America's Involvement in the Vietnam War: Why?

[vansmith]

That's a good thing, democracies cannot pursue wars that are an electoral liability. Sometimes that makes them appear weak, just look at appeasement in the 1930s and the appeasement Putin has got over Ukraine (although now he really has gone too far and is now like the naughty child who has broken his parents vase - he hopes that if he does nothing or just blames the dog, he'll get away with it).

I'd argue that this might be too broad a generalization. The Russian government has successfully mobilized their population (as least as far as Canadian media portrays it) and it's very much a democracy (it might have its faults but so do all democracies). In a very different sense, a war can be unpopular and still continue unabated. In doing some research, it looks as if public support for the Vietnam War dipped below 50% in July of 1967. It looks as if the president at the time wasn't re-elected in 1968 and his successor was re-elected in 1972 despite the fact that the U.S. was still involved in the war until 1973. What I'm trying to get at is that although war can push people out of office, it doesn't always do so.

Aside note: Wikipedia seems to suggest that Canada's involvement in the Vietnam War is mired in debate. I can tell you that's just wrong (Canada couldn't have been less interested in that war). The fact that the Vietnam War doesn't even register as a footnote in history classrooms speaks to that.

 

[MacInWin]

The fact that the Vietnam War doesn't even register as a footnote in history classrooms speaks to that.

I can't speak to Canada's involvement but the fact that it isn't brought up in school is only a reflection of the school system agenda, not the lack of interest at the time.

As far as democracies and war, the bottom line is that wars tend to be unpopular unless clear progress toward a victory is visible to the populace. In Vietnam the philosophy was for the military to control the media, much as it had in WW2 and Korea. But that didn't work as well because the media was becoming more and more ubiquitous and demanding. The press became hostile to the military, and eventually that led the military to be even more secretive. The environment then led to the press coloring what they reported and becoming slanted against the military, leading, in part, to the degradation of the public opinion of and support for the war.

By the time the Iraq incursions occurred, the US Military had decided to embrace the media and allow media correspondents to be embedded with military units and to give a very much more free hand to what they broadcast. That change in approach started to heal a breach between media and military that had developed over the years. As a result, today's populace routinely goes up to warriors in uniform and thank them for their service. When I came back from Vietnam, I was advised NOT to wear my uniform anywhere in public to avoid being spat on (or worse). It wasn't until less than a decade ago that anyone ever said to me, "Thanks for your service." It's good to see our country growing up in that regard. Soldiers do soldiering at the behest of political leadership. As a citizen, it's ok to vilify the politicians who called for the war, but not to vilify or demonize the warriors who end up at the pointy end of the spear.

 

[Slydude]

@ MacInWin The Tet Offensive is a great example of what I said earlier about public perception being way off. I count myself among that group when it comes to the Tet Offensive. Until recently when I started looking at some aspects of the war in greater detail, I thought the Tet Offensive had been a victory for the NVA.

 

[vansmith]

I can't speak to Canada's involvement but the fact that it isn't brought up in school is only a reflection of the school system agenda, not the lack of interest at the time.

Not really though; implying that this is part of an agenda assumes that it's an important story to tell . The Vietnam War is not part of any historical narrative here aside from the recognition that draft dodgers came here. Indeed, I don't think I've ever heard of anyone talk about the Vietnam War here unless it was about one of the countries involved. However, people may very well have talked about when it was occurring (it's before my time) but they don't anymore since there's no legacy or national involvement to talk about. All in all, It would be like teachers in the U.S. talking about the King-Byng Affair.

As far as democracies and war, the bottom line is that wars tend to be unpopular unless clear progress toward a victory is visible to the populace. In Vietnam the philosophy was for the military to control the media, much as it had in WW2 and Korea. But that didn't work as well because the media was becoming more and more ubiquitous and demanding. The press became hostile to the military, and eventually that led the military to be even more secretive. The environment then led to the press coloring what they reported and becoming slanted against the military, leading, in part, to the degradation of the public opinion of and support for the war.

I think this is a great point. The media has tremendous capacity to shape perceptions. In fact, you can see it right now in any debate that comes up about the Israeli offensive in Gaza (the news outlet you consult likely paints a different one than another).

