Escalation of the US-Vietnam Conflict.

During Kennedy's presidency from 1962, he sent over 16,000 military advisors to Vietnam including Green Berets to train South Vietnamese army defend themselves. When Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, his successor Lyndon Johnson became the new president. By 1964, 35% of South Vietnam was in Vietcong hands, communists, and 60,000 communist guerrillas operating in the South. Soon after the Gulf of Tonkin Incident on 2 August 1964 the US destroyer Maddox was fired by North Vietnamese and probably another destroyer Turner Joy later. This gave excuse to the US congress to pass the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution where allowed President Johnson a free hand to send military supplies, including troops, to Vietnam. The resolution led to an escalation of US involvement in the war. The number of troops increased rapidly, reaching 385,000 in 1966 and 535,000 in 1968, totally having 2.59 million Americans served in Vietnam from 1964 to 1975.

As the jungle nature of the country, the guerilla warfare strategies of the Vietcong and the difficulty to discriminate between North and South Vietnamese soldiers made Americans to have a hard time, they relied heavily on air raids and chemical weapons. Vietcong had weaponry supplied mostly from China and the USSR before, it was clearly not as forward as the US so the guerilla strategies were necessary. The US's combat power, therefore, was heavily limited to exfoliate chemical weapons like Napalm and Agent Orange to strip trees bare of leafs for better navigation, to destroy the local rice fields, and stop supporting Vietcong guerrillas in the South, as seen in Operation Rolling Thunder, initiated on February 13, 1965. However, the Tet offensive was a massive attack by the Vietcong upon South Vietnam began on 30th January 1968. All the major cities of South Vietnam were attacked, including Saigon. In Saigon, the US embassy was seized by a suicide squad, which was subsequently driven out by paratroopers. It took 11,000 troops a week to drive the Viet Cong out of Saigon. Eventually the US force managed to repel the Viet Cong, killing 80,000 in the process. What is important about Tet Offensive was that it showed Viet Cong could strike anywhere at anytime and that there is nothing Americans could do about it. It made clear that the war could not be won. In the presidential election campaign in 1968, Richard Nixon promised to withdraw US forces from Vietnam.

Due to the huge efforts put into this war, the US could not afford to quit at anytime during the war. From 1953-1957 the US economic aid was at 823.3 million dollars and 277.8 million dollars in military aid to South Vietnam. US had aided over 4.5 billion dollars on both economic and military aid from 1953-66. This money came from the American tax-payers thus the war had to continue and win. Not only money, casualties was another problem, 50,000 troops had died in the entire war, US couldn't just pull out. Another problem was that it meant another falling domino. Domino effect that was introduced in 1954 by president Eisenhower saying countries falling to communism one by one like dominos. This view that, if one country fell to communism, neighboring states would follow became known as the domino effect. Lao, Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia would probably fall if it did.

Comparing with the First and Second World Wars, the US in Vietnam did not have clear enemies. Troops were fighting for freedom but in fact they were killing everyone such as the My Lai massacre. They have bombed over 1,000,000 tones of bombs on North Vietnam. That is much more than any other wars.

Vietnam war was said the most controversial war in the US history. There were huge anti-war movements inside the country. Many students stood up against the war due to three main reasons, the newly available war coverage on television, the heightening American casualties and the war crimes committed against the Vietnamese. The Vietnam Conflict was the first ever war televised in color, nationwide without specific censorship from the government. The people were no longer persuaded by propagandas after seeing the horrible truth on the TV. A large number of the soldiers were conscripts, not volunteers, in Vietnam and not knowing what they've been fighting for. Those disillusioned with the war included students, intellectuals, liberal-minded politicians and returning US troops. Liberals attacked US policy in the war, radicals used the war to make denunciations of the entire US system. Tet offensive indicated that the war was not being won, intellectuals didn't understand why US was involved, people disliked the methods of warfare used by the US, which were all chemicals. The indiscriminate killing that resulted from Search and Destroy missions was critical, for example the My Lai massacre in 1968 where kids, women were killed. Heightening casualties, high expenditure, lack of resources to built a 'Great Society', it was mostly blacks fighting, thus said to be a racist government oppressing other ethnic groups. The growth of the anti-war movement was therefore caused by the combination of a range of factors.

By the end, US had more than 60,000 casualties, 300,000 wounded, 75,000 disabled. Drug addiction, fragging and suicides were very common among the US troops. Statistics show that more committed suicide than killed in combat. Finally, the US pulled out of Saigon before May of 1975. The biggest reason was the nature of the conscripted untrained young soldiers. They couldn't handle the modern weaponries and very unstable emotions. Soldiers were told to kill without losing their sanities. This is the most important reason why the war ended in this way.

For the Vietnamese, it was a big tragedy. Having nearly a million North Vietnamese men lost and Viet Cong troops. Nearly half a million South Vietnamese were killed including the soldiers and civilians. All together nearly 2 million people killed. A country that was one of the biggest rice exporting nation ended up a rice importing country when 90% rice fields were burnt. Even though the war was won, the economy was totally crashed down in Vietnam.

There were not many things gained for both sides in the war. The US had lost lots of money, people and morals. On the other side, Vietnam gained morals, but money and people lost. If we look back from today, Vietnam yet does not have a very stable economy and is hardly maintained by food exports, famous for prostitutions and drugs.