The Vietnam war – also known as the American War in Vietnam, Indochina War and the Vietnam Conflict – took place from the year 1959 all the way through to 1975. The war ended with a North Vietnamese victory some decade and a half later. The human cost of the war in Vietnam will never fade. Over one million military personnel and over one million civilians died. The war was between North Vietnam and South Vietnam – with the US backing the South. In the end the US withdrew, the Republic of Vietnam lost and both North and South ended up under the control of the communist government.

The United States government, and allied forces, opted to deploy a number of troops to South Vietnam following the First Indochina war, in 1954, all the way through to 1973. US military advisers had played a role in Vietnam since 1950, firstly helping French colonial forces. By 1956, these US advisers were responsible for training the South Vietnam armed forces. The number of US troops in Vietnam grew from the days of John F Kennedy, who was responsible for sending 16,000, to a more significant deployment under the presidency of Lyndon Johnson. While almost all of the armed forces departed following the Paris Peace Accords, the last troops left in April 1975.

During the Vietnam conflict, clashes took place in many different forms. Vietnam industry and infrastructure became a prime target during the conflict, which military tacticians generally target as a means of weakening their opponent and dampening morale – this was largely completed by US aircraft performing aerial bombings. Chemical Defoliants were also deployed as a means of reducing the ability for troops to seek cover in the mountains and jungles which were leveraged by North Vietnamese troops to initiate guerilla attacks. When the capital of South Vietnam, Saigon, fell the war came to an end culminating in a North Vietnamese victory.

The 1968 election saw Richard Nixon promise “peace with honor”. This involved building the AVRN so that they could handle the defence of Republic of Vietnam – this strategy would later evolve to be known as the Nixon Doctrine. This was met with contempt from some – as it suggested only the US had experienced lost through the conflict – and left commentators and political opponents with ammunition to oppose his ideas. Although many parallels were drawn between Nixon and Kennedy, in terms of their strategy, Nixon’s desire to continue and broaden the war put him in a camp of his own.

The anti-war movement was gaining momentum in the United States, which lead to cries from Nixon for the “silent majority” of US citizens to make their opinion heard in their support for the war. Public opinion, although wavering, suffered more than ever when revelation of the My Lai Massacre were revealed. The killing of civilians, which included women and children, sparked outrage internationally and strengthened the position of Nixon’s opponents.

The Vietnam War was a sort of humanitarian assistance program that slowly drew us into a war that we weren’t expecting. We were trying to help a fledgling democracy and were actually fighting the communist regimes and attitudes of the day. We in effect were fighting the beginning of the Cold War. So there was more at stake than the country that we were fighting for and that is what got us into trouble. We should have simply went after the real enemies from the start.

Anyway we also went in without a clear objective. We wanted to do a good job while not sacrificing life. This went on to a fault and ended up costing a lot more life than it should have. You see we as a country back home was not real into the conflict as a rule and didn’t really understand what it would take to do the job right. This was the fault of our government entirely. Only when the troops got into it were they able to see what it was all about. They were persuaded that the Vietnam War was worth the loss of life when considering the championing of life and liberty but the public in America who were very shielded and lied to had a harder time. This also coincided with a rebellion of the young people against the cultural values that had gone before them of hard work, discipline, and responsibility for something other than our own individuality. So it was the military fighting both the enemy in the Vietnam War and also their own home country’s citizens who were sticking their nose where it didn’t belong and not understanding the investment of life for liberty. I don’t know about you but I have a tremendous respect for those who went to do a job that was very worth it to champion liberty and democracy and were dying for it all the while their own people were against them too. It makes me angry and I worry that this conflict in Iraq presently is going the exact same direction.