which president started the vietnam war

[40]:488489 Two months later a third offensive was launched, the Phase III Offensive. Operation Frequent Wind had been delayed until the last possible moment, because of U.S. [97]:18 Despite Johnson and Westmoreland publicly proclaiming victory and Westmoreland stating that the "end is coming into view",[162] internal reports in the Pentagon Papers indicate that Viet Cong forces retained strategic initiative and controlled their losses. [325] Vietnam veterans suffered from PTSD in unprecedented numbers, as many as 15.2% of Vietnam veterans, because the U.S. military had routinely provided heavy psychoactive drugs, including amphetamines, to American servicemen, which left them unable to process adequately their traumas at the time. [40]:3335, Military advisors from China began assisting the Viet Minh in July 1950. A successful effort in Vietnamin Kennedy's words, "the cornerstone of the free world in Southeast Asia"would provide to both allies and adversaries evidence of U.S. determination to meet the challenge of communist expansion in the Third World. The United States Department of State wanted to encourage a coup, while the Defense Department favored Dim. Chapter 17 index: "Communists provided further corroboration of the proximity of their casualty figures to American figures in a postwar disclosure of total losses from 1960 to 1975. Building up on the success of ARVN units in Cambodia, and further testing the Vietnamization program, the ARVN were tasked to launch Operation Lam Son 719 in February 1971, the first major ground operation aimed directly at attacking the Ho Chi Minh trail by attacking the major crossroad of Tchepone. [150]:58 Tellingly, South Vietnamese forces were again defeated in June 1965 at the Battle of ng Xoi. [161] Up to the war's end, the Viet Cong and PAVN would initiate 90% of large firefights, of which 80% were clear and well-planned operations, and thus the PAVN/Viet Cong would retain strategic initiative despite overwhelming US force and fire-power deployment. Martial law was declared. "[128] The numbers for U.S. troops deployed to Vietnam during the same period were much lower: 2,000 in 1961, rising rapidly to 16,500 in 1964. President Diem, refusing an American offer of safety contingent upon his resignation, was assassinated. The U.S. heavily armored, 90mm M48A3 Patton tank saw extensive action during the Vietnam War, and over 600 were deployed with U.S. Tr appealed to Gip's superior, first secretary L Dun, who approved the operation. [228] The fatal shooting of four students at Kent State University in 1970 led to nationwide university protests. [317], Between 1953 and 1975, the United States was estimated to have spent $168billion on the war (equivalent to $1.47 trillion in 2021). During the withdrawal the PAVN counterattack had forced a panicked rout. [209] In AprilMay 1970, North Vietnam invaded Cambodia at the request of the Khmer Rouge following negotiations with deputy leader Nuon Chea. [193]:349350[194]:166175 At home, desertion rates quadrupled from 1966 levels. [188] In the two-year period following Tet, the PAVN had begun its transformation from a fine light-infantry, limited mobility force into a high-mobile and mechanised combined arms force. Dim refused to make concessions to the Buddhist majority or take responsibility for the deaths. During the war, more than one million rural people migrated or fled the fighting in the South Vietnamese countryside to the cities, especially Saigon. In response, China invaded Vietnam in 1979. At Binh Gia, however, they had defeated a strong ARVN force in a conventional battle and remained in the field for four days. Unlike the men, the women who served in the military were solely volunteers. It has also been called the "Second Indochina War"[78] and the "Vietnam conflict". The top-secret history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, commissioned by the Department of Defense, detailed a long series of public deceptions on the part of the U.S. government. [199] A total of 900 fragging and suspected fragging incidents were investigated, most occurring between 1969 and 1971. Ami Pedahzur has written that "the overall volume and lethality of Viet Cong terrorism rivals or exceeds all but a handful of terrorist campaigns waged over the last third of the twentieth century", based on the definition of terrorists as a non-state actor, and examining targeted killings and civilian deaths which are estimated at over 18,000 from 1966 to 1969. [283], The US service rifle was initially the M14. High-profile opposition to the Vietnam War increasingly turned to mass protests in an effort to shift U.S. public