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History of vietnam
Vietnam and Korean war
Modern history of vietnam
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During the Vietnam War on January 30th, 1968, the communist Vietnam troops in the North, with assistance from the Viet Cong, commenced a series of attacks against the forces in the south and the US, known as the famous “Tet Offensive.” The name “Tet Offensive” is derived from the most important holiday on the Vietnamese calendar. It is a celebration of the lunar New Year. General Vo Nguyen Giap, along with the forces in the north, decided to attack on this day because it is supposed to be a “truce period” between the north and south. On this day, the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) was at its lowest level of alertness. (Dunn, 2005) The offensive consisted of three phases. The first phase took place on January 31st and lasted until March 28th. During this phase, the North Vietnamese forces wanted to draw the allied forces out of heavily populated cities and lowlands and then launch attacks on those cities. (Staff, 2014) This was a major surprise. The second phase, also known as “mini-tet”, took place on May 5th and lasted through June 15th. This phase consisted of massive attacks on villages and cities aiming to hit 119 targets. (Staff, 2014) This phase was a complete failure. The last and final phase of the offensive ranged from August 17th to September 23rd. This attack consisted of more attacks on villages and cities and was handled only by the North Vietnamese soldiers, without the help of Viet Cong, ending in another failure. (Staff, 2014) The Tet Offensive was a highly publicized attack with the daily media coverage it received. It was also regarded to as one of the turning points of the Vietnam War. After the failed attacks of the North forces, Viet Cong was ruined as a military force. (Dunn, 2005) Vo Nguyen Giap use... ... middle of paper ... ...edge that an attack was coming, but if we had more intelligence in the North, then we might have been better prepared. The offensive seemed to indicate to most observers that the three years of “big-unit war” that followed to deployment of U.S forces in 1965 had produced only a steady stream of casualties on all sides. (Wirtz, 1991) Some of the lessons learned from the Tet Offensive include: “If the enemy has quantity and quality, do not attack”, “superior firepower almost always trumps ideological commitment”, “Guerrillas rarely win set-piece battles against well-armed regulars with access to unlimited stock of ammunition” and “don’t assume civilians will embrace a revolution forced on them at gunpoint.” (Dudley, 2001) The Tet Offensive quelled the crusading spirit that characterized America’s postwar rush to intervene in conflicts in the Third World. (Wirtz, 1991)
The relationship between conventional and guerilla operations was a key element of the Vietnamese communists’ “Dau Tranh” strategy to fight and win the Vietnam War. A brief description of the Dua Tranh (meaning struggle) strategy is appropriate since it was the basis for North Vietnam’s success. The strategy consisted of an armed struggle and a political struggle. The armed struggle began with Stage One hit and run guerilla tactics to “decimate the enemy piecemeal and weaken then eliminate the government’s administrative control of the countryside...
...am War is not just history but the fundamental part of our history. Therefore, it needs to be taken seriously. Only if we take it seriously, can we prevent ourselves from doing the same mistakes again. It also teaches how the war policies and authorities can blind us from the real reason behind the war. It is important to also know the enemy and plan accordingly. One can clearly see that higher technologies can go wrong when accompanied with failed strategies. Most important of the all it makes the readers reconsider their definition of just-war. Most important of all, “Working-Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam” by Christian G. Appy teaches us how education and economic advantages can help us from facing the worst.
The world’s history is majorly shaped by mega wars that happen both inside and outside the boundaries of individual nations. Almost every sovereign state in the world had to forcefully liberate itself from its colonizers and oppressors mainly through warfare. For instance, America had to fight a long and exhausting revolutionary war against the British before it could attain its independence in 1783, likewise is the fate of many other nations. It is important to understand the two distinct types of wars that exist and their implications. Guerrilla warfare and the conventional military warfare are two types of war that are very different in their execution and military approach. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the similarities and differences existing between the American war in Vietnam and the American Revolution (Vetter, 1997).
David Galula and Roger Trinquier have common roots, they were French citizens and both lived in the 20th century when the study of counterinsurgency theory was coming into focus. Each of these men experienced bitter conflicts of war. Galula fought in North Africa, Italy, and France. In addition, Galula fought in irregular wars located in China, Greece, Indochina, and Algeria. Galula was a lieutenant colonel when he decided to author his now classic book. Whereas, Trinquier an officer in the colonial infantry defended the French concession in Shanghai and later in Indochina under the Japanese occupation where he was held prisoner of war in a Japanese internment camp. After Trinquier’s release from prison, he continued to serve in Indochina and additionally in Algeria. Both men wrote from first-hand experience and published their accounts in 1964 while the Cold War waged. Communism ideology vs. the free world theorists collided across the face of the globe in a race for domination. Counterinsurgency has been an American strategy since the 1960s ebbing and flowing in strategic signi...
Operation Linebacker II, also known as the Christmas Day bombings, were a sequence of atrocious bombings over North Vietnam during the Vietnam War from December 18, 1972 and lasted 11 days through December 29, 1972 arranged by former President Nixon. President Nixon ordered these bombings to destroy the belligerents’ complexes and push the North Vietnamese government into peace talks that would hopefully result in a cease fire treaty. The use of B-52 bombers and other heavy military weapons instead of small aircraft and other small military weapons, made The Christmas Day bombings were the largest bombing campaign of the Vietnam War. These bombings caused many civilian casualties and had many repercussions against the United States. Many soldiers were killed, aircraft was shot down, aircraft suffered heavy damage, innocent civilian were killed, and many American soldiers were taken for prisoner but later released under treaty. This paper will explain what happened before, during, and after the Christmas Day bombings through Nixon’s own words and newspaper articles. This paper will al...
