Why was the United States forced to withdraw its soldiers from the Vietnam war

The Vietcong dug large tunnels under the ground so they could move around in safety. They also slept, ate and planned their attacks in safety. The tunnels provided a safe living space for the Vietcong and were a useful way of avoiding the U.S bombs. The tunnels also provided the Vietcong with cover for attacking invaders. With the V.C knowing their way not only through the jungle but through the underground as well, this left the Americans feeling extremely nervous whilst performing their search and control missions. This lead to the U.S troops not beign able to perform to the best of their ability.

A way of slightly defeating the harsh jungle was to drop a chemical called agent orange from U.S planes. This helped the Americans find the Vietcong supply roots through the jungle, such as the Ho Chi Minh trail. Although useful for finding the supply trails, agent orange caused massive deformities in unborn children. Which turned the Vietnamese people against the Americans and made more of the Vietnamese peasants want to help the Vietcong. This added to the American soldiers paranoia that the Vietcong were everywhere.

The supply trails used by the Vietcong to gain supplys from the north Vietnamese was a great tactic. They made sure that the Vietcong were constantly supplied and even if the American troops did find the trails they could easily be moved. This meant that the Vietcong were never short of weapons or food and could perform to the best of their ability, whereas American troops may not always be getting the nourishment they needed, and with the added paranoia and drug taking they were far from being the great fighters that the Vietcong were.

As well as brutal American tactics leading to the peasants supporting the Vietcong there was also the fact that the Vietcong supplied the peasants with land. This was a very clever tactic as it gave the Vietcong support of many more villages.

The U.S soldiers in Vietnam were growing increasingly suspicious of the normal Vietnamese peasants and were extremely paranoid that they were Vietcong, this paranoia may have been linked to the drugs that many of the American soldiers ended up taking due to the pressures of the war. By 1969 the military police were arresting 1,000 soldiers per week for possession of drugs such as heroin and marijuana. Therefore, the psychological impact of the war in Vietnam helps us to understand why U.S troops were unable to fight to the best of their ability which made it more likely that they would be withdrawn.

The paranoia of many of the American soldiers in Vietnam may have caused the My Lia massacre. The My Lia massacre took place in a village in Vietnam called My Lia. U.S troops had conducted a search and destroy mission which went badly wrong. The troops ran wild, raping and killing dozens of innocent villagers. This sort of event was probably caused by the intense psychological pressure faced by American troops and this attack, like many others was covered by the media who made people at home aware of the horrors taking place in Vietnam.

Search and destroy missions involved the American soldiers raiding Vietnamese villages and killing any suspected Vietcong, in many cases they also burnt down the village which forced the villagers to move into American built camps. This turned many normal Vietnamese against the Americans and explains why U.S tactics such as 'pacification' were such a failure.

The Vietcong used A.k47 salt rifles which could carry a lot of bullets and so they wouldn't run out of bullets during an attack. Whereas the Americans used M16 assalt rifles which couldn't carry as many bullets and so during an attack they may have ran out. The Vietcong also used rocket launches which could bring down the U.S helicopters and so would stop the helicopters being able to drop their bombs or to take casualties and supplys to and from the base camps. This could leave to The U.S troops being undernourished aswell as causing many American deaths.

During the Vietnamese war many reporters portrayed the war as it really was, recording all the horrific scenes that went on and broadcasting them to the American public. When the Americans saw the terrible way that the American troops were acting, and because aware of all the deaths and massacres they turned against the war and many organised peace protests. This would eventually put pressure on the government to withdraw the troops.

In some senses Vietnam was very much a "media war", fought on newspapers and television as much as in the jungles of Vietnam. In the beginning of the war media coverage was positive and upbeat as it emphasised U.S success stories. AS the war continued the media showed the horrors of the war. Television was a major culprit of this as it actually showed moving pictures of the bloodshed and murder straight into peoples living rooms night after night.