opinion. [262] American women serving in Vietnam were subject to societal stereotypes. [282], After the Tet Offensive, many PAVN units incorporated light tanks such as the Type 62, Type 59 tank., BTR-60, Type 60 artillery, amphibious tanks (such as the PT-76) and integrated into new war doctrines as a mobile combined-arms force. In Vietnam, one notable film set during Operation Linebacker II was the film Girl from Hanoi (1974) depicting war-time life in Hanoi. His plan to build up the ARVN so that it could take over the defense of South Vietnam became known as "Vietnamization". Some have suggested that the failure of the war was due to political failures of U.S. Phase 1. [271] Many mixed-blood Amerasian children were left behind when their American fathers returned to the United States after their tour of duty in South Vietnam; 26,000 of them were permitted to immigrate to the United States in the 1980s and 1990s. This council was headed by General Dng Vn Minh, whom Stanley Karnow, a journalist on the ground, later recalled as "a model of lethargy". Others, such as Stephen Spiro, opposed the war based on the theory of Just War. [24]:76 President Dwight D. Eisenhower made American participation contingent on British support, but the British were opposed. [94][95][40]:9697 The exodus was coordinated by a U.S.-funded $93million relocation program, which included the use of the Seventh Fleet to ferry refugees. More than 1.8m acres of farm land became available for purchase by landless people. The PAVN/VC responded with a new strategy hammered out in a series of meetings in Hanoi in March 1973, according to the memoirs of Trn Vn Tr. [40]:704707 An embittered and tearful president Thieu resigned on the same day, declaring that the United States had betrayed South Vietnam. [354] 20,00062,000 Laotians also died,[63] and 58,281 U.S. military personnel were killed,[48] of which 1,584 are still listed as missing as of March 2021.[355]. [328]:4447 An estimated 125,000 Americans left for Canada to avoid the Vietnam draft,[329] and approximately 50,000 American servicemen deserted. Thousands of refugees streamed southward, ahead of the main communist onslaught. When Kennedy was informed, Maxwell Taylor remembered that he "rushed from the room with a look of shock and dismay on his face. Kennedy advisors Maxwell Taylor and Walt Rostow recommended that U.S. troops be sent to South Vietnam disguised as flood relief workers. [16], Support for the VC was driven by resentment of Diem's reversal of Viet Minh land reforms in the countryside. Phase 3. U.S. ground forces had largely withdrawn by early 1972, and their operations were limited to air support, artillery support, advisors, and materiel shipments. In 1998, after a high level review by the. President Dim was overthrown and executed, along with his brother, on 2 November 1963. [71]:14, Between 1953 and 1956, the North Vietnamese government instituted various agrarian reforms, including "rent reduction" and "land reform", which resulted in significant political oppression. This effort to highlight the positive aspects of a nursing career reflected the feminism of the 1960s1970s in the United States. Following an attack on a U.S. Army base in Pleiku on 7 February 1965,[143] a series of airstrikes was initiated, Operation Flaming Dart, while Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin was on a state visit to North Vietnam. Indeed, there was no longer a 'regime' in the sense of a relatively stable political alliance and functioning bureaucracy. Others served as nurses and doctors in the battlefield and in military hospitals, or served in South Vietnam or America's intelligence agencies. Much like the general historiography of the war, discussion of myth has focused on U.S. experiences, but changing myths of war have also played a role in Vietnamese and Australian historiography. Once in office, his administration sought to achieve "peace with honor." [71]:76. L c Th and Henry Kissinger, along with the PRG Foreign Minister Nguyn Th Bnh and a reluctant President Thiu, signed the Paris Peace Accords on 27 January 1973. "[97]:546 The American public and media began to turn against Johnson as the three offensives contradicted claims of progress made by the Johnson administration and the military. [70][A 9] The Viet Cong (VC), a South Vietnamese common front under the direction of the north, initiated a guerrilla war in the south. While its issues were not as severe as they were in the M14 or M16, the M60 still could fail to fire at crucial times spent casings could get stuck inside of the chamber, meaning the barrel would have to be replaced before it could fire again. [145] Between March 