A small factor which also condemned the U.S in Vietnam was the fact that the U.S saw this conflict as a part of the Cold War, in other terms, the U.S were fighting in Vietnam to prevent the spreading of communism to further countries such as Lous and Cambodia. The problem here is that the U.S failed to recognize that Ho Chi Minh had the support of the people of Vietnam; the people of Vietnam were not against Ho Chi Minh’s regime of communism, and as a result of this the U.S was working against the interests of the majority of the Vietnamese people.
Another factor that played a part in the U.S failure in Vietnam was the lack of a stable South Vietnamese Government. After the death of Diem the U.S had a very hard time replacing him with a leader that was popular with the people, as a result of this instability Ho Chi Minh’s regime won even more popularity and the U.S was quickly losing it.
Another aspect which vilified the U.S in Vietnam was the methods of the U.S army; they were brutal and often racist toward the Vietnam people as a whole. The U.S army used the most brutal methods of warfare, such as the use of napalm which would stick to a person and burn straight through them, a popular picture of the U.S brutality is a picture of a little girl running away from a napalm struck area, with napalm stuck to her skin burning her. The U.S army often burnt down whole villages where there were thought to be Guerilla fighters hiding, apart from this there were massive bombing raids which did little damage to the basic peasant society. There were not many suitable targets for the U.S such as industrial targets. There was also a use of racist comments by the Americans; they would often refer to the Vietnamese people as “Gooks” which would be the same as calling a black person “Nigger”.
A major point which brought the U.S army crashing was that the U.S troops became increasingly demoralized during the war. This is because most of the troops sent to Vietnam were only draftees and they were also only around the age of 19. Drug use became a major problem and troops even killed their own officers, these actions are often referred to as “fragging”. It gained this name because when, for example a small U.S group of troops went out for a hunting mission to find the enemy, the troops would make sure that there was a big gap between them and their officer and then they would use a frag grenade to kill their own officer, hence the name “fragging”.
Another point was the cost. The massive cost of the war was a major factor. In one week ten B-52 bombers were shot down, each one cost 3.4 million dollars. By 1967 the war was costing the U.S millions of dollars per day.
As a result all of these factors placed the U.S in a “no win situation”, for example they couldn’t even walk into a village without problems, because if they run into a group of people, what do they do? Do they kill them on the spot in fear of what they might do? Or do they risk getting close enough to them to talk? This factor placed the U.S in a “no win situation”.
Now that I have explained the reasons to why the U.S lost in Vietnam, I will attempt to explain why the U.S lost in the United States of America.
One of the huge factors which caused a vast amount of problems for the U.S in fighting the war was that this war was unlike any other war before it, it was the “first TV war”. What this meant was that every small thing that the U.S army did while fighting in Vietnam, there would be a chance that it would be viewed by an enormous amount of Americans on their televisions half way across the world.
The U.S people saw the images of the horrors and the atrocities that the U.S army committed, and these small images of the war in Vietnam did a great deal to turn public opinion in the U.S against the war. The U.S people were shocked when it was revealed that the government had told lies when it came to the conduct of the war and when the U.S troops were involved in massacres of civilians. These events lead to small-scale protests which began in college campuses but eventually these issues would cause a greater portion of the U.S people to protest about the war in Vietnam.
Another aspect which caused a lot of protest in the U.S against the war was the belief that when drafting troops to the Vietnam War, there was a hint of racism in the troops sent to Vietnam. The amount of black people that were drafted to the Vietnam War far exceeded the number of white people which were drafted; this was in some people views a hugely racist act by the U.S government. One of the facts as to why this happened was the view that the white population in America could achieve a higher level of education and have a better chance to go to universities and later, influential and important, the view implied that black majorities could not achieve such a high level of education and work so they were drafted in heavier numbers.
The last factor which played a role in the loss of the U.S in its own home was the fact that I stated earlier, the cost. With all money being harnessed from the U.S economy, the president at the time, J.F Kennedy wished to carry out social programs in an attempt to turn the U.S into a “greater society”; although these acts were noble the shear cost of the Vietnam War banished the hope that these social reforms would actually take place. The huge cost of the Vietnam War meant that there was not a cent left to spend on anything which aided the American people, this obviously aroused some protesters.
In conclusion, I would like to state that I believe that the statement “The War in Vietnam was lost in the U.S.A and not in Vietnam” to be partly true. The problems faced in the U.S.A did condemn the U.S in Vietnam, but the war was still fought and lost in Vietnam. I believe that the war was lost in both the U.S.A and Vietnam. The war was not only lost in the U.S, the protests going on in the U.S just aided the fact that the U.S army faced a true “no win situation” while fighting, which condemned them to loose against their enemies. The factors from both the U.S and Vietnam merged together truly did cause the defeat in the Vietnam War for America.
By Sam Arkless
