Vietnam War

E

Bombing of North Vietnam

In the spring of 1972, with only 6,000 U.S. combat troops remaining in South Vietnam, the DRV leadership decided the time had come to crush the ARVN. On March 30 more than 30,000 North Vietnamese troops crossed the DMZ, along with another 150,000 PRG fighters, and attacked Quang Trí Province, easily scattering ARVN defenders. The attack, known as the Easter Offensive, could not have come at a worse time for Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger. A military defeat of the ARVN would leave the United States in a weak position at the Paris peace talks and would compromise its strategic position globally.

Risking the success of the upcoming Moscow summit, Nixon unleashed the first sustained bombing of North Vietnam since 1969 and moved quickly to mine the harbor of Haiphong. Between April and October 1972 the United States conducted 41,000 sorties over North Vietnam, especially targeting Quang Trí. North Vietnam’s Easter Offensive was crushed. At least 100,000 Communist troops were killed. Vo Nguyen Giap, head of the PAVN and chief military strategist, was perceived as too conservative in his use of force and was compelled to resign. His successor, Van Tien Dung, adopted more aggressive military tactics but also counseled the renewal of negotiations with the United States.

Further negotiations were held in Paris between Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, who represented North Vietnam. Seeking an end to the war before the U.S. presidential elections in November, Kissinger made remarkable concessions. The United States would withdraw completely, while accepting the presence of ten North Vietnamese divisions in South Vietnam and recognizing the political legitimacy of the PRG. Hanoi also made important concessions, such as dropping its insistence on the immediate resignation of Nguyen Van Thieu, who had become president of South Vietnam in 1967. Kissinger announced on October 27 that “peace was at hand.” The negotiations had not involved South Vietnam, however, and the Saigon government’s acceptance of the terms was not set as a precondition. Thieu was outraged by the agreement, and Nixon subsequently refused to sign it.

After the 1972 elections, Kissinger attempted to revise the agreements he had already made. North Vietnam refused to consider these revisions, and Kissinger threatened to renew air assaults against North Vietnam unless the new conditions were met. Nixon then unleashed at Christmas the final and most intense bombing of the war over Hanoi and Haiphong.

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F

United States Withdrawal

While many U.S. officials were convinced that Hanoi was bombed back to the negotiating table, the final treaty changed nothing significant from what had already been agreed to by Kissinger and Tho in October. Nixon’s Christmas bombings were intended to warn Hanoi that American air power remained a threat, and he secretly promised Thieu that the United States would punish North Vietnam should they violate the terms of the final settlement. Nixon’s political fortunes were about to decline, however. Although he had won reelection by a landslide in November 1972, he was suffering from revelations about the Watergate scandal. The president’s campaign officials had orchestrated a burglary at the Democratic National Committee headquarters, and Nixon had attempted to cover it up by lying to the American people about his role.

The president made new enemies when the secret bombing of Cambodia was revealed at last. Congress was threatening a bill of impeachment and in early January 1973 indicated it would cut off all funding for operations in Indochina once U.S. forces had withdrawn. In mid-January Nixon halted all military actions against North Vietnam.

On January 27, 1973, all four parties to the Vietnam conflict—the United States, South Vietnam, the PRG, and North Vietnam—signed the Treaty of Paris. The final terms provided for the release of all American prisoners of war from North Vietnam; the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from South Vietnam; the end of all foreign military operations in Laos and Cambodia; a cease-fire between North and South Vietnam; the formation of a National Council of Reconciliation to help South Vietnam form a new government; and continued U.S. military and economic aid to South Vietnam. In a secret addition to the treaty Nixon also promised $3.25 billion in reparations for the postwar reconstruction of North Vietnam, an agreement that Congress ultimately refused to uphold.

G

Cease-Fire Aftermath

On March 29, 1973, the last U.S. troops left Vietnam. The Paris peace treaty did little to end the bloodshed for the Vietnamese, however. Problems arose immediately, primarily over the delineation of two separate zones, as required by the agreement, and the mutual withdrawal of troops to these respective zones. Northerners in the Lao Dong leadership wanted to keep hostilities to a minimum in order to keep the United States out of Vietnam. However, southerners on both sides refused to give up the fight. Thieu quickly showed that he had no desire to honor the terms of the treaty. In his view, the continued presence of North Vietnamese soldiers in South Vietnam absolved him of honoring the cease-fire agreement. Thieu immediately began offensives against PRG villages, and he issued an order to the ARVN: “If Communists come into your village…shoot them in the head.” In October Hanoi authorized southern Communists to strike back against ARVN troops.

