Ironically the communist North Vietnamese army (The NVA) and the Vietcong (The VC) forces waged war against the U.S.
The U.S. started to send in troops to find and flush out the Vietnamese, but this was proved unsuccessful as the Americans were flushed out them self’s, Vietnamese traps were everywhere, they were simple but effective and hard to find by the American troops, e.g. if you moved a wrong branch a set of spikes could come and just ram right through you. When the troops came across a small or large village it was very hard to determine who was a Vietnamese fighter and who was just an ordinary civilian, this caused a lot of unnecessary killings, but it seemed the only way.
By 1966 over 275,000 American troops but the conflict just kept going on, and Americans kept falling in battle and being killed. The American soldiers were not trained for such jungle/guerrilla warfare, as the Vietnamese troops were used to the surroundings and were trained extremely well in camouflage and guerrilla warfare in a sense the Americans were outnumbered in skill of guerrilla and jungle war fare but the Americans outnumbered them in army size but this was effective. Soon the number of American troops sent into Vietnam was to rise over half a million.
Over back in the U.S. American civilians were protesting against the war, and a lot of violence, injuries, imprisonments and even death were occurring. As so many troops kept being sent in to war and barely a quarter of the ones sent in returning the American civilians saw this as a complete death trap.
One of the most significant mistakes made by the U.S. leadership during the conflict was the decision to wage limited war, or a low-intensity conflict. Such a strategy is characterized by limited action against the enemy as opposed to full, intense fighting. Obviously, limited war has the potential to prolong a conflict and create war of attrition. But the Americans did not use there full potential if they used a lot more air raids and more heavy artillery such as tanks and Shell guns, then they might have had a better chance of defeating the Vietnamese and the communists, but instead they just used light artillery and troops after troops.
But the Americans did try and use air support for example the mission rolling Thunder; this was a campaign exemplifying limited war. Its goal was to bomb North Vietnamese targets to support the escalation of U.S. troops in Vietnam by reducing NVA infiltration to the South. However, Rolling Thunder was largely a failure due to the North Vietnamese cooperation and resilience in precautions and repair. Furthermore, the infrastructure of the North remained strong as the North constantly rebuilt. In addition, the government of the U.S. received the false impression that the air campaign was going well due to fictitious sortie counts. However, just as body counts on the ground were inflated to look impressive, sortie counts were over exaggerated. The determined, sophisticated anti-aircraft resistance surprised the Americans there fore underestimating the enemy by U.S. leadership made Rolling Thunder a failure.
Perhaps the most damaging effect of limited war was the creation of attrition, where ach side did not make significantly large strategic of territorial gains. But from here it seemed as if the Vietnamese were gaining the slightest wining over the Americans as of their advantage.
Some historians argue that it was not the government’s inappropriate decisions that lost Vietnam to the communists, but rather the public’s lack of support and trust for the conflict. The basis of this viewpoint is that if the public had greater support for the government, the government could have ended differently. E.g., if the public support had been high, draftee morale would consequently also have been high. This support would have allowed the government to wage total war, including fully invading Cambodia and Laos. Overall, such approval would have been allowed the U.S. decisively cripple the north through total war, and the Americans would have stopped the capture of Vietnam by communism and restore the peace.
So in a view American soldiers continued to die for a war that did not go anywhere.
Soon the Americans were running out of troops and light artillery and were being complete pushed further and further back, soon the Americans had to leave, and Vietnam had fallen to communism.
So in conclusion there are many different reasons why the Americans had to withdraw there troops, not that they had many left by the end, for example the skill of the Vietnamese guerrilla soldiers had the major advantage of knowing the way around the jungles and how to hide them self’s in civilian grounds, troops were not getting the air support or artillery support they needed and so were losing vital places in the war, protesting back in the U.S. lowered moral though the U.S. soldiers, there for not giving the support they needed and also making it not possible for total war to achieved, so in the end there were many mistakes made that could have been resolved or avoided.
Edward Semprini Vietnam course work form 5 /
