efforts, remaining engaged in the war, as beating the Vietnamese offered an indirect triumph over Communism, given Communist China largely supplied the Viet Cong with resources. This indirect triumph over Communism would increase America’s globally perceived credibility and power, factors especially important in non-wartimes, when there would be no true physical measures like war to test a nation, rendering perceptions very important when attempting to align with powerful, secure countries. If the U.S. backed down prematurely, its perceived credibility and power would decrease, given it would have lost a battle to Communist-fueled forces, framing
After World War II, the French began a fight for their former colony of Indochina, which included Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The French and other countries failed to see at that time the will and desire of the Vietnamese people to gain independence from foreign rule and to have their country unified. Ho Chi Minh, a Vietnamese nationalist, fought the French and overtook the North Vietnam capital of Hanoi with his followers, the Viet Minh, declaring the area the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. (Anderson, 2002) The French were unwilling to give up their colony and drove the Vietminh from many of the larger cities in the south. The United States entered the Vietnam struggle in 1950 when $15 million in aid was pledged to France in order to fight the Vietminh. (Anderson, 2002) The rationale was to align with France and keep the Soviet Union from expanding in Europe and to keep another country from falling into communist rule.
In conclusion, I think that the United States became increasingly involved in the Vietnamese War because of the policies they had made as a promise to fight communism, and because they had sorely underestimated Vietcong’s ability to fight back using Guerrilla warfare. They refused to pull out of the war in fear of losing face before the world, but this pride factor scored them massive losses in the war. In the end, with both side sustaining heavy losses, the US were still seen as mutilators in the war, with advanced showing what their intervention had costed, and Vietnam was still fully taken over by Communism – they had achieved nothing and lost a lot.
Vietnam has a very rich and cultural diverse background dating all the way back to 1066 when William the Conqueror invaded and paved the way for English colonization. The French had been colonizing since the 19th century. The French role in Vietnams history is critical; they started out by bringing these simple peasants to the latest technology of farming and hunting (Yancey 37). The French helped these people out greatly in the beginning, but like all stories of occupation go they just got worse. They started forcing rules and laws on the people of Vietnam. Thus started the First Vietnam War, also known as the Indochina War between France and Vietnam. "The French possessed military superiority, but the Vietnamese had already the hearts and minds of the country. (38). Even from the beginning the Vietnamese had the odds to there favor. The French looked at the wars in numbers and how many lost on each side. They gathered from all the battles that they were winning because the Vietnamese casualties far outweighed the French; nonetheless they were wrong. To a certain point the French were fighting a game that they could not win at any cost. The French had the military superiority but the Vietnamese had the manpower and the Guerilla tactics. The Indochina War ended with French loosing terrible at Dienbienphu, where a whole French garrison was wiped out.
In his article, “To Be Patriotic is to Build Socialsim”: Communist Ideology in Vietnam's Civil War, Tuong Vo challenges a standard view of the civil war between North and South Vietnam – the war is power struggle between the two camps. Based on a newly availble documents and other primary sources, Vu argues that “[V]ietnamese communists never wavered in their ideology loyalty during the period when key decisions about the civil war were made (1953–1960).....a modernizing socialist idology rather than a mere for national unification was driving the Vietnamese civil war from the north” (Vu 2009, 34–35).
The French eventually gained back some control over parts of Vietnam. In early 1946, the French began a series of dual negotiations with the Chinese and Viet Minh over the future of Vietnam. After failed negotiations with the French over the future of Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh and his Viet Minh retreated into remote parts of the countryside to fight a small-scale insurgency against the French. (The History Place, Beginner’s Guide)
After returning, Minh had help from the Vietminh; an organization of communist that wanted freedom from other countries. Their main goal was to turn Vietnam into a self-governed communist country. France wanted none of this non-sense. In 1945 they had moved back into southern Vietnam and ruled most of the cities. Ho Chi Minh swore to fight France to gain control of the whole country. U.S. promised to aid France, and sent almost $15 million worth of financial aid to France. The French fought for four years, being financially aided by the U.S. the whole time. The U.S. spent nearly one billion dollars in order to help France regain control of the tiny country. The only reason that much effort was put into a small area was the fear of the y. Domino Theory. The Domino Theory first showed it's head during a 1954 news conference by U.S. President Eisenhower. The domino theory is the fear of the spread of communism from one country to the next, and so on. Even with the assistance of the U.S. France could not gain the control it once had on Vietnam.
