Vietnam & After

Flawed Reasoning

"Unless we can achieve this objective in South Vietnam, almost all of Southeast Asia will probably fall under Communist dominance (all of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia), accommodate to Communism so as to remove effective U.S. and anti-Communist influence (Burma), or fall under the domination of forces not now explicitly Communist but likely then to become so (Indonesia taking over Malaysia).  Thailand might hold for a period without help, but would be under grave pressure.  Even the Philippines would become shaky, and the threat to India on the West, Australia and New Zealand to the South, and Taiwan, Korea, and Japan to the North and East would be greatly increased" - National Security Action Memorandum 288, March 17, 1964

In LSAT language, this is what is referred to as a "circular argument".  In a circular argument, the premise is left to assumption.  One can assume that the "Domino theory", or China's or the Soviet Union's sphere of influence may be at the forefront of one's thoughts upon reading this memorandum.  However, none of that can be directly inferred from this document.  So, what premise to this argument is a reader supposed to summon in order to fully understand a memorandum of this magnitude?  And for a document as consequential as this, is it safe to assume?

Lyndon B. Johnson's Decisions for War

"In 1964, in response to alleged attacks against US Naval vessels, congress passed a resolution that granted te president sweeping powers.  It authorized him to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attacks against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression."

Though the first American protests against U.S. intervention in Vietnam took place in 1963, the antiwar movement did not begin until nearly two years later, when President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered massive U.S. military intervention and the sustained bombing of North Vietnam.  The United States of America did not belong in this tragic war at all.  This was not our war to fight.

We are in the same political trap that we were in the late 60's - a lost war, lives and dollars being squandered, and irresponsible leadership.  First Iraq and what now "Russia".  What does the government need to see or do to prevent history from repeating itself.  For god sakes, look at Iraq, I know we need to stand strong as the most powerful country and make a statement for 911 but at what cost do we need to stay.  Thousands of live lost and no guarantees for Iraq to be a democratic country.  To me giving the President "sweeping powers"  just doesnt seem like the right thing to do.

What was America Thinking Appointing Ngo Dinh Diem?

In 1955 after the Geneva conference, Vietnam was divided into a North and a South. Ngo Dinh Diem was appointed the leader and given power over the South, where he formed the Republic of Vietnam. But Diem was not the Ho Che Minh of the south, he was very much the complete opposite. Ho Che Minh was a nationalist and a communists, but he wanted the best for his people and was so popular with them that the United States feared him and knew that if an election was held after the Geneva Conference that Ho would win hands down. Fearing communism and the spread of it, the United States basically put Diem in charge of the south for "the time being" and elections would be held in two years (1956), with America hoping that by them Diem would gain in popularity. This never happened.

These elections never came and Diem's appointment was just a strategic move on behalf of the United States to further help contain communism by basically being a ghost writer in south vietnam. America thought that they could control Diem, and make him do as they wished, but Diem had other plans. His ways lead to great unrest from his people and lead to buddhists revolting, saying he was corrupt and violent to his people. One of the most famous forms of protest by the buddhists was the self immolation of Thich Quang Duc. Diem was later hunted down and killed.

This is a very interesting example of our country, the United States, trying to build a nation from behind the scenes and flood it with democracy. America at this time feared communism and it spreading and they knew Ho Che Minh was very much a communists and wanted to indirectly stop him from coming into real power in Vietnam, so a road block was put in, in the form of Ngo Dinh Diem. We thought we could control Diem, but we couldn't and he began stepping on toes and the people were never really behind him. This just shows that there are times when nations should not try to build other nations up because it leads to so many problems.

The Good Life

"the constitution that the United States had written for Vietnam: It was actually written by a team of American professors.  It said that in case of war, the population of Vietnam had to quarter troops and turn their property over to the army for its use". - Ngo Vinh Long

Article the fifth [Amendment III] of the United States' Constitution:
No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house,   without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be   prescribed by law.

It would seem as though to a logically thinking person that the Vietnamese may resent blatant contradictions between the constitution of the United States and the constitution written by Americans for Vietnam.  A resentment like this should be thought to be even deeper if the people upon whom this new constitution is thrust, have a unique familiarity with the United States' own constitution.  For one thing, considering that the U.S. constitution was quoted by Ho Chi Minh in the composition of the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence, a resounding tension between the Vietnamese and the United States' shill, Ngo Dinh Diem, should have come as no surprise.

