After the assasination of Kenndy, L.B. Johnstone took over as president and decided to increase the number of troops in Vietnam. These troops patrolled the North Vietnamese border looking for the NLF. In August 1964, they retalliated, attacking the American Destroyer on The Gulf of Tonkin. This gave Johnstone the excuse he needed to launch attack on the Noth Vietnamese; he passed the Tonkin Resolution. The USA soon began bombing North Vietnam factories, railways and bridges however they often missed their targets hitting schools and hospitals. By 1966, these bombings were happening 164 times a day.
The US also dropped chemicals such as Nalpalm and Agent Orange which burned forests as well as sticking to and burning human flesh. However the Vietminh proved to hold their own against the violent attacks so to stop people communicating with them, 40% of the population was placed in Strategic Hamlets; US controlled areas surrounded by barbed wire but still the US were getting nowhere. in March 1968, a unit of US soldiers in search of the Vietcong, shot and murdered over 300 civilians in attack they thought to be on the guerillas in what was known as 'The Massacre at My Lai'. The US population soon caught wind of this and it soon became clear that the Vietnam war was going very wrong.
Although it had no aircraft, tanks or artillery, the Vietcong were winning in the fight against America. They had previous experience of fighting a guerilla war against France and they were very familiar with the land, both of which they used to their advantage. To avoid detection, they did not wear a uniform but mingled with the peasants or hid in the jungle. When China and Russia began providing Vietnam with weapons, the North Vietnamese brought them through the jungle by foot or on bicycle at night this is because they were virtually undetectable through the thick greenage.
The most famous route used was called the 'Ho Chi Minh Trail'. However the most effective method used by the Vietcong was it's tunneling system. The tunnels ran for 200 miles under South Vietnam and it was from there they would launch hit and run attacks. These tunnels even had a hospital system for those who had been wounded.
The media was clearly showing the US population the volient tactics and the failure of the USA and so they began requesting the troops be brought home. This made Johnstone so upopular he didn't run for re-election. Instead Nixon became Presedent in 1968. He introduced the policy of Vietnamisation in which the US troops would pull out of Vietnam but continue to supply the South Vietnamese troops with arms to continue the fight against the Viet Cong. By 1971 half of the US troops had been pulled out of the country. Nixon still wanted to win so he continued bombing Cambodia in secret so as to prevent supplies being sent to the NLF down the 'Ho Chi Minh Trail'.
In order to achieve 'Peace with Honour', Nixon's foreign affairs minister, Dr. Kissinger held secret talks with the North Vietnamese and an armstice was signed in Paris in January 1973. The remainder of the US troops went home and thousands of South Vietnamese went with them.
For the US the whole war was a disaster; the Domino Theory had happened with Vietnam , Laos and Cambodia falling into communism; 58000 soldiers died, 300000 were injured and 7000 suffered psychological effects; the war had cost America a staggering total of $120 billion and the US population had a strong anti-war feeling due to the widespread media images showing horrific images of the effects of nalpalm and the high death rate.
For Vietnam the consequences were equally as bad; although the country had become united under comunism in 1976, the jungle and tropical rainforests had been reduced to scrubland, destroyed from the war; the economy was destroyed, a country that was once a major rice exporter now could not even feed its own people and it began relying on Russia heavily after its Chinese invasion in 1979.
