A Fatal Mistake the Vietnam War
Robert S. McNamara, appointed by John F. Kennedy to the position of U.S. Secretary of Defense in 1961, said about the Vietnam War, "It is important to recognize it's a South Vietnamese war. It will be won or lost depending upon what they do. We can advise and help, but they are responsible for the final results, and it remains to be seen how they will continue to conduct that war," (McNamara 72). Despite these guidelines for assisting in the war, the U.S. would end up doing much more than just advising. The Vietnam War was supposed to be a demonstration of how willing the U.S. was to battle communism, but ended up a personal vendetta against the North Vietnamese as the U.S. escalated its commitment in Vietnam infinitely greater than it had ever intended. After World War II, France returned to Vietnam to reclaim their Indochinese colonies after the Ho Chi Minh had declared Vietnamese independence in 1945 (Goldstein 3). The U.S. had just ended a war started by German conquest in Europe, and now was being asked to help France conquer the colonies it lost control of during the war. The Vietnam Nationalists, the same ones who had supported the U.S. in the war against the Japanese not more than a year previous, sought only to pea
Now the U.S. was at war, with an insignificant nation struggling for autonomy, the same way the original thirteen colonies had struggled against Britain two hundred years previous. If the U.S. won, it would achieve very little, but the goal did not seem to be to reunite the country under a specially crafted democratic government, and there would be nothing to gain from victory. Most American soldiers had no idea why they were fighting, while Viet Cong and Vietnam nationalists were fighting to be free. The U.S. based its decisions on assumptions and underestimates, and lacked the necessary understanding of the region's history (McNamara 219). The U.S. never established any clear goals, besides crushing communism, an oversight that led to military confusion, ambiguous efforts, and poor distribution of troops and supplies (McNamara 219). By 1961, President Kennedy saw South Vietnam's weakened condition as a sign pointing to escalated involvement (Chant 31). Up until that point, U.S. involvement of military personnel had been limited to advisors. The total of eleven thousand was more than two-thirds American (Chant 31). In October of that year, Kennedy sent General Maxwell D. Taylor to Vietnam to assess the situation, and Special Forces to provide tactical training to the Vietnamese Civilian Irregular Defense Groups (Chant 31). The first true military engagement the U.S. experienced came on August 2, 1964 (Encarta "Vietnam War"). The Maddox, a U.S. destroyer, was accused of violating North Vietnamese waters, and was consequently fired on by Viet Cong gunboats (Encarta "Vietnam War"). This confrontation was the excuse to go to war the U.S. was waiting for, and President Johnson immediately ordered the first air strikes on North Vietnam following a second attack on the USS TurnerJoy (Encarta "Vietnam War"). These attacks on U.S. ships were seen as acts of war, and President Johnson was given full "war-making powers" by Congress (Encarta "Vietnam War"). Following the two confrontations, a bombing operation began in North Vietnam (Encarta "Vietnam War"). Upon the insertion of U.S. aircraft into the Vietnam conflict, Robert S. McNamara foresaw further involvement. He then wrote in a memo to President Johnson on November 7th of 1965, "...there are three fronts to a long-run effort to contain China (realizing that the USSR "contains" China on the north and northwest): The Military History of the United States: The Vietnam War, the Early Days, Marshall Cavendish, New York, 1992: 9, 22, 25, 38. Following World War II, President Truman saw the growing Communist threat to the free world. The idea of "Containment" was first addressed in the Truman Doctrine, which was at first meant to help anti-Communist forces in Greece and Turkey. "Containment" was the perfect justification for U.S. involvement in Vietnam, or any other country the U.S. felt was threatened by communism. At the time that France began requesting U.S. aid, the Cold War was just escalating to a nuclear standoff, and the U.S. wanted to show its superiority over the communist USSR, but the use of nuclear arsenals meant devastation to both countries. Cold War tensions intensified immensely as the U.S. used its nuclear superiority to keep the USSR "in check" (Chant 8). Keeping the Soviets "in check" was part of the U.S. policy of "containment," (Hunt 2). The threat of a "massive retaliation" was the first U.S. nuclear deterrence policy, created under Eisenhower's administration, which quickly became obsolete. In the 1960's, Kennedy was demanding that the U.S. have the ability to make quick responses, which could mean the difference between victory and defeat in the numerous military situations the USSR could create in which nuclear weaponry was not an option (Chant 9). Vietnam was one of these situations, although it had not been created directly by the USSR. The "Flexible Response" policy prepared the U.S. with specific countermeasures for distinct c
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Approximate Word count = 2891
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page double spaced)
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