Use Of U.S. Troops Outside South Vietnam example essay topic

The Vietnam War was a war that most people in the United States did not approve of. It was a struggle between U.S. forces and South Vietnamese army against the North Vietnamese and the National Liberation Front fought in Vietnam from 1959 to 1975. From the 1880's until World War II, France governed Vietnam as part of French Indochina, it also included Cambodia and Laos. During the end of 1940, when Japanese troops had invaded and occupied French Indochina, Vietnamese nationalists seeing an opportunity to for resistance to French colonial rule had established the League for the Independence of Vietnam, or Viet Minh. Later on, the U.S. began an alliance with the Viet Minh and forced the Japanese to surrender on September 2, 1945. During the time that the Japanese surrendered, a principal leader of the Viet Minh, Ho Chi Minh, declared the independence of Vietnam, which he called the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) but the French refused to acknowledge Vietnam's independence, and later drove the Viet Mien into the north of Vietnam.

The U.S., afraid to lose South Asia to communism, later condemned Ho Chi Minh as an agent of international communist and offered to help the French regain control of Vietnam. After a long struggle between French troops against Viet Minh forces, the French public forced the French government to reach a peace agreement at the Geneva Conference. Following a peace agreement called the Geneva Accord, French troops moved to the south of Vietnam until they could safely be withdrawn and Viet Minh forces moved north. Ho Chi Minh maintained control of North Vietnam while Emperor Dao Dai had control of South Vietnam. In 1955, the U.S. government justified its support for South Vietnam through the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization that gave protection to South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos in case of Communist attacks.

These supports lead to direct involvement of U.S. troops. Also in 1955, the U.S. picked Ngo Dinh Diem to replace Dao Dai as head of the anti-Communist regime in South Vietnam. In a rigged election, Ngo Dinh Diem defeated Bao Dai and declared South Vietnam to be an independent nation called the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), with Saigon as its capital. After Ngo Dinh Diem's declaration, the Viet Minh immediately sought to overthrow the Diem government.

They were aided in their efforts to organize a resistance in the South by Diem's policies which alienated many peasants. Diem also used the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) created by the U.S. to take away land from peasants by force and move many villagers to controlled settlements in an attempt to prevent Communist activity. He also drafted young men into the ARVN. By 1959, opposition to Diem had grown so much in the south that the southern Communists formed the National Liberation Front (NLF) and started to train and equip guerrillas who became known as the People's Liberation Armed Forces (PLAN). The U.S. government continued to support the ARVN and worked to stop the NLF recruitment of peasants. U.S. air power was also used to spray herbicides like Agent Orange to deprive the NLF of food and jungle cover. In November 1, 1963, Diem and his corrupt brother Nhu were murdered and so South Vietnam government became called the Saigon Government.

Also the CIA was forced to admit that the strength of the NLF was growing. After Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963, Lyndon B. Johnson became president and made efforts to frighten the North Vietnamese leaders with the possibility of full-scale U.S. military involvements. In January 1964, he approved convert attacks against North Vietnamese territory. Although intelligence reports stated that most of the support for the NLF came from the south, Johnson insisted that the North Vietnamese were controlling the southern rebellion. On August 2, 1964, North Vietnamese coastal gunboats fired on the U.S. destroyer USS Maddox, which had crossed North Vietnam's boundaries in the Gulf of Tonkin. This incident lead to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which allowed President Johnson the powers to wage an all out war against North Vietnam without an approval from Congress.

After the resolution was passed, President Johnson began to steadily bomb North Vietnam, which began to send units of the People's Republic of Vietnam (PAVN) into the south. The NLF and the PAVN then worked together to attack U.S. air bases and killed several U.S. servicemen. The attacks brought in U.S. troops to further protect the air bases. By June 1865, there were seventy-four thousand U.S. combat troops in Vietnam. The DRV and NLF troops were very poorly equipped compared to the U.S. and therefore their main strategy was to use hit and run tactics to cause casualties on U.S. troops and wear down support for the war in the U.S. The United States's strategy was to try to save area's already under Saigon's control but this strategy failed because the NLF had pretty good strength almost everywhere in South Vietnam. In October 1965, a division of the U.S. army fought one of the biggest battles in Vietnam in the Ia Drang Valley and caused a serious defeat to North Vietnamese forces.

From then on, the U. S strategy changed to wearing down and harassing North Vietnamese forces while the NLF and the North Vietnamese strategy changed to fighting both at the same time in surprise. In 1967 North Vietnamese attacked and placed a U. S Marine base in Khe San under siege. To stop the communists from taking the base, around fifty thousand U. S forces were called into the area, which the communists had wanted. At the start of the Vietnamese lunar new year celebration when a pause in fighting usually occurred and U.S. and Saigon forces were on stand down, over eighty thousand NLF soldiers attacked almost every major city including Saigon at the same time. As U.S. and Saigon forces fought to regain control, it became the bloodiest fighting of the entire war. In 1968, Richard Nixon, promising to end the war, won the presidential election and took office.

He created a policy called Vietnam ization where he would withdraw U.S. forces and the South Vietnamese would take over the fighting. Nixon then issued the Nixon Doctrine which stated that U.S. troops would no longer be directly involved in Asian wars. As he withdrew U.S. forces, he put into play the Phoenix Program, a secret CIA operation which resulted in the assassination of twenty thousand suspected NLF guerrillas. In during the mid to late 1960's, Nixon ordered the secret bombings of Cambodia and Laos in order to destroy North Vietnamese and NLF base camps along the borders of Cambodia and to destroy North Vietnamese along sections of Laos. These bombings resulted in the killing of hundreds of thousands of Cambodians and Lao. Later on, the Congress passed the Cooper-Church Amendment which forbade the use of U.S. troops outside South Vietnam.

After a U.S. air and ARVN ground invasion of Laos, the Communists won support of the Lao population and by 1975, a Communist government in Laos was established. On January 27, 1973, the U.S., South Vietnam, the Provisional Revolutionary Government, and North Vietnam signed the Treaty of Paris. The terms of the Treaty of Paris was that all American prisoners of war from North Vietnam were to be released; the withdrawal of U.S. forces in South Vietnam; the end of all foreign military operations in Laos and Cambodia; a cease-fire between North and South Vietnam; the starting of a National Council of Reconciliation to help South Vietnam form a new government; and the U.S. to continue military and economic aid to South Vietnam. On March 29, 1973 Nguyen van Thieu, who had become president of South Vietnam in 1967, went against the Treaty of Paris and began offensives against PRG villages. In 1975, North Vietnam, having lost faith in the Treaty of Paris, began to attack South Vietnam. After these attacks, the ARVN began to fall apart and on April 30, the new president of South Vietnam, Duong Van Minh, issued his surrender to the PRG.

After almost thirty years since Vietnam's declaration of independence, Vietnam was finally a single country. I learned a lot about the Vietnam War. Before this report, I knew almost nothing of the Vietnam War except that there were hippies. I learned that the conflicts of the Vietnam War began when Vietnam declared its independence and probably could have been avoided if the U.S. wasn't so afraid of Communism and had not interfered.