At this time, Vietnam was a French colony. As time went on, tension started to come between the French and the Vietnamese people. As tension increased, so did the fighting between the French and the Vietnamese. Finally in 1954, the French decided that they could no longer withstand the revolts of the Vietnamese. The Vietnamese are now free of French rule.
Third, do we really know a country 8000 miles away from us? Knowing them so well that we are sure they would like our ideology. Fourth, our government had sent a “boy scout” to fight with those sophisticated Vietcong, some of our troops were composed of those people who just graduated from high school. In the 1960’s, according to the American government’s “Domino Theory”, if the Vietnam came under control of the communism, then the entire southeastern Asia would fall into communism too. Americans had already lost China, we certainly wouldn’t allow the southeastern Asia to follow in China’s footsteps, otherwise we would lose access to the huge resources and markets of Asia.
The beginning and end of the war is still disputed over today, but it is widely seen to have started in November of 1955. Prior to this, Vietnam was colonized by the French and under their rule. The trouble in French Indochina began when Vietnam declared their independence and raged war against France. The anti-colonial war lasted from 1945 to 1954 with Americas monetary support (Overview of the Vietnam War). The French received 2.6 billion dollars from the U.S. but eventually lost the battle.
The Vietnam war has been referred to by many names, one of the longer ones was 'the cornerstone of the free world southeast Asia'. It was called that by John F. Kennedy. He was talking about Vietnam being and essential country in a non-communist world. He believed that if Vietnam became a communist country, all of the surrounding countries would also become communists. This is the main reason America was involved in the Vietnam war. Another reason was that America wanted to spread their “political ideas around the globe”. They wanted to do this so that their anti-communism stance was clear. The public also wanted to keep communism from spreading. To soldiers, the war was like a crusade, a great journey to purge the communists from Vietnam. Sadly, this is not what happened. The Viet Cong (VC) had far better tactics than the US. The VC was told to 'nibble at the enemy' so that he could 'neither eat or sleep'. This worked very well. Another demoralizing tactic the VC used was their landmines; they were designed to blow the limbs off the soldiers without killing them. This tied up hospital beds and meant the soldiers had to carry the wounded back to the base.
The Vietnam War was the first major war American’s had suffered defeat. The Vietnam war was a war of confusion, competition and biasness. The outcome of the war was far greater than an upset American nation, but a severe breakdown of the Vietnamese culture, economy, environment and government. It also had a tremendous impact on American society even up to present day. It was unclear from the beginning of the war if the American’s should even be involved. It was a war between Northern and Southern Vietnam but the U.S saw it as an indirect way to challenge the USSR’s sphere of influence in Southern Asia and to prevent the domino effect and the further spread of communism. The Vietnam War completely changed the way the United States approached military action and helped establish the role of the United States within the new world order.
...ng the democratic election. Once the Vietnamese people chose their president, the country will be unified again. Although many of the Vietnamese people loved Ho Chi Minh since he freed them from colonial oppression. The United States refused to allow Vietnam to reunify under a communist regime since the national policy was containment. Also, President Eisenhower felt that the countries in Southeast Asia would participate in the domino theory, which was if one country in Vietnam became communist than the rest of Southeast Asia would also become communist. Prime Minister Diem canceled the election process which was influenced by the United States in order to stop the spread of communism and not allow Ho Chi Minh from becoming the leader of Vietnam. Since this was the time period for the Cold War, the United States, the USSR, and the PRC began the Second Indochina War.
United States' Withdrawal From Vietnam America went to war in Vietnam with an aim of destroying the Vietcong to protect South Vietnam from Communism. America was against communism and they wanted to stop the spread of it. They did not achieve what they set out to do as they had many boundaries in their way. Events both inside and outside of Vietnam led to the withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam.
In the colonial era, the world was divided into the colonies of European empires. France, among others, used military force and presence to rule in Vietnam and bordering countries, at that time called French Indochina. The French ruled with its army between 1854 and 1884 in the country, and about this time the aversion and disgust of Vietnamese people initiated against the French and other supremacy powers. One of the many effects of World War II was that European states, lost its imperialist and superpower status, as the World slowly shifted into the bipolar era - United States contra Soviet Union.
Vietnam was a struggle which, in all honesty, the United States should never have been involved in. North Vietnam was battling for ownership of South Vietnam, so that they would be a unified communist nation. To prevent the domino effect and the further spread of communism, the U.S. held on to the Truman Doctrine and stood behind the South Vietnamese leader, Diem.