1965 and November 1968, Rolling Thunder deluged the north with a million tons of missiles, rockets and bombs. [231], The Soviet Union supplied North Vietnam with medical supplies, arms, tanks, planes, helicopters, artillery, anti-aircraft missiles and other military equipment. [40]:699700, With the northern half of the country under their control, the Politburo ordered General Dung to launch the final offensive against Saigon. [82] It is also sometimes called the "American War". [148] Nonetheless, it is possible to specify certain groups who led the anti-war movement at its peak in the late 1960s and the reasons why. [113] In May 1958, North Vietnamese forces seized the transportation hub at Tchepone in Southern Laos near the demilitarized zone between North and South Vietnam. Historian Luu Doan Huynh notes that "Dim represented narrow and extremist nationalism coupled with autocracy and nepotism. These included the Ho Chi Minh trail supply route, which ran through Laos and Cambodia. In 1968, the Vietnam War Crimes Working Group (VWCWG) was established by the Pentagon task force set up in the wake of the My Lai Massacre, to attempt to ascertain the veracity of emerging claims of war crimes by U.S. armed forces in Vietnam, during the Vietnam War period. The negotiations became deadlocked when Hanoi demanded new changes. The Western Political Quarterly. [97]:676 Gip, the North Vietnamese defence minister, was reluctant to approve of Tr's plan since a larger offensive might provoke U.S. reaction and interfere with the big push planned for 1976. Following unsuccessful negotiations, the Viet Minh initiated an insurgency against French rule. Furthermore, throughout the war there was found to be considerable flaws and dishonesty by officers and commanders due to promotions being tied to the body count system touted by Westmoreland and McNamara. Dim, however, viewed the election as a test of authority. [85]:353354 The idea that the government of South Vietnam could manage its own affairs was shelved. "[119][120], Kennedy's policy toward South Vietnam assumed that Dim and his forces had to ultimately defeat the guerrillas on their own. [291] Despite speculation that the victorious North Vietnamese would, in President Nixon's words, "massacre the civilians there [South Vietnam] by the millions," there is a widespread consensus that no mass executions took place. [214][40]:683 Gerald Ford took over as U.S. president on 9 August 1974 after the resignation of President Nixon, and Congress cut financial aid to South Vietnam from $1billion a year to $700million. [165]:148149 By the end of 1968, the VC insurgents held almost no territory in South Vietnam, and their recruitment dropped by over 80%, signifying a drastic reduction in guerrilla operations, necessitating increased use of PAVN regular soldiers from the north. [342] As of 2006[update], the Vietnamese government estimates that there are over 4,000,000 victims of dioxin poisoning in Vietnam, although the United States government denies any conclusive scientific links between Agent Orange and the Vietnamese victims of dioxin poisoning. On 28 July, North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao forces invaded Laos, fighting the Royal Lao Army all along the border. Diem brought the landlords back to the villages. Once in power, the Khmer Rouge carried out the Cambodian genocide, while conflict between them and the unified Vietnam would eventually escalate into the CambodianVietnamese War, which toppled the Khmer Rouge government in 1979. Included among their ranks were "about 90 percent" of Laos's "intellectuals, technicians, and officials. By 1968, the number of US forces surpassed 500,000. Tr's plan called for a limited offensive from Cambodia into Phc Long Province. By 1960, the land reform process had stalled because many of Diem's biggest supporters were large land owners. [67][68] The war is widely considered to be a Cold War-era proxy war. [249]:77 During their visit to the Con Son Prison in 1970, U.S. congressmen Augustus F. Hawkins and William R. Anderson witnessed detainees either confined in minute "tiger cages" or chained to their cells, and provided with poor-quality food. Although they were originally intended for use behind front lines after a conventional Soviet 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. [288]:4,10, The U.S. dropped over 7million tons of bombs on Indochina during the war, more than triple the 2.1million tons of bombs the U.S. dropped on Europe and Asia during all of World War II and more than ten times the amount dropped by the U.S. during the Korean War. [97]:340 Lodge, frustrated by the end of the year, cabled home about Minh: "Will he be strong enough to get on top of things?" The French-speaking Australian journalist Kate Webb was captured along with a photographer and others by the Viet Cong in Cambodia and travelled into Laos with them; they were released back into Cambodia after 23 days of captivity. Lyndon B. Johnson was the 36th President of the United States from 1963 to 1969. [195] Among the enlisted, only 2.5% chose infantry combat positions in 19691970. A devout Roman Catholic, Dim was fervently anti-communist, nationalist, and socially conservative. Ho Chi Minh, then known as Nguyen ai Quac, wrote to US Secretary of State Robert Lansing in 1919, asking for support in securing Vietnamese liberation from French colonial rule [34]:450453 Estimates of civilian deaths caused by American bombing of North Vietnam in Operation Rolling Thunder range from 30,000[24]:176,617 to 182,000. But revelations of the 1968 My Lai Massacre,[40]:518521 in which a U.S. Army unit raped and killed civilians, and the 1969 "Green Beret Affair", where eight Special Forces soldiers, including the 5th Special Forces Group Commander, were arrested for the murder[190] of a suspected double agent,[191] provoked national and international outrage. Military information officers sought to manage media coverage by emphasizing stories that portrayed progress in the war. [242] Nick Turse, in his 2013 book, Kill Anything that Moves, argues that a relentless drive toward higher body counts, a widespread use of free-fire zones, rules of engagement where civilians who ran from soldiers or helicopters could be viewed as Viet Cong and a widespread disdain for Vietnamese civilians led to massive civilian casualties and endemic war crimes inflicted by U.S. The bloody conflict had its. Unlike other wars, there was no declaration of the Vietnam War. [185][186], In September 1969, Ho Chi Minh died, aged seventy-nine. [148] During this phase, the use of captured equipment decreased, while greater numbers of ammunition and supplies were required to maintain regular units. [154] Johnson did not, however, communicate this change in strategy to the media. Increasingly, each new regime was viewed by the communists as a puppet of the Americans; whatever the failings of Dim, his credentials as a nationalist (as Robert McNamara later reflected) had been impeccable. [326] According to Dale Kueter, "Of those killed in combat, 86.3 percent were white, 12.5 percent were black and the remainder from other races. This marks the official beginning of American involvement in the war as recognized by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Defense Department officials believed that these body count figures need to be deflated by 30 percent. Additional common crimes included theft, arson, and the destruction of property not warranted by military necessity.[238]. The U.S. war in Vietnam officially began in 1964 under President Lyndon B. Johnson. [97]:224 Three days later, he declared South Vietnam to be an independent state under the name Republic of Vietnam (ROV), with himself as president. [108]:1416, In May 1957, Dim undertook a ten-day state visit to the United States. Other Vietnam War films include Hamburger Hill (1987), Casualties of War (1989), Born on the Fourth of July (1989), The Siege of Firebase Gloria (1989), Forrest Gump (1994), We Were Soldiers (2002) and Rescue Dawn (2007).[24]. [253] The US Department of Defense estimates the VC/PAVN had conducted 36,000 murders and almost 58,000 kidnappings from 1967 to 1972, c. The American Army's decline was readily apparent in this final stage. The Foreign Minister for the Viet Cong and later the PRG was also a woman, Nguyn Th Bnh. ng Thy Trm became renowned after her diary was published following her death. [23], The PRC also began financing the Khmer Rouge as a counterweight to North Vietnam at this time. [133] The CIA also ran the Phoenix Program and participated in Military Assistance Command, Vietnam Studies and Observations Group (MAC-V SOG), which was originally named the Special Operations Group, but was changed for cover purposes. [107] According to Gabriel Kolko, 40,000 political prisoners had been jailed by the end of 1958. Phase 2. [97]:644645 Nixon and Thieu had sought to use this event to show-case victory simply by capturing Tchepone, and it was spun off as an "operational success". He expected that the American people would give him a year to end U.S. involvement in the war, and he expected to succeed during that . Before he left for the South, Dng was addressed by L Dun: "Never have we had military and political conditions so perfect or a strategic advantage as great as we have now. U.S. troop withdrawals continued, but American airpower responded, beginning Operation Linebacker, and the offensive was halted. 