Source G is an American soldier talking about the My Lai Massacre. He writes about how most of the soldiers had never been away from home. It also says that the soldiers had to slaughter whole villages of men and women. This source agrees with my own knowledge of the My Lai Massacre. The My Lai massacre was a massacre of Vietnamese civilians by U.S. soldiers. On March 16, 1968, a unit of the US army Americal division, led by Lt. William L. Calley, invaded the South Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai, an alleged Viet Cong stronghold. In the course of combat operations, unarmed civilians, including women and children, were shot to death (the final army estimate for the number killed was 347). The incident remained unknown to the American public until the autumn of 1969, when a series of letters by a former soldier to government officials forced the army to take action. Several soldiers and veterans were charged with murder, and a number of officers were accused of dereliction of duty for covering up the incident. Special investigations by the US army and the House of Representatives concluded that a massacre had in fact taken place. Of the many soldiers originally charged, only five were court-martialed, and one, Lt. Calley, convicted. On March 29, 1971, he was found guilty of the premeditated murder of at least twenty-two Vietnamese civilians and sentenced to life imprisonment. His sentence was later reduced to 10 years, and in September, 1974, a Federal district court overturned the conviction and Calley was released. The My Lai incident aroused widespread controversy and contributed to growing disillusionment in the United States with the Vietnam War. In Nov., 1974, the US army formally released a report on its investigation of the incident. Overall this source and my own knowledge partially agree with the statement that colour television was an important reason to why the United States lost the war in Vietnam. This source would have been by the public but in a different method. It may have been published in a newspaper or book during the war. Even though what the source is telling me is backed up by my own knowledge, it does not contribute to agreeing with the statement but tells me that there are other ways the United States public found out about the tactics used by the United States soldiers in this case, newspapers and books but as the statement suggests, colour television would be more effective and images of the My Lai Massacre would have still been shown on television during the war.
Source J is a photograph showing an anti-war demonstration at Kent State University in 1970. This tells us that the United States public was against the war in Vietnam. I know from my own knowledge that they would have found out about the war through the media and in particular television. I also know that four students were shot while peacefully protesting at the Kent State University by the police. So source J supports the statement that colour Television was an important reason why the United States lost the war in Vietnam, because the United States public would have found out about the war through the media and in particular Television. Probably the turning point came in January 1968 with the Tet Offensive. The US public had been told that America was winning the war. However, when the VC attacked (and held for 3 weeks) most of South Vietnamese cities and towns Americans began to question whether the war could be won at all. Despite the serious VC losses (20,000), they were soon replaced. The US could never stem the flow of supplies to the Ho Chi Minh Trail and this was crucial to keep the guerrilla war going. President Johnson was so disillusioned with the war he did not seek re-election. The Republicans won the 1968 election and Richard Nixon became President. Fairly soon he started ‘Vietnamization’ – pulling out US troops and getting ARVIN’S to do the fighting. The everyday sight on the news of Americans coming home in body-bags was hitting the government's support for the war. Another serious blow to the US credibility came with the exposure of the My Lai massacre (March 1968). Hushed up at the time and only discovered by a tenacious journalist, this involved the killing of 400 men, women and children by US troops.
It came as a terrible shock to the US public and was a powerful boost to the huge peace movement who wanted the war stopped. Huge protests brought together the various direct-action movements.
In the days following the Presidential announcement, students on University campuses across the United States were protesting the US invasion of Cambodia. At in , protesters threw rocks and broke some windows. Some students tried to burn the ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps) building.
On 3 May, 1970, Ohio Governor called in the National Guard.
The National Guard units that responded were poorly trained and had just completed riot duty elsewhere. The first day, there was some brutality; members of the National Guard bayoneted two men, one of whom was a disabled veteran, who had cursed or yelled at them from cars.
On 4 May, the National Guard marched down a hill, to a field in the middle of angry demonstrators, then back up again. Seconds before they would have passed around the corner of a large building, and out of sight of the crowd, some of the Guardsmen wheeled and fired directly into the students, hitting 13 and killing four of them. The firing lasted for 13 seconds. Guardsmen later admitted to firing at specific unarmed targets; one man shot a demonstrator who was giving him the finger. The unarmed students who were shot raged from 60 feet to 700 feet away from the Guardsmen.
The targets were not limited to protesting students. Two of the four who had been killed were simply on their way to class. Most of the Guardsmen later testified that they turned and fired because everyone else had. The question of who fired the first shot, or gave the order to fire, has never been answered. The Guardsmen were not in any immediate physical danger when they fired. The demonstrators were not following them and they were seconds away from being out of sight of the demonstration.
The four students killed by members of the were: Alison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer and William Schroeder.
The Guardsmen were never prosecuted by the State of Ohio, for any crime. President Nixon announced any number of investigations, none of which reached any clear conclusions. White House tapes released later showed that Nixon thought demonstrators were 'bums', had asked the to go beat them up, and apparently felt that the Kent State victims 'had it coming'.
