The French were shocked at the growing cost of conflict. The French economy could not sustain these heavy costs and the military could not sustain these heavy losses of troops. The mayor blow came when a whole division of French paratroopers were defeated at the hands of the Vietminh. The French pulled out of Vietnam which created more humiliation for the French.
After the French left, the UN proposed to bring some democracy to Vietnam. The UN split the country in to two parts, South Vietnam and North Vietnam. This was only a temporary move to settle the country. It was suggested that parties should run for control over the country with everyone in the country having a vote. The South ran their side as a Plutocracy, meaning that they elected family and friends to run different areas. This was a corrupt government.
The Americans realised that Ho Chi Minh would win the election because he was the hero that kicked out the Japanese oppressors and the French interlopers. The Americans didn’t want communism to spread and at the height of the Cold War they didn’t want the USSR gaining more support as it seemed that war was on the verge of breaking out.
The Americans helped Ngo Dinh Diem set up the Republic of Vietnam party that ruled Vietnam. The communists countered this by setting up the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam often called the Viet Cong. The Chinese were supporting Ho Chi Minh and sent them support but with America helping Hgo Dinh Diem financially China could not compete.
America started by sending military advisers to Vietnamese villages and training them to resist the Viet Cong but this was a very slow process.
In 1964 Vietnam patrol boats opened fire on US shipping in the Gulf of Tonkin, in retaliation to this hostility America sent 3500 Marines to Da Nang. America was at war with Vietnam.
The media had a very large part to play in the turning of public support for the Vietnam War. In the 1960’s most households had televisions in their homes and were able to watch the News at home rather than going to the local cinema to watch the news reels. Reporters were everywhere in Vietnam and were able to report everything back to those at home, including the armies mistakes. Most people in American, most likely, would not have seen someone dead or in injured by military hardware. A movie was released on American TV showing a suspected Viet Cong being executed by South Vietnamese police; this was show around dinner time for most families. This lead to the Americans thinking about who America were supporting, this brutal force that murdered people in front of a camera. This was a long term factor, slowly turning the tide against war. At the start of the war, before America had forces in the country, the media reported what the advisers were doing in villages, helping them become more efficient but soon showed the destruction of the villages by the war machines.
The showing of children crying, burned by napalm bombs gave the American pubic the impression of America being the enemy not the Viet Cong.
The tactics used by the Viet Cong was also turning the tide for war. The growing numbers of American deaths over a long period stood out against the suspected Viet Cong deaths. The Americans had many, fully trained professional troops against a weak group of freedom fighters. Why was the American causality lists growing? This was due to the tactics employed by the Viet Cong, Guerrilla Warfare. Small attacks and ambushes against large volumes of troops lead to small but growing causalities. Drive-bys were also used to ambush patrols and resting troops. Small parties of raiders creped into American bases and poisoned water supplies and laid traps for the Americans in the morning. The guerrillas used their knowledge of the terrain very affectively. They appeared in front of troops to ambush them, and then disappeared into the undergrowth. A special weapon of the Guerrillas was Pungi pits. These pits were holes in the ground filled with sharpened bamboo sticks. The idea of this was to injure the victim and not to kill them as this would mean resources and time would be needed to heal them. This form of Warfare was terrorism. Since many deaths were not sustained in short periods of time, this factor was a long term factor adding to the fuel of the Anti-War movements in the USA.
The massacre at My Lai quickly changed the feelings of the American public. A small group of Marines were sent on a search and destroy mission in the village of My Lai but the orders were misunderstood and they killed everyone about at the time in the village including women and children. Pictures were released a few months later and the cover up failed. The American public were disgusted seeing so many dead civilians and joined the Anti-War movement. This was a short term factor.
The American army were starting to conscript Americans but many refused so they had no choice but to put them in prison. Students at Universities started to protest in campus and staged sit-ins and over peaceful demonstrations. At one incidence when the protesters clashed with the army they shot dead 4 students to disperse the crowds. Many were injured and 4 students died. This was broadcasted all over the press and News stations and evoked disgust. This was short term factor that also lead to the growing anti war movement.
It is hard to fight a war with political pressure to withdraw and your own people ordering the withdrawal. Without the will of the soldiers and without the will of the people many things can go wrong. The tactic of ‘Hearts and Minds’ in Vietnam was partly a success but also partly a failure. If they would have kept the program running, the Vietnamese might have trusted the Americans a lot more and tried at an uprising against the government but the Americans were impatient. While contending with the Cold War against the USSR, the Americans could not fight a long war but also could not allow for Communism to spread. Communism is great in theory but when put into practice many things can go wrong, the worst being that the country could be lead by a dictator as it is easy to control people using media. The media has a very large part to play in influencing the public. Although you can’t believe everything you read in the papers there is always some truth and it’s the reporting of over exaggerating that changes people’s minds. Just showing some of the carnage in a war can change people’s minds and they start losing site of why the war had started in the first place. If communism had spread and engulfed large areas of the world the question on most of the American people would be ‘Why hadn’t we seen this treat and acted?’ and the government would have been at fault. The situation you are left with is whether you should act against support because it is the best thing and that is the role of the politician.
The war was not lost by the American soldiers; it was lost by the people of America. The growing anger against the war was sufficient enough to create enough chaos to make the President withdraw the troops. This factor was one of the many factors that influenced the decision but remains the most influential. The public are the people that fight the war, they are the people that find the war and they are the people that judge the President on his ability to wage war. It is impossible to say if the outcome of the war would be different if the public supported the war but it can be said that the public had, by far the most influence is why the American forces were withdraw from Vietnam.