 

[MacInWin]

Well, according to that impeccable source Wikipedia, Canada didn't send any official troops, but about 30,000 Canadians volunteered to fight there in the US services. One even won the US Medal of Honor after he immigrated to the US officially. Given how Canada was often a go-between for the US and North Vietnam, it's surprising it's not covered more in schools. Canada's role was also important in the beginning, before the war started, to try to prevent it happening. I'd say the lack of teaching it is either an "agenda" or at least "unfortunate" if they run out of time at the end of the year in history classes.

 

[MacInWin]

@ MacInWin The Tet Offensive is a great example of what I said earlier about public perception being way off. I count myself among that group when it comes to the Tet Offensive. Until recently when I started looking at some aspects of the war in greater detail, I thought the Tet Offensive had been a victory for the NVA.

Yep! I was in the service at the time and was getting intelligence briefings on what was going on. Military estimates gave NVA about 6 weeks to go before total collapse. We were totally stunned when Johnson stopped the bombing and allowed them to rebuild. The Rules of Engagement were really stupid. Basically, the military was not allowed to prosecute the war to the fullest at any time during the conflict, so we ended up looking weak and ineffectual. If Johnson had hung on for two months, the war would have ended in 1968 or 1969 with the South being fully established and the North curtailed, if not eliminated and unified to the South. The VC would have shriveled and disappeared.

One of my studies as a warrior disclosed that Clausewitz wrote that famous line that "War is the continuation of politics by other means." Unfortunately, politicians also want to meddle in warfare and have a tendency to stop warriors before the war is actually over. When they do that, too often the issues that triggered the war are left still festering and can lead to more conflict later. Word to politicians: If you WANT the military to take over, you must stand aside and let them do what they do best. When they are done and the objectives you set are achieved, they will turn to you to ask, "What's next?" and you can THEN tell them to rest. Not before.

 

[vansmith]

Well, according to that impeccable source Wikipedia, Canada didn't send any official troops, but about 30,000 Canadians volunteered to fight there in the US services.

Ah, that's an important distinction. The Canadian government did not sanction this nor did it support it. That's not Canadian history, that's just the experience of 30,000 Canadians who moved to the U.S.

If we put that into context, it makes more sense why it's not much more than a footnote. Thinking about numbers of people, that's quite a small number of people especially when you consider that between 1986 and 2012 (a 26 year period), nearly 400,000 Canadians emigrated to the United States (source). For the 20 years that the Vietnam War occurred, only 30,000 went to the U.S. to fight. So, for the former period, on average, 15,400 Canadians moved to the U.S. for whatever reason. During the Vietnam War, 1,500 per year for the purposes of fighting. I realize those are two different time periods and two different contexts but it does help to show just how insignificant (politically and demographically) that population is, especially since they left Canada to fight a war that Canadians had no investment in. This is not to downplay the significance of the war in the record of 20th century history but rather to contextualize why that part of history doesn't register here.

I'd say the lack of teaching it is either an "agenda" or at least "unfortunate" if they run out of time at the end of the year in history classes.

I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree. As it is no part of any Canadian government policy, social history (the 30,000 Canadians who emigrated are then Americans, not Canadian) or political discourse, it's hard to make a case for it in a curriculum that is already loaded with content that has specific relevance to the Canadian context.

 

[MacInWin]

vansmith, I guess we'll agree to disagree. Not all Canadians who entered the US services became Americans as that is not a requirement of the services here. And not all of them stayed here after their service was over. As for dismissing the Canadian involvement, you really ought to read the wikipedia article to see how involved Canada really was in South East Asia throughout the period. Certainly Canada was not as invested in it as was the US, but it's still history, and Canada did play a part in the region even before the US got involved.

 

[vansmith]

Certainly Canada was not as invested in it as was the US, but it's still history, and Canada did play a part in the region even before the US got involved.

They certainly were involved but not in a way that is any more important than anything else in a history curriculum that's already packed. In such a limited time period, you have to make choices about what you cover and Vietnam doesn't often make the cut (other than pointing out how ostensibly great we were in taking in draft dodgers which is nothing more than unwarranted self-congratulatory nationalism).

Vietnam also lacks what many history education scholars note as common goal in most historical narrativization in schools: nation building. Vietnam isn't important in the building of nationalism in Canada, certainly not to the extent that WW1 and WW2 are/were which explains why those wars get beaten to death in history curricula.

Again, it's not that it isn't important but you'd have a hard time selling Vietnam as necessary for a Canadian history course.