The political and societal ramifications of Vietnam's Tet Offensive indubitably illustrate the historical oddity of 1968. 1967 had not been a bad year for most Americans. Four years after the profound panic evoked by the assassination of John Kennedy, the general public seemed to be gaining a restored optimism, and even the regularly protested Vietnam War still possessed the semblance of success (Farber and Bailey 34-54). However, three short weeks following the eve of 68, Americans abruptly obtained a radically different outlook. The Tet Offensive, beginning on January 30, 1968, consisted of a series of military incursions during the Vietnam War, coordinated between the National Liberation Front's People's Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF), or "Viet Cong," and the ...
He was also a Gulf War veteran who commanded an armored cavalry. His desire in writing this book was to examine, through the recently declassified documents, manuscript collections, and the Joint Chief of Staff official histories, where the responsibility for the Vietnam foreign policy disaster lay, but also examine the decisions made that involved the United States in a war they could not win. This book details the discussion of government policy in the stages of the Vietnam crisis from 1961-July 1965. It examines the main characters of President Lyndon B. Johnson, Robert McNamara, in addition to the military, which included the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It began in the Kennedy era amidst the Bay of Pigs incident and how that led to mistrust of the military planning by advisors and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Trigger warnings are becoming a widely used method to prevent offending or upsetting people. Trigger warnings are used to alert people of content that might set off a strong emotional reaction. The people who usually experience these experiences are people who suffer from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or anxiety. There are many more, but these two are the ones I will be focusing on. As a survivor of my own traumas, and an anxiety disorder so bad that my hair fell out, I want trigger warnings to be in the college environment.
The Vietnam war was a long, costly armed conflict with the communist regime of North Vietnam and its Southern allies known as the Viet Cong, against South Vietnam and its principle ally the United States. The divisive war, which was increasingly unpopular at home, ended with the withdrawal of U.S forces in 1973 and the unification of Vietnam under Communist control two years later. Truong Nhu Tang provides invaluable insights into the opposing side in the Vietnam War. Tang is a dedicated nationalist who was never a communist but was willing to work with the communist to achieve national independence – the kind of Vietnamese the French and the Americans never sufficiently understood.
As far back as my mind would let me travel I remember my grandmother telling me, “Jaylon, there are three things in life you can’t escape. Death, taxes, and sunday school.” Well it turns out she was right. Come rain or shine I was there every single Sunday morning service and since all my other grandmother’s grandsons took to playing sports and chasing women they left all the singing in church choir to me. Now I was always different and in my little town of Mount Pleasant they let you know just how different they thought you were. They called me weird, punk, sissy, and gay. My momma just called me special. The first time I ever heard the word “faggot” was when I was playing in the back of a pew one sunday after church. My pastor’s son, Matthew, delivered that two syllable death punch directly to my face after I showed him my Britney Spear’s album that I had gotten for my seventh birthday. Faggot? He called me a faggot. I was a faggot? What did that word even mean? Why did he call me that? Was I acting like a faggot? Upset and confused I asked my mom what it meant to be a faggot. She just looked at me with a calming smile, clasp my hands together and told me to pray. And I did. For years and years I prayed, but if there was one thing my grandmother was wrong about, it’s that there is a fourth thing you can’t escape in life, yourself.
June 25th, 1965 at 8:15pm, an event occurred that changed the streets of Saigon, Vietnam forever. Three Viet Cong terrorists had planted two bombs, one inside the floating My Canh restaurant, and the other outside of the doors of the My Canh restaurant. They strategically did this so that when the first bomb went off inside the restaurant, all of the people dining inside would run outside in panic and pandemonium, and then the second bomb would detonate. sending shrapnel in all directions. This pipe bomb/claymore style explosive caused a very bloody and messy killing. The attack killed forty-two men, women, and children, and wounded eighty-one.
Another military that occurred in 1968 was the Tet Offensive that happened in Vietnam. On the morning of January 30,1968 13 cities went under attack by Viet Cong forces. They attacked cities, towns and government buildings and US military bases in south Vietnam. The U.S. Embassy was also attacked. Close to 150 U.S. Marines were killed in the Fight of Hue, along with some 400 South Vietnamese troops. The Tet Offensive marked a crucial turning point in American participation in the Vietnam War. It was a war disliked by many Americans.
One of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War was called the Tet Offensive. The Tet Offensive was to protect against the forces of the South Vietnam, United States Armed Forces, and their allies. The Vietnam war in 1968 was the bloodiest year which shocked the public because American soldiers killed hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese civilians. The North Vietnam attacked in the late night and it did not do much damage versus when the main North Vietnamese operation attacked because it was very effective and was countrywide. It was the largest military operation which stunned both the US and South Vietnamese armies, which caused them to lose all control for the time being.
World War II was the most devastating war in the world’s history, causing an immense amount of death, due to both battle and genocide. That being said, what marked the end of said war was the United States of America’s bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan (Frieden et al. 23). Prior to this, what had compelled the United States to take action in the war was the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 (Frieden et al. 22). To add, during the time of the United States joining the war, they had developed and “first tested [the atomic bomb] in New Mexico on July 16, 1945. (The Atomic Bombings). Subsequently after Germany had surrendered in the war, in July, “Japan’s militarist government rejected the Allied demand for surrender put forth in
Kennedy and Diem were both killed in 1963 and 1964. Johnson took control of the situation by increasing the amount of money and manpower put into Vietnam. Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving the president full military power. After Johnson dramatically escalated the amount of soldiers in Vietnam, The North Vietnamese mounted a surprise attack during the Vietnamese new year, and this strike was called the Tet Offensive. It made America more aware of what they were up against, that the communists were capable of fierce, guerrilla warfare, unlike anything Americans had ever fought before. Images of the terror and disarray reached back home, and the U.S. began to wonder how effective their involvement in Vietnam really was.