2. The Vietnam War was a whole new experience for the US soldiers, they went in not knowing what to expect, and certainly not creaming of what was to come. Massacre is a word that comes to mind when you read about some of the stories that emerged from Vietnam. The tactics used by both sides were very different, and the Americans were certainly not prepared for the Vietnamese tactics. They used guerrilla war tactics, and the Americans couldn’t easily defend or counter these attacks. They used booby traps, ambushes, and close combat weapons; they were highly trained and skilled in these methods of fighting. The US soldiers where being slaughtered and needed to change their strategy, the couldn’t use the jungle to their advantage, the Vietnamese where using that, so they attacked from the air, they bombed the jungle, not just with ordinary bombs, but with two different chemical substances; napalm and agent orange. Agent Orange is a toxic chemical defoliant used by American military in Vietnam to deprive the enemy of food and of hiding places in the jungles, by killing all vegetation. Nicknamed “Agent Orange” because of the identifying orange stripe on its steel drum containers. It was sprayed over large areas by aircraft and over smaller areas by hand. It was supposed to have been diluted 20:1, but it was used full strength. Many Vietnam Veterans suffer from health problems caused by exposure to Agent Orange. Napalm is an Incendiary, such as jelly gasoline, used in Vietnam by the French and the Americans using flame throwers and dropping in bombs from aircraft to serves as a defoliant and as an antipersonnel weapon.
3. It is believed that the most important event that changed the US opinion is the TET offensive. The TET offensive was a massive attack by the Viet Cong upon South Vietnam, which began on 30 January 1968. All the major cities of South Vietnam were attacked. In Saigon the US embassy was overtaken by suicide squads, who were only removed eventually by paratroopers. This was a big shock as it came at a time when the US was seemingly winning the war.
The number of casualties per week kept rising, the men were being constantly sent home in body bags. The war was draining money form the ‘Great society’ and the civil rights leaders were getting annoyed. Now, at 1968, the people got involved, mainly students outside universities, they protested. Some ended nastily when the National Guard was called to control the protests, several students were shot. This war had a huge affect on the population of America in the sense that it was the first war shown on television. People sat at home and watched terrible events happen for real. They saw such things as peasants huts being set alight, Vietcong prisoners being executed, and GI’s being torn apart and shot to pieces. In 1969 the truth about the My Lai massacre was revealed along with the army film which showed South Vietnamese women and children being stripped and murdered by GI’s.
The media made this war a lot more public. So they public knew a lot more of what was happening and protested and made complaints etc. And the people got a lot more of a say in the war, as they saw what was going on and how this would affect, and was affecting them.
4. America lost the war in Vietnam through a number of reasons and events. First of all, they underestimated the tenacity and organisation of the VC and NVA. Also, despite dropping more tonnage of high explosive on Vietnam than the whole of WW2, the Americans could not stop the movement of troops and supplies to the south along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The people of America also turned against its government, at first, most Americans supported the war. By 1970, the peace movement had support from all sections of society and no government could ignore it. Then the troops started to be a concern, after 1969, there were serious questions about the efficiency of US troops. There was a serious drugs problem; desertion rates were high and morale was low. Many troops were ‘time-servers’, which means they counted the days until the tour was over. America was not prepared to keep losing high numbers of casualties for such limited progress in a difficult jungle war, for which they were not suited, so they started to remove their troops, covering this up by constantly bombarding North Vietnam by air, with more defoliants and explosives.
Overall America seriously underestimated the force, determination, and tactics of the Vietcong; this along with some other problems caused them to slowly lose the Vietnam War.
5. The Vietnam War had terrible affects on the people and places involved in the war. The defoliants painfully killed thousands of soldiers from both sides of the war, and destroyed hundreds of acres of forest land. 2,000,000 men, women and children were killed and Over 7,000,000 tonnes of bombs were dropped on North Vietnam, destroying masses of forest land. Vietnam was reduced from a major exporter of rice to a country that could not feed itself. Many mines and other booby traps were left after the war. They are still there in many cases. And people continued to suffer from the effects of chemicals and defoliants. 2,000,000 people fled from Vietnam to escape famine and the communist government. These included 1,000,000 'boat people', who tried to sail to other countries as far away as Hong Kong. In America the a lot of the people’s taxes went toward funding this war in Vietnam, and the people protested against this.
6. The war had a major affect on America and its people. The government had to use tax payer’s money and money from the ‘Great society’ to fund the war. The people found out about this and protested against it. The people also demonstrated about the efficiency of the troops and the treatment of the P.O.W’s. The war cost $120,000,000,000, and many people say this money went to a complete waste, and it’s a hell of a lot of money to through away. 700,000 veterans have suffered from psychological disorders since returning to the USA. More veterans have committed suicide than were killed in the fighting.