Vietnam War

History Essay

The Vietnam War was a long civil war since 1955 in which participated North Vietnam and South Vietnam. Diem who governed South Vietnam and who had the support of the USA was overthrown and murdered because of ideological between him and the rest of the country and because he refused to hold general elections as it had been previously established in the Geneva Conference of 1954. Then, a number of different successors governed South Vietnam. The USA feared communist expansion since North Vietnam was communist and Ho Chi Minh, who governed this state, was looking forward to unifying the country with the use of violence. Therefore, following its policy of containment, the US decided to intervene. Several US presidents dealt with the conflict and usually with the support from the American citizens. But it was during the end of Lyndon Johnson’s presidency when American people started to realize they might not win the war.

Johnson decided to bomb North Vietnam in 1965. During seven years, more bombs were dropped on North Vietnam than during the Second World War. In 1968, a turning point took place: the Tet Offensive. In the Tet New Year Holiday, Vietcong fighters launched a major offensive, and they also tried to capture the US embassy in Saigon, which the actually did, but then the Americans were able to recover it. This attack not only affected the Americans in a negative way but also the Communists, as they hoped that the people of South Vietnam would rise up and joined them, but they actually didn’t. This incident caused the Americans citizens to raise hard questions about the war and started wondering if the USA should keep on fighting and if the war was right or not.

Another incident which increased the opposition against the war in the home front was the My Lai Massacre. In this case, a group of soldiers were sent to destroy one village. However most of them believed that the mission consisted in killing everyone they found in the village. This ended up in the murder of about 300 or 400 innocent civilians. Some pictures of this killing and the piece of news leaked to the American press. The revelations greatly shocked the American citizens and they also showed that the war was not as they had thought it would. In 1969, the largest political protest in American history took place in Washington DC.

During Nixon’s Administration this opposition grew in a great way and so Nixon decided to reduce the range of attacks and apply a policy of Vietnamization by which the US government would support the South Vietnamese with arms and equipment and they would have to fight against North Vietnam on their own. However, an unexpected American heavy bombing took place in North Vietnam on their own. However, an unexpected American heavy bombing took place in North Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia which increased the opposition against the war. The idea of resisting the war of Vietnam kept on increasing due to the secret bombing of North Vietnam and the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos and Cambodia, the use of gases such as napalm which took heavy toll also on the environment, the big number of casualties and the fact that even though the war had lasted several years, the US did not seem to be making much progress. Moreover, in 1970 four students were killed at Kent State University during a protest against the invasion of Cambodia. This caused a wide national response which consisted in hundreds of universities and schools closing because of a student strike and also public opinion turned heavily against the Vietnam War.

Nixon found himself with very little support, a heavy number of casualties and losses in equipment, the fact that the US had little chance of defeating the Vietcong and winning the war and decided to sign an agreement by which the US would return home and North and South Vietnam, with Communism remaining in North Vietnam, would be divided at the 17th parallel. Nevertheless,

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