Source F is an American journalist, Richard Hamer, writing in 1970. He writes about his experiences about being a journalist during the Vietnam War. He describes the Vietnamese peasants in a particular point in time and then when a bomb is dropped by the Americans. The source then goes on and states that the United States tactics in Vietnam were wrong and unnecessary. Overall this source partially supports the statement that colour Television was an important reason to why the United States lost the war in Vietnam. Because it describes harsh United States tactics and those harsh tactics would have been constantly shown on Television. Therefore the public would have seen them and then start protesting. This protesting would then lead to more pressure on the United States Government to leave Vietnam. The source agrees with my own knowledge when it describes the harsh United States tactics. The US tactics involved working closely with the Army of the South Vietnamese (Arvin’s) the Americans tried to make it difficult for the Viet Cong (Vietnamese Communists – ‘Victor Charlie’) to gain support from the South Vietnamese peasants. ‘Strategic Hamlet’ attempted to place peasants in fortified villages at night, where they couldn’t be ‘infiltrated’. This backfired badly. It was very unpopular with the peasants who resented being so far away from their rice fields and ancestors. VC demolished many of the fortified villages anyway.
Source K is a table showing the results of an Australian public opinions poll during the periods April 1969, October 1969 and October 1970. This source tells me that between the periods April 1969 and October 1969 the majority of the public who wanted soldiers to return home increased. This increase could have been because of the public finding out about the harsh tactics used against the North Vietnamese. They could have found out from TV. Between he period October 1969 and October 1970 the majority of the public who wanted troops to return had increased, but was still greater than the % of public who wanted them to continue. Overall this source partially supports the statement that television was an important reason to why the United States lost the war in Vietnam because this was not the US public but the Australian and also because between October 1939 and October 1970 the majority of the public who wanted troops to return had decreased. This source agrees with my own knowledge of TV of losing the US the war. The Australians sent troops as they feared the domino theory, as if it carried on spreading across Asia, it would soon hit them. I 1909 they sent over 7000 troops. They were much better fighters in the jungle; this was because they were much more patient and better at ambushes. They would stay with the Vietcong and not run away and call in the planes.
Source H is a cartoon published in the British magazine ‘punch’ in 1976. The source shows a train, the great society being broken into pieces and used to fuel the train. Out of the train steam is coming out with writing in the smoke saying ‘Vietnam’. This source tells me that president Johnson is using all the money which he is meant to be using for the public, the great society, on the war in Vietnam. The source states Johnson’s original aims on the great society which was to feed and shelter the homeless and to provide more education and medical care. The Great society is when the poor, especially the blacks would receive decent welfare payments and decent homes. However, little had been achieved. Johnson wanted them, but couldn’t afford it. The war was costing 20 billion pounds a year so the great society was pushed to one side as this source suggests. The great society itself was to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, Improve education and medical care. It was mainly to help blacks. However Johnson decided to quit in March 1968, Nixon take over as president. This would not have happened because he spent all the money on Vietnam as the source tells me along with my own knowledge. Overall this source does not agree with the statement that television was an important reason to why the United States lost the war in Vietnam. Another factor why the United States lost the war in Vietnam is because of the media and in particular media in 1971. In 1971 more revelations about the war strengthened the growing opposition movement. One concerned details of a policy of assassination and torture carried out by the South Vietnamese under American supervision. The second development which seriously damaged the reputation of the United States in 1971 was the ‘Pentagon Papers’. In 1976 Daniel Ellsberg, a pentagon employee, was asked to collect together all the government documents to do with Vietnam from the 1940s onwards. There were a total of 4000 pages of these. Ellsberg and others then added 3000 pages of analysis of these documents. Together they became known as the ‘Pentagon Papers’. These secret documents showed how United States government officials had sometimes lied about and covered up incidents in the war. Members of congress were especially angry that important decisions to step up the war had been made without congress being told. The documents also showed the United States governments had really failed to understand what they were getting involved in. By 1969 Ellsberg had become an opponent of the war. He started to photocopy secretly 7000 pages of the ‘Pentagon Papers’. He passes the papers on to the ‘New York Times’. Ellsberg believed that the war was immoral. The United States was causing the deaths of many thousands of innocent civilians. He hoped the publication of the papers would help end the war. The ‘New York Times’ started publishing them in June 1971. At this point President Nixon was unsure what to do. On one hand these papers were classified or secret documents which had been stolen. This was a criminal act. The papers also put the whole war in a very bad light. More people would now protest against it and his policy. On the other hand, the documents clearly showed the Kennedy and Johnson governments in a bad way. Both these men were democrats and political opponents of Nixon’s Republican Party. The information in the papers would, therefore, damage the democrats. In the end, Nixon decided to try and stop all publication of the papers and to prosecute Ellsberg for theft and conspiracy. The Supreme Court, however, decided that the publication of the papers was not illegal and could continue. Charges against Ellsberg were dropped in 1973. Two earlier attempts to put Ellsberg on trial had to be stopped because Nixon had used illegal methods to get evidence against Ellsberg. These included bugging his telephone and breaking into his psychiatrist’s office. The release of the Pentagon Papers proved very harmful for Nixon-even though non of the documents had anything to do with his presidency. The publication of the papers made him more obsessed with security. He would now use any method, including criminal ones, to stop ‘leaks’ of information from the White house. This led him to use illegal methods to cover up the truth about the Watergate Scandal and forced him to resign in 1974.