Psychological and chemical warfare should neutralize the Viet Cong's resistance to Diem and the new government of South Vietnam though.  Pamphlets titled "Toward the Good Life" distributed during long trails of forced migration at gunpoint to hamlets sectioned off by barbed wired paid for by the immigrating peasants should do the trick.  "Toward the Good Life" combined with "Operation Ranch Hand" (devastating millions of acres of crops), and countless other brilliant ideas on behalf of the U.S. and Diem should surely win over the support of the people.

I guess the pamphlets lacked emphasis or something.

Virgin Mary becomes Big Influence

Being involved in a war can be compared to as one big chess game. The main idea of chess is to dominate the playing board and put the King in "check". Once you have done that task, the game has come to an end.

The French did not succeed in their epic battle. The Vietnamese took matters into their own hands, and defeated the French. But the United States did not want the spread of communism to spread. They had to find an Anti-Communist leader and soon assume the place that France had. They found the leader, and his name was Ngo Dinh Diem.

"Diem came from an upper class, Catholic family in Central Vietnam with a long history of political activism".

Diem would later take a leave of absense in politics. He traveled to many different countries, such as Japan and Europe and then arrived in the United States.

The United States began a rumor to help persuade the Catholics in the area. They told them that churches were going to be closed down. They went as far as saying that the Virgin Mary was seen leaving the North and traveling down to the South. That was the "icing on the cake" which made many Catholic travel down south.

Religion and politics are not seen in two aspects of life that go together. But many people are still struggling with both of them. Even in todays society, the image of God or Mohammad are very sacred and many people take offense to it. The idea of America using the Virgin Mary as bait is someone offensive, but at a time of crisis, you have to break the rules sometimes.

The struggle not to fight

" An all-out attack on the Diem government risked American intervention, even an attack on the North. Without foreign allies ready to support a more forceful response, the only sensible policy was to carry on the most vigorous political struggle possible, delaying for as long as possible the resort to arms."

               This quote is describing how no one wanted to fight. It was a struggle on the last resort possible. Good behavior was not even possible for these countries they were doing their best to stay out of fighting and strictly staying with political issues.This was something that would become extremely difficult. The repression was becoming increasingly thin as well as the ranks of the southern party members. There was a great amount of outrage towards Diem's policies. This was all going on in the countryside. Even being able to discuss political issues was a struggle for many of these people because of the government's overspeculation.Many men decided to retaliate against the government officials themselves. In doing so they took their weapons and killed many of the officials involved in the party.

     This quote stood out to me because I thought it was a brave move for the people to retaliate against their own government officials. Something many people today would never do.

The War for the South Begins

A WAR BETWEEN THE CLASSES

An American analysis conducted a few years later concluded: and the war became in a real sense a class war.  This was because the poor came under the control of the Front.  What was so difficult for American observers to understand, although hundreds of prisoners, defectors, and suspects said so in thousands of pages of transcript interviews, was that the Front included the poor, who interpreted the support they received from Hanor neither as contradiction nor contamination but as Affirmation that Vietnam was one country. pg 73 Vietnam Wars.

The war in Vietnam occurred during the Cold War, and has been viewed as an indirect conflict between the United States and Soviet Union, with each nation and its allies supporting one side North Vietnam and South Vietnam.

United States: 58,119 killed, 153,303 wounded, 1,948 missing in action 

A tragedy we should of never endured.  This was clearly not our war to fight.  The war in Vietnam was not a war of aggression by the North against the South, nor was it ever a purely conventional war. From start to finish, the Vietnam War was a people's war.  A War in which the United States had no business entering.  The aftermath of this war is still being felt by so many soldiers today physically and emotionally.

I understand that our country needs to be viewed as a powerful force to be wreckoned with, but why is it always, we stick our noses where we do not belong and so many of our men and women die.

