The Communist forces began to use guerrilla warfare against the USA military force it proved very effective. It was the only successful method fro a small nation to fight against a super-power such as America, which was vastly superior in the number of ground troops available and technology. The Vietcong were experts at this type of warfare, and easily trapped the USA military as they had been trained to fight conventional wars, which this was not. The USA never found an effective way to combat the ‘terrorist’ methods practised by the Vietcong. The Vietcong dug ditches, and booby-traps to control the threat of the USA. These simplistic tactics proved too straightforward for the USA to understand, and the Vietcong continued to keep them at bay. The Vietcong came out at night and would then set their traps, they then appeared by day as normal villagers, this being the reason for the My Lai Massacre. The Vietcong appeared as normal villagers having no uniform or mark to say that they were any different from the peasants of Vietnam. They gained the peasants support, which the American troops’ did not achieve. The USA where fighting on an unknown territory against the people they were fighting for. They realised too late that they were not just fighting a military war, but were also fighting a political one. The Vietcong treated the peasants well and rewarded them with land and food. Another reason to why the Vietnamese supported the Vietcong rather than the USA was because they wanted to be a communist ruled nation. The majority of the population were Buddhist, peasants.
The Vietnamese people were horrified by the damage caused by the American troops. Their response to the Vietcong’s tactics were air strikes killing thousands of innocent civilians. This overpowering reaction caused the North Vietnamese to be more determined to resist against the USA.
The conventional warfare that the US used was not effective against these tactics used by the Vietcong. It did not protect them from the basic dangers of punji stakes or pit falls. The USA began to use chemical warfare such as Napalm, and Agent Orange. These were used to strip the jungle of vegetation, but caused much more human distress. Also ‘search and destroy’ missions were introduced. The world media did not approve, and quickly turned the world against this war, and the reasoning’s behind it.
A great anti-war movement was building up in America. The media aided this movement by continuously reporting from Vietnam on the injustice of the war. Newspapers, magazines, the radio and the television all were against the war, and influenced the public to go against it too. The opposition increased after events such as the TET offensive, a surprise attack by the Vietcong on the American army to demoralise them, and turn the media against the US troops, also it brought the medias attention closer to the war. Other events covered by the media such as the My Lai Massacre, where many innocent peasants were killed because there was an off-chance that some of the occupants of the village were Vietcong, and the Kent State University Massacre, where students were killed for protesting against the war. All these events were captured by the media causing outrage among the world at how barbaric the USA where being.
The anti-war movement grew with the realisation that many more black people were being conscripted to fight in Vietnam, which caused movements in the black community against the war. This pushed fair equality and equal rights to the government with increasing complaints on the matter. The costs grew as the opposition grew. $2 billion was the cost of the war in Vietnam. But that was a small loss compared to the increasing body count. In the years of 1965 to 1968 the body count rose from just under two thousand to fourteen thousand. The public soon began to notice that the body count was increasing but yet no progress was being made to over throw the North Vietnamese. Many people who had supported the war in the past began to doubt whether the sacrifices being made were really worth the costs that they were paying.
The USA had not grasped the idea that the Vietnamese may have wanted a communist government, and could not accept this as normal behaviour. It seemed to the public and world media that the USA was just fighting for the sake of fighting and that they believed that this war was just another progression in The Cold War against communism.
The soldiers fighting in the war had very little interest in it and did not fully understand themselves why they were fighting it. All they wanted to do was serve their 12 months of duty and then go home back to their lives. This was very different to why the Vietnamese were fighting. They were fighting to keep a way of life and have freedom in their own country, and also to stay alive.
President Johnson was soon voted out, and so was his policy for war in Vietnam. President Nixon was elected as The USA’s new president, and brought the USA out of war.
In 1973 troops were withdrawn from Vietnam. The loss of the war was blamed upon the military advisors and government. But really what had lost the war was the lack of reasoning behind it in the first case. The only reason behind it was that the ‘threat’ of communism nearly four thousand miles away from their country. Their fear of this small threat was the reason that the USA failed in Vietnam. Their ‘domino theory’ was only a fear to the government and not the public. The insignificant threat to their superpower drove them to war, and drove them to failure.