Source D is North Vietnamese poster showing the problems faced by the Americans fighting a guerrilla war. The source shows a map of Vietnam with conventional fighting soldiers, the US, at the bottom and the guerrilla fighters, the VC, in the North. The source tells me that the US was a conventional fighting army and that the VC used guerrilla tactics. This agrees with my own knowledge of VC guerrilla tactics. Overall this source does not agree with the statement that television was an important reason to why the United States lost the war in Vietnam but does suggest other reasons which were the problems faced by the US soldiers Guerrilla fighters. The Communist NLF used classic Maoist guerrilla tactics. “Guerrillas must move through the peasants like fish through sea”, i.e. the peasants will support them as much as they can, shelter, food, weapons, storage, intelligence, recruits. In VC held areas they distributed the land to the peasants, which went down extremely well. By 1973, the VC held about half of South Vietnam. Their weapons were cheap and reliable - the AK47 Kalashnikov assault rifle out-performed the American M16, and the portable rocket launcher took out many US vehicles and aircraft.
They recycled dud bombs dropped by the Americans or old weapons left by the French. Deadly booby-traps could inflict huge damage on young American conscripts!
The US countered with ‘Search and Destroy’ tactics. In areas where the VC were thought to be operating troops went in, checked for weapons and if found, rounded up the villagers and burned the villages down. This often alienated the peasants from the US/Arvin cause. As one marine said of a search and destroy mission – “If they weren’t VC before we got there, they sure as hell were by the time we left”. The VC often helped the villager’s re-build their homes and bury their dead. The Vietnamese built large tunnel complexes such as the ones at Cu Chi near Saigon. This protected them from the bombing raids by the Americans and gave them cover for attacking the invaders. To counter this, the Americans set up a special unit, the Tunnel Rats to seek out the Vietnamese fighters.
Another reason why the United States lost the war in Vietnam is because of the weakness of the United States army. Around 2.8 million Americans served in Vietnam. Two million of them were drafted or conscripted. These conscripted troops were mainly blacks, Hispanics and poor whites. To begin with most of the men who arrived in the very early stages of the war were professional soldiers. The army was their chosen career. They were motivated and committed. By 1967, however, most of the arrivals had been drafted. Very few believed that they were defending democracy or even cared. Their own aim was to count the day to DEROS (Date Eligible for Return from Overseas). Westmoreland hoped that one-year tour of the duty system would keep up morale. This was probably not true. The constant supply of replacements undermined morale. Replacements were the new arrivals, bought in to replace men who had been killed or severely injured. It wasn’t easy joining a group of men who had been buddies for many months and had seen combat together. The fact that the American troops used drugs which further reduced the effectiveness of United States forces in Vietnam. In 1971 5000 men were treated in hospital for combat wounds and 20 000 for drug abuse. The fact that the American troops used drugs and sometimes ‘fragged’ their own officers suggests low morale among them. The troops often didn’t know what they were fighting for or didn’t believe in their cause while on the other hand the morale of the Vietcong and North Vietnamese troops was much better this was because of their belief in their cause of what they were fighting for.
In conclusion sources E, G and J support the statement that colour television was an important reason why the United States lost the war in Vietnam while sources F and K Partially support the statement and Sources H and D do not support the statement. There may be sufficient evidence in some of the sources and some evidence in others to support the interpretation that television was an important reason why the United States lost the war in Vietnam because the sources and my own knowledge tell me this. On the other hand there may not be sufficient evidence in the sources as some of the sources suggest, along with my own knowledge to support them, that there are other reasons why the United States lost the war in Vietnam other than colour television.
Overall I think there is sufficient evidence in the sources to support the interpretation that television was an important reason why the United States lost the war in Vietnam. My reasons for this are that my own knowledge agrees that it was a factor that lost them the war because television in the 1960s included your average sitcoms, comedies, and other genres. Shows such as "Get Smart," "Dragnet," "The Dick Van Dyke Show," "The Andy Griffith Show," and "I Dream of Jeannie" were just a taste of the wide variety of televised shows. Then along came a war that would change how people would look at television forever. The Vietnam War was the most dramatic and vivid war ever televised at that time. Shown to the American public daily, it earned its name as "the living room war." This imagery was so detailed that it shocked and amazed its viewers of the harsh tactics used by the US soldiers. Because of the intense detail and graphics, the reactions were quite strong and led to protest in the United States. While some believe that the use of the television medium was a negative turning point for America, there were others who believed that it gave citizens a new perspective on the war.