The media gave reports of American brutality. In 1965 CBS aired a report showing Marines lighting thatched roofs of the village Cam Ne with zippo lighters. The report also included criticisms of the treatment of the Vietnamese villagers and in1968 during the Tet offensive, viewers saw the chief of the south Vietnamese police blow out the brains of his captive on Saigon street. These brutalities and many others were shown to the American public night after night and caused the American public to completely disagree with what was happening in Vietnam and for them to want the war to stop.

Walter Cronkite claimed in his report of the Tet offensive that the war was unwinnable, this would have caused the American public concern that not only has there been so much bloodshed of their fathers, brothers and sons but it has all been for no reason. That they had seen their male citizens brutally murder and rape many Vietnamese and it had been for no reason.

With the constant media coverage causing more and more people to turn against the war in Vietnam it led to peace protests. The first peace protests where organised by students in universities and other young people, one of these peace demonstrations ended in disaster. It is known as the tragedy at Kent State University and took place on April 29, 1970. The cause of this particular protest was president Nixon marching American troops into neutral Cambodia. This caused a violent riot to break out at the university and the National Guard was called. The National Guard fired openly into the group of students and many were injured but four students were killed . This caused outrage among American society which added to the pressure placed on the government to remove the American troops from Vietnam since many more people soon became involved in the peace movement

The Free Speech Movement was an organized protest movement that started at the university of California in Berkeley, CA in 1964. It was one of the first large scale student organisations that influenced students throughout the country. As well as concentrating on other issues they campaigned against the Vietnam war.

As well as students campaigning in the Free Speech Movement they also organised a group called Students For A Democratic Society, which was formed in the Midwest of America in the 1960's. They were organized to be part of the antiwar movement. Their main approach consisted of policies like resistance to the draft. In 1968 they organized a major protest in front of the Democratic National Convention. This would have show the government just how against the war the American public were and would encourage them to pull out the troops from Vietnam.

Most Americans had traditionally been very supportive of their government and believed that whatever it did must be right, so it much have been a huge shock for the American government to see how outraged the public were at its involvement in the war. Even Vietnam veterans turned against the war when they returned home to find that they weren't getting the welcome they wished for. Instead they were called "baby killers". this added stress of realising they were had been fighting for their country only to be seen as murderers not hero's made many of them develop delayed stress syndrome and reduced the morale of soldiers in the field.

As well as causing delayed stress syndrome the pressure put on the American soldiers caused them to turn right against the war and become protestors. Maybe to ease the guilt of their actions in the war.

As well as soldiers at home turning against the war, soldiers fighting in Vietnam started to realise that many people in their country had turned against them for what they were doing and many killed their officers and mutinied. They were listed as AWOL. Many units refused to fight and almost a quarter of U.S troops were taking drugs. The government saw this and realised they were not only fighting the Vietnamese but also their own people as a result of media pressure.

With all the pressure on the government many members of congress started to agree with what the public said and showed their opinions openly. This divided the government, with the government divided and the country divided it was almost impossible to keep fighting a war than half the population didn't agree with. So the U.S government finally pulled their troops out of Vietnam.

In my opinion the most important cause for U.S withdrawal from Vietnam was the Media coverage. I believe this because the media showed the American people what the U.S troops were doing, and how they were murdering and raping the Vietnamese, this caused the American people to turn against the war and those fighting it. With the American troops having access to the newspapers they were able to see that their own country was turning against them and this caused low morality across American troops. The realisation throughout the U.S troops that their own people were against the war that they were fighting and dying for caused them to turn to drugs to escape the reality. This caused the American soldiers in Vietnam to not fight to the best of their ability.

If the media had not been able to televise the war then I believe that the american public would have been oblivious to the horrors that were happening in Vietnam and therefore the peace protests would not have occurred. This would have meant that the Government was under less pressure to withdraw American troops from Vietnam and so the war may have gone on for a lot longer than it did, and maybe with a very different outcome.