Meanwhile, the withdrawal of U.S. personnel resulted in a collapsing economy throughout South Vietnam. Millions of people had depended on the money spent by Americans in Vietnam. Thieu’s government was ill-equipped to treat the mass unemployment and deepening poverty that resulted from the U.S. withdrawal. The ARVN still received $700 million from the U.S. Congress and was twice the size of the Communist forces, but morale was collapsing. More than 200,000 ARVN soldiers deserted in 1974 in order to be with their families.

The apparent weakening of South Vietnam led Hanoi to believe it could win control over the south through a massive conventional invasion, and it set 1975 as the year to mount a final offensive. Hanoi expected the offensive to last at least two years; the rapid collapse of the ARVN was therefore a surprise even to them. After the initial attack by the North Vietnamese in the Central Highlands northeast of Saigon on January 7, the ARVN immediately began to fall apart. On March 25 the ancient imperial city of Hue fell; then on March 29, Da Nang, site of the former U.S. Marines headquarters, was overtaken. On April 20 Thieu resigned, accusing the United States of betrayal. His successor was Duong Van Minh, who had been among those who overthrew Diem in 1963. On April 30 Minh issued his unconditional surrender to the PRG. Almost 30 years after Ho Chi Minh’s declaration of independence, Vietnam was finally unified.

VI

The Troops

In the United States, military conscription, or the draft, had been in place virtually without interruption since the end of World War II, but volunteers generally predominated in combat units. When the first U.S. combat troops arrived in Vietnam in 1965 they were composed mainly of volunteers. The Air Force, Navy, and Marines were volunteer units. The escalating war, however, required more draftees. In 1965 about 20,000 men per month were inducted into the military, most into the Army; by 1968 about 40,000 young men were drafted each month to meet increased troop levels ordered for Vietnam. The conscript army was largely composed of teenagers; the average age of a U.S. soldier in Vietnam was 19, younger than in World War II or the Korean War. For the first time in U.S. military history, tours of duty were fixed in length, usually for a period of 12 or 13 months, and an individual’s date of estimated return from overseas (DEROS) was therefore set at the same time as the assignment date.

Those conscripted were mostly youths from the poorer section of American society. They did not have access to the exemptions that were available to their more privileged fellow citizens. Of the numerous exemptions from military service that Congress had written into law, the most far-reaching were student deferments. The draft laws effectively enabled most upper- and middle-class youngsters to avoid military service. By 1968 it was increasingly evident that the draft system was deeply unfair and discriminatory. Responding to popular pressures, the Selective Service, the agency that administered the draft, instituted a lottery system, which might have produced an army more representative of society at large. Student deferments were kept by Nixon until 1971, however, so as not to alienate middle-class voters. By then his Vietnamization policy had lowered monthly draft calls, and physical exemptions were still easily obtained by the privileged, especially from draft boards in affluent communities.

Both North and South Vietnam also conscripted troops. Revolutionary nationalist ideology was quite strong in the north, and the DRV was able to create an army with well-disciplined, highly motivated troops. It became the fourth-largest army in the world and one of the most experienced. South Vietnam also drafted soldiers, beginning in 1955 when the ARVN was created. Although many ARVN conscripts were committed anti-Communists, the Saigon leadership did little to educate ARVN soldiers on the nature of the war or boost their morale. In 1965, 113,000 deserted from the ARVN; by 1972, 20,000 per month were slipping away from the war.

Although equipped with high-tech weaponry that far exceeded the firepower available to its enemies, the ARVN was poorly led and failed most of the time to check its opponents’ actions. United States troops came to dislike and mistrust many ARVN units, accusing them of abandoning the battlefield. The ARVN also suffered from internal corruption. Numerous commanders would claim nonexistent troopers and then pocket the pay intended for those troopers; this practice made some units dangerously understaffed. Some ARVN soldiers were secretly working for the NLF, providing information that undermined the U.S. effort. At various times, battles verging on civil war broke out between troops within the ARVN. Internal disunity on this scale was never an issue among the North Vietnamese troops or the NLF guerrillas.