 

[CarolJV123]

Some additional imporatant historical information.

America and other allies aided South Vietnam against the communist North in the Vietnam war (1954 to 1975). From what I have briefly read and been told was the logic for America's involvement was it was apprehensive Vietnam will consequently form with China and USSR to form a super-power communist allegiance posing a threat to the United States. My question is how?

How does a group of communist countries pose a threat to a capitalist nation? I could visualize if it was religion vs religion may amount to war but communist vs capitalism, how does that pose sufficient threats to risk your countrymen's lives and to spend $738 billion on the war? They can justify that amount of money and domestic casualties if they were to send men in outer space to stop an Armageddon astroid but to go to war to change the economic system of another country because in 'theory' they will be 'teamed up upon' does not make sense to me.

Eventually America withdrew its' troops and my guess is the North Vietnamese took over the country. Was and is there any conflict or threats between America and Vietnam after the war? My presumption is 'no'. Thus, there would be no difference if America did not go to war because there are no threats whatsoever. On the other hand, since I do not understand this, I believe I could have missed a lot of information out on why USA went to war.

The answers here are good however there are a few important facts
left out in answer to this question. It wasn't just that the U.S. wished to contain Communism. Although this is true an actual doctrine was signed by the U.S. and other non Communist countries called "The Truman Doctrine" that promised to help contain the spread of Communism. Add to that the South Vietnamese government ASKED the U.S. to help in their fight against the North Vietnamese and the U.S. obviously agreed. This wasn't just the U.S. bullying around other countries or sticking their collective noses in where it didn't belong. There was a doctrine in place that the U.S. was very much a part of along with the fact the South Vietnamese government asked us to help.

 

[McTwirly]

Important in light of current events with immigration is the damage caused in Guatemala, for example, by our kneejerk reaction Domino Theory interventions. We sent the CIA in to "rid the country" of an elected leader who was thought to be tied to Communism. Afterwards the CIA went back in to find the smoking gun - there was none. We effectively got rid of arguably the least corrupt (and non-Communist) leader the country had ever had. A 30 year war ensued. The fallout from that war is a culture of violence and corruption today. To be thorough, we were also protecting the interests of United Fruit Company, owned by the brother of the U.S. Secretary of State at the time. This is a short read and well worth a few minutes if you are interested in the Domino Theory and its outcomes: 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[sullij]

Vietnam

I'm never sure how this discussion started; however, as a Vietnam Vet, I am amazed at the content. For those who where not there I'd suggest "What it's like to go to war" by Karl Marlantes.

The one lesson which I learned early is that wars are justified by the high level concepts such as ideology and religion; although, there are significant reasons such as economics and politics which drive major decisions. That is true for any conflict, Iraq and Afghanistan come to mind.

I hope that our leaders listen better, understand the consequences and don't play with the lives of soldiers like they are chess pieces. I suspect that future wars will be closer to Video games with an unreal sense of what is happening in the field, where the target is a "bad" guy since he is "..in the target area"

I guess I shouldn't have watched "Sum of All Fear" last night.

 

[Nomad127]

Don't fool yourself into the belief that you understand the history of the thing. The US agreed to let the country vote as to what would happen... such as unification. When it looked like that might happen, unification, the US made sure the vote, by the people, never happened. No one has pointed out that the Bay of Tonkin incident, which started the war, was a lie, just like the one that took us into a war with Iraq! Finally, some of us LIVED through that history, it is much more that history to us! The truth is that the war was fought for the resources of the area, so that they might belong to the capitalists, and not the communists! PERIOD! The rest is propaganda.

 

[vansmith]

Don't fool yourself into the belief that you understand the history of the thing. [...] The truth is that the war was fought for the resources of the area, so that they might belong to the capitalists, and not the communists! PERIOD! The rest is propaganda.

This isn't how history works though. There is no one true narrative, no right way of telling what happened since it is very much a subjective enterprise. There's a reason that people keep re-reading the events of the past to make sense of the present. Beyond that, you've provided no evidence that the war was about resources and in so doing, a claim of propaganda could just as easily be levied against your historical understanding.