1973. [252] South Korean forces are also accused of perpetrating other massacres, namely: Bnh Ha massacre, Binh Tai Massacre and H My massacre. [181] As Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara noted, "the dangerous illusion of victory by the United States was therefore dead. The U.S. entered the Vietnam War in an attempt to prevent the spread of communism, but foreign policy, economic interests, national fears, and geopolitical strategies also played major roles. Casualties fluctuated considerably from year to year, but a degree of accuracy can be inferred from the fact that 500,000 was 59 percent of the 849,018 total and that 59 percent of the war's days had passed by the time of Fallaci's conversation with Giap. There was a sixty-day period for the total withdrawal of U.S. forces. May 12, 1975, "Chapter I, Background to the Crisis, 1940-50", "Stabbed in the back! A group of American doctors inspecting the prison in the same year found many inmates suffering symptoms resulting from forced immobility and torture. [112]:73, In March 1956, southern communist leader L Dun presented a plan to revive the insurgency entitled "The Road to the South" to the other members of the Politburo in Hanoi; however, as both China and the Soviets opposed confrontation at this time, L Dun's plan was rejected. After North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked two U.S. destroyers on Aug. 5, 1964 in the Gulf of Tonkin,. [211][40]:576582, Vietnamization was again tested by the Easter Offensive of 1972, a massive conventional PAVN invasion of South Vietnam. [40]:517 On 27 October 1969, Nixon had ordered a squadron of 18 B-52s loaded with nuclear weapons to race to the border of Soviet airspace to convince the Soviet Union, in accord with the madman theory, that he was capable of anything to end the Vietnam War. The National Security Agency ran a crash program to provide U.S. forces with a family of security equipment, codenamed NESTOR, fielding 17,000 units initially; eventually 30,000 units were produced. On November 1, 1963, the South Vietnamese government was overthrown. Encounter Books, December 2022. The ostensibly neutral Laos had become the scene of a civil war, pitting the Laotian government backed by the US against the Pathet Lao and its North Vietnamese allies. Further information on the final North Vietnamese offensive: Ousting and assassination of Ng nh Dim, Gulf of Tonkin and Johnson's escalation, 19631969, ARVN taking the lead and U.S. ground-force withdrawal, Easter Offensive and Paris Peace Accords, 1972, United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races (FULRO). The war claimed the lives of more than 3 million people which included more than 58,000 American soldiers, and more than half of the casualties were Vietnamese civilians. [195][40]:526 From 1969 on, search-and-destroy operations became referred to as "search and evade" or "search and avoid" operations, falsifying battle reports while avoiding guerrilla fighters. [239] The substantiated cases included 7 massacres between 1967 and 1971 in which at least 137 civilians were killed; seventy eight further attacks targeting non-combatants resulting in at least 57 deaths, 56 wounded and 15 sexually assaulted; and 141 cases of U.S. soldiers torturing civilian detainees or prisoners of war with fists, sticks, bats, water or electric shock. On 23 July 1962, fourteen nations, including China, South Vietnam, the Soviet Union, North Vietnam and the United States, signed an agreement promising to respect the neutrality of Laos. [347] A 1975 US Senate subcommittee estimated 1.4million South Vietnamese civilians casualties during the war, including 415,000 deaths. Bombing was not restricted to North Vietnam. [15] This decision was made at the 11th Plenary Session of the Lao Dong Central Committee. Ambassador Graham Martin's belief that Saigon could be held and that a political settlement could be reached. From 1978 to 1979, some 450,000 ethnic Chinese left Vietnam by boat as refugees or were expelled. [40]:106[16] Violence between the insurgents and government forces increased drastically from 180 clashes in January 1960 to 545 clashes in September. Young wrote that "The divisions within villages reproduced those that had existed against the French: 75 percent support for the NLF, 20 percent trying to remain neutral and 5 percent firmly pro-government". They were however criticized for ignoring the political nature of the insurgency. [24]:1070. [268][269] American bases were ringed by bars and brothels.

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