The armed forces of the United States serving in Vietnam began to suffer from internal dissension and low morale as well. Racism against the Vietnamese troubled many soldiers, particularly those who had experienced racism directed against themselves in the United States. In Vietnam, Americans routinely referred to all Vietnamese, both friend and foe, as “gooks.” This process of dehumanizing the Vietnamese led to many atrocities, including the massacre at My Lai, and it provoked profound misgivings among U.S. troops. The injustice of the Selective Service system also turned soldiers against the war. By 1968 coffeehouses run by soldiers had sprung up at 26 U.S. bases, serving as forums for antiwar activities. At least 250 underground antiwar newspapers were published by active-duty soldiers.

After Nixon’s troop-withdrawal policy was initiated in 1969, many soldiers became reluctant to risk their lives for a war without a clear purpose. No soldier wished to be the last one killed in Vietnam. Especially toward the end of the war, the fixed one-year tours of duty in Vietnam resulted in a “short-timer” mentality in which combat troops became more reluctant to engage in risky military operations as their departure date approached. In some cases, entire units refused to go out on combat patrols, disobeying direct orders. Soldiers sometimes took out their frustrations and resentments on officers who put their lives at risk, especially officers they deemed to be incompetent or overzealous. The term “fragging” came to be used to describe soldiers attacking their officers, most often by tossing fragmentation grenades into the officers’ sleeping quarters. This practice, which took place mostly late in the war, was a clear sign that military discipline had broken down in Vietnam. As the war dragged on and morale sagged within the U.S. armed forces, U.S. military personnel in Vietnam found it increasingly difficult to carry out their service.

Incidents in which soldiers were absent without leave (AWOL) also became more frequent toward the end of the war. Some soldiers who were AWOL for 30 days or more were administratively classified as deserters. Most deserted for personal, rather than political, reasons. Of 32,000 reported deserters who were assigned to combat duty in Vietnam, 7,000 had failed to report for deployment to Vietnam, and 20,000 had completed a full tour of duty in Vietnam but still had obligations of military service; the remaining 5,000 reported desertions occurred in or near Vietnam. Most who went AWOL or deserted later returned or were found, and they received less-than-honorable discharges. Consequently, they received fewer veterans benefits and little, if any, postcombat rehabilitation.

VII

Response to the War in the United States

Opposition to the war in the United States developed immediately after the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, chiefly among traditional pacifists, such as the American Friends Service Committee and antinuclear activists. Early protests were organized around questions about the morality of U.S. military involvement in Vietnam. Virtually every key event of the war, including the Tet Offensive and the invasion of Cambodia, contributed to a steady rise in antiwar sentiment. The revelation of the My Lai Massacre in 1969 caused a dramatic turn against the war in national polls.

Students and professors began to organize “teach-ins” on the war in early 1965 at the University of Michigan, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of California at Berkeley. The teach-ins were large forums for discussion of the war between students and faculty members. Eventually, virtually no college or university was without an organized student movement, often spearheaded by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). The first major student-led demonstration against the war was organized by the SDS in April 1965 and stunned observers by mobilizing about 20,000 participants. Another important organization was the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which denounced the war as racist as early as 1965. Students also joined The Resistance, an organization that urged its student members to refuse to register for the draft, or if drafted to refuse to serve. Vietnam Veterans Against the War was organized in the United States in 1967. By the 1970s the participation of Vietnam veterans in protests against the war in the United States had an important influence on the antiwar movement.

While law enforcement authorities usually blamed student radicals for the violence that took place on campuses, often it was police themselves who initiated bloodshed as they cleared out students occupying campus buildings during “sit-ins” or street demonstrations. As antiwar sentiment mounted in intensity from 1965 to 1970 so did violence, culminating in the killings of four students at Kent State in Ohio and of two at Jackson State College in Mississippi.

Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X, and other black leaders denounced the U.S. presence in Vietnam as evidence of American imperialism. Martin Luther King, Jr., had grown increasingly concerned about the racist nature of the war, toward both the Vietnamese and African American soldiers, who suffered disproportionately high casualty rates early in the war. In 1967 King delivered a major address at New York’s Riverside Church in which he condemned the war, calling the United States “the world’s greatest purveyor of violence.”