 

[soctrang65]

Politicians lost that war

Another question I always had was 'how could the USA lose the war?' Obviously, they could win by nuking the entire north. They probably chose not to due to morality issues, I don't know. Instead, they sent their troops in the jungles to do the nitty gritty work. As I have heard, there were frequent ambushes and the old saying goes 'you cannot kill an enemy you cannot see'. Hence, they lost the war in that regard. Nevertheless, how did they lose to North Vietnam while succeeding in other wars like Iraq?

The subject says it all. North Vietnamese General Giap said as much years after the war. The North Vietnamese were ready to throw in the towel, then Ted Kennedy et al started pushing for withdrawal and defunded the operations, that, along with the Walter Cronkites and Dan Rathers faulty reporting breathed new life into the enemy . The North Vietnamese were good fighters and took an ungodly number of casualties, and deserve credit for their efforts, but they were backed up to their goal line and the U.S. was first and goal, until the traitorous *******s in Congress and the news media sold us down the river along with those locals who supported us who were subsequently butchered after the NVA rolled into Saigon. Look at the statistics of Tet 68 if you want to know the beating they took in that endeavor. Compare that with Cronkite and Rather's reporting.

 

[soctrang65]

I was there in the air war. Flew off carriers on both Delta station (south) and Yankee station (North). There were huge areas of the country that were off-limits to bombing. Guess where the NV stored equipment and ammo? Also, we would see ships approaching Haiphong harbor loaded with equipment, but because they carried foreign flags, we could not attack them there, we had to wait until the stuff was off the ships and exited the off-limits areas. We finally decided to mine Haiphong harbor, which started to choke off the North. The rail line to China was totally destroyed and the major roads were as well, so the North was slowly being strangled for everything. Kissinger gave it all away in Paris when we were within 5-6 weeks of them having to surrender or starve. Frustrating for those of us there at the time.

You're absolutely right, NVA General Giap said as much years after they war. The Russians referred to people like Ted Kennedy, Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather as "useful idiots." They proved it during the Vietnam war.

 

[Yodrak]

Interesting thread. To me it seems like only yesterday that I lived through it, so it comes as something of a shock to find our how uninformed the current generation is.

 

[Duff49]

Politicians always make a mess of it - Johnson halted the bombing just before the election. Was this to save the Dems ?
I was in Phila watching a compaign rally for Humphry fall 68. The protestor's were overwhelming his speach.
Nixon Then escalated bobming the ** Chi Minh trail along with Cambodia and laos. Was this for Nixon
to become the hero ? It didn't work. Then Nixon decided to completely pull out. Was this his "I'll bring the boy home" promise ?

I was standing in formation Fort Ord Oct 1969 hearing orders read off for Vietnam. When it was done with a lot
of guys pissing thier pants, an announce was made "All orders have been cancled untill furter notice". We
were all standing there feeling like we were in a time warp.

 

[soctrang65]

Yep! I was in the service at the time and was getting intelligence briefings on what was going on. Military estimates gave NVA about 6 weeks to go before total collapse. We were totally stunned when Johnson stopped the bombing and allowed them to rebuild. The Rules of Engagement were really stupid. Basically, the military was not allowed to prosecute the war to the fullest at any time during the conflict, so we ended up looking weak and ineffectual. If Johnson had hung on for two months, the war would have ended in 1968 or 1969 with the South being fully established and the North curtailed, if not eliminated and unified to the South. The VC would have shriveled and disappeared.

One of my studies as a warrior disclosed that Clausewitz wrote that famous line that "War is the continuation of politics by other means." Unfortunately, politicians also want to meddle in warfare and have a tendency to stop warriors before the war is actually over. When they do that, too often the issues that triggered the war are left still festering and can lead to more conflict later. Word to politicians: If you WANT the military to take over, you must stand aside and let them do what they do best. When they are done and the objectives you set are achieved, they will turn to you to ask, "What's next?" and you can THEN tell them to rest. Not before.

I fund it ironic that the guy (Johnson) who started the build up in earnest with his phony Gulf of Tonkin Resolution is the same guy who pulled the plug when victory was at hand.

 

[mmesford]

Economic impact

Geopolitical arguments can be made, for or against various wars. But a complete and honest discussion has to include the outrageous profits made by private companies and the motivation this creates to encourage war through lobbying and other politically corrupt means. Brown & Root was a construction firm based in Houston during the Vietnam war. They received no-bid contracts to build military infrastructure in South Vietnam that were incredibly profitable. They are connected to Halliburton, the main recipient for similar no-bid contracts during the Iraqi war.