Words to Heed

"I am frankly of the belief that no amount of American military assistance in Indo-China can conquer an enemy which is everywhere, and at the same time nowhere, [and which] has the sympathy and covert support of the people" - John F. Kennedy (1954)

In 1954, the enemy JFK referred to was Communism.  Today, the enemy (as defined by the Bush administration) is "evil".  "Evil", "terror", and "radical Islamic ideology" are somehow to succumb to the United States' military superiority, at least that's the standard that has been set for victory in Iraq.

Although many of the people in Iraq, and of other pertinent regions of the Middle East, may not sympathize with, or knowingly provide covert support for "evil", "terror", or radical religious beliefs, the United States' military campaign in a sovereign country is likely to inherently breed a new generation of anti-American sentiment, and in turn, materialized, fleshy enemies.

So can the United States conquer evil?  Like communism, it is everywhere, and nowhere at the same time.  Evil can be broadly defined, based on different moral or political views.  If the bar for success in Iraq in not lowered, the "quagmire" of Iraqi occupation may truly expand into that which came to define the latter war between the United States and Vietnam.

Just Like Playing Dominoes

You cannot help but be amazed at how quick the balance of powers could be swayed throughout the world. When you look at the information that has been made accesable to the academic world you can only puzzle at the idea of making some of the choices that our former Presidents made leading up to the post World War 1 and Word War 2 worlds and thusly into the Vietnam War. Its easy to be cynical now and make judgments about what "you" would have done differently, but can we really put ourselves in the shoes of world leaders. Imagine waking up and going to work. Stopping for nothing but your local paper and your too often bitter cup of coffee. Walk into your office and all of sudden BAM!!! "The Soviets are preparing to spread their ideologies, politics and propaganda to the outside world", or as President Truman called it, "internal aggression." What to do, what to do? President Truman vowed to not only not sit back and be a spectator to this offensive but he "pledged the United States to fight it everywhere (Communism)." Again, if you wish to be cynical you could argue that our involvement in the fight against communism led to the deaths of many thousands of soldiers. But what would our world be like now if we did not par take in the worlds then current times??

One after another Countries would fall fate to the ill effects of Communism. Within the matter of years, months, even days the freedoms that we take for granted, the freedoms that our founding fathers and statesmen bleed for would be for naught. Good bye to the days of questioning...anything. Heck, good bye to the days of buying the paper and that bitter cup of coffee before work. We would go from a SuperPower to an after thought. All of a sudden the Soviet Union would become so large that an entire continent would become our adversaries. Thats a frightening thought. One by one Countries would fall to the impeding pressures of the Soviets, almost like Dominoes. Imagine that.....

The Fear of The Dominoes

The question of why the Vietnam War started and got so far, and the reasoning behind America's involvement can be answered in many different ways. Christian G. Appy, author of "Patriots", mentions an interesting point in this war. This is the point where the United State's involvement in the Vietnam War become less of an opportunity to assist their ally (France) and more of an obligation to prevent Communist expansion. Ho Chi Minh's DRV (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) felt they were entitled to govern all of Vietnam due to their defeat of the French in Dien Bien Phu on May of 1945. However a compromise was made because of the fear of Vietnam's complete communist rule drawing the United states to war. Thus the DRV was granted control of North Vietnam. Communists attaining any form of territory maddened the United States. In the late 1940S there was a great amount of fear instilled in the United States by the Cold War. In 1954 a notion known as the "domino theory" was expressed by president Eisenhower in a speech he made.

"You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is certainly that it will go over very quickly"

The question at hand by this point is why would a country like the United States who were considered to be a super power fear a country as insignificant and small as Vietnam (compared to all of the other super powers)? Appy's answer to this is simple. The fear wasn't necessarily with Vietnam itself, but the "chain reaction it might trigger elsewhere". You see Just like dominoes, the United States felt that any conquer or victory Vietnam would receive would have an end result of other countries being inspired by Communism thus attempting the same. The problem with American perspective at this time is that they didn't view the Vietnamese people as the nationalists and anti-colonialists that they were. They were merely viewed and labeled as communist point blank. But the question that is still ever so debatable is : was Ho Chi Minh really a communist or did he identify his political ideologies with those of a non oppressive and non French ideal. After all Minh did try to reach out to the United States.