On October 15, 1969, citizens across the United States participated in The Moratorium, the largest one-day demonstration against the war. Millions of people stayed home from work to mark their opposition to the war; college and high school students demonstrated on hundreds of campuses. A Baltimore judge even interrupted court proceedings for a moment of reflection on the war. In Vietnam, troops wore black armbands in honor of the home-front protest. Nixon claimed there was a “great silent majority” who supported the war and he called on them to back his policies. Polls showed, however, that at that time half of all Americans felt that the war was “morally indefensible,” while 60 percent admitted that it was a mistake. In November 1969 students from all over the country headed for Washington, D.C., for the Mobilization Against the War. More than 40,000 participated in a March Against Death from Arlington National Cemetery to the White House, each carrying a placard with the name of a young person killed in Vietnam.

Opposition existed even among conservatives and business leaders, primarily for economic reasons. The government was spending more than $2 billion per month on the war by 1967. Some U.S. corporations, ranging from beer distributors to manufacturers of jet aircraft, benefited greatly from this money initially, but the high expense of the war began to cause serious inflation and rising tax rates. Some corporate critics warned of future costs to care for wounded veterans. Labor unions were also becoming increasingly militant in opposition to the war, as they were forced to respond to the concerns of their members that the draft was imposing an unfair burden on working-class people.

Another factor that turned public opinion against the war was the publication of the Pentagon Papers on June 13, 1971, by the New York Times. Compiled secretly by the U.S. Department of Defense, the papers were a complete history of the involvement of numerous government agencies in the Vietnam War. They showed a clear pattern of deception toward the public. One of the senior analysts compiling this history, Daniel Ellsberg, secretly photocopied key documents and gave them to the New York Times. Subsequently, support for Nixon’s war policies plummeted, and polls showed that 60 percent of the public now considered the war “immoral,” while 70 percent demanded an immediate withdrawal from Vietnam.

The Vietnam War cost the United States $130 billion directly, and at least that amount in indirect costs, such as veterans’ and widows’ benefits and the search for Americans missing in action (MIAs). The war also spurred serious inflation, contributing to a substantially increased cost of living in the United States between 1965 and 1975, with continued repercussions thereafter. Nearly 58,000 Americans lost their lives in Vietnam. More than 300,000 U.S. soldiers were wounded, half of them very seriously. No accurate accounting has ever been made of U.S civilians (U.S. government agents, religious missionaries, Red Cross nurses) killed throughout Indochina.

After returning from the war, many Vietnam veterans suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, which is characterized by persistent emotional problems including anxiety and depression. The Department of Veterans Affairs estimated that 20,000 Vietnam veterans committed suicide in the war’s aftermath. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, unemployment and rates of prison incarceration for Vietnam veterans, especially those having seen heavy combat, were significantly higher than in the general population.

Having felt ignored or disrespected both by the Veterans Administration (now the Department of Veterans Affairs) and by traditional organizations such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion, Vietnam veterans have formed their own self-help groups. Collectively, they forced the Veterans Administration to establish storefront counseling centers, staffed by veterans, in every major city. The national organization, Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA), has become one of the most important service organizations lobbying in Washington, D.C.

Also in the capital, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in 1982 to commemorate the U.S. personnel who died or were declared missing in action in Vietnam. The memorial, which consists of a V-shaped black granite wall etched with more than 58,000 names, was at first a source of controversy because it does not glorify the military but invites somber reflection. The Asian ancestry of its prizewinning designer, Maya Lin, was also an issue for some veterans. In 1983 a bronze cast was added, depicting one white, one black, and one Hispanic American soldier. This led to additional controversy since some argued that the sculpture muted the original memorial’s solemn message. In 1993 a statue of three women cradling a wounded soldier was also added to the site to commemorate the service of the 11,000 military nurses who treated soldiers in Vietnam. Despite all of the controversies, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial has become a site of pilgrimage for veterans and civilians alike.

While the United States has been involved in a number of armed interventions worldwide since it withdrew from Vietnam in 1973, defense planners have taken pains to persuade the public that goals were limited and troops would be committed only for a specified duration. The war in Vietnam created an ongoing debate about the right of the United States to intervene in the affairs of other nations.

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