Why American Military Goals in the Vietnam War Were Unachievable The Vietnam War began as a political conflict between the capitalist South Vietnam and the communist North Vietnam. South Vietnam wished to join the North Vietnamese state to form a single communist nation. (Anderson and Ernst 2014, p. 23). As part of its new containment strategy, the United States was involved in this by providing the South Vietnamese government with weaponry. This strategy was modified to restrain communism's growth and constrict its influence over neighboring states. However, the first American troops were sent to Vietnam in 1965 under the command of President Lyndon Johnson (Whitfield 1996, p. 70). This came as a major mistake and would later lead to the first loss of the war in the American history. The major reason as to why the U.S lost the Vietnam War was predominantly because of the United States government in itself. While the tactics, the morale, the fighting and the troops of the nation played a key role, it was how the United States administration dealt with the circumstances that they found themselves in that determined much on the outcome of the war. Overall, the United States military failed to attain its objectives in the Vietnam War as a result of numerous factors such as role of the media, influence of the anti-war movement, lack of understanding of the Vietnamese context, and the failure of the political will.
To start with, the strategy employed by American forces aimed at defeating the enemy while the enemy fought the traditional way. The Americans drew closer and led the war in a way that was not helpful for winning it or accomplishing the obscure arrangement of points (Borstdorff and Goldzwig 1994, p. 528). No matter how you look at its system, operations and strategies, they neglected to repress the foe and to a great extent, in light of the fact that the American accentuation was on steady loss. Wearing down could not adequately deplete the North Vietnamese with a cost in men and material the US was set up to pay. Moving the war into Laos and Cambodia may have possessed the capacity to cut the lines of correspondence with the rebellion in the south adequately to have an impact. However, it was politically dangerous to do as such on a huge scale. According to Gaddis (1974, p. 391), if the North Vietnamese army used the same approach, they would be overcome with much ease. They were wise as they did not use the same strategy employed by the American forces. The North Vietnamese forces applied the guerrilla war tactics which the American army had little to know about (Borstdorf and Goldzwig 1994, p. 525). This strategy involved hitting and running rather than taking and holding territory with mass military units. The Vietnamese used simple tactics; they used jungle taps which were simple to make because they could not afford high tech arms. Also, they did not wear uniforms thus it was difficult for the American soldiers to identify a Vietnamese soldier. This tactic decreased the probability of Vietnam losing many of their men and equipment in the war.
The Vietnamese tactic was better as they took the fight to the jungle. Carleton ( 1985, p. 68) argues that this was a major challenge to the U.S military as they could not adjust to the climate and terrain. They feared to fight in the jungle. They feared being ambushed, losing their genitals and death. The American used a very much different tactic to the Vietnams. They used a skin burning substance called napalm, helicopters and blanket bombing (Spector 2006, p. 278). This shows how America was advanced in technology in comparison to Vietnam. Their primary objective was to search and destroy an enemy. Despite employing this strategy, at the end of it, all the American troops were defeated. The forest made it difficult to locate the enemy as they feared losing lives because of the traps that were set up by the Vietnamese fighters (Gaddis 1974, p. 387). These traps could cause severe injury and illnesses because they were concealed in animal waste. These traps were inexpensive to make, and they would kill more than two militaries at a time. The American soldiers had a slogan of "search to destroy" while the Vietnamese troops were trained to “hit and run” (Spector 2006, p. 284). These Vietnamese strategies were very effective and played a significant role in defeating the American soldiers. America did not change its strategy until the last few years of the war when an order to withdraw was made before they could implement the plan.
Another issue was to do with the morale. The Vietnamese morale was high as they knew that they had high chances of winning. Also, realizing that the tactics they employed against American forces were bearing fruits further fuelled them (Le Espiritu 2014, p. 55). The North Vietnamese had a clear objective of why they were fighting. They were preventing their nation from American invasion, and being enslaved by the Americans thus, they had resolved to win at any cost. The American forces, on the other hand, were confused about what they were fighting for. Their morale was diminishing as the fighting continued. The only goal they knew they were fighting is “communism” and this did not make sense when compared to the everyday reality of the war. The North Vietnamese soldiers’ tactic of dressing as civilians further dropped the United States soldiers’ morale as they felt like they would not win the war because they were fighting an enemy they could not see (Spector 2006,p. 286). The soldiers became disappointed with the prominence they had previously seen of their nation and the glory of the war. These frustrations led to My Lai massacre where the troops tortured and killed 347 civilians in My Lai village. Their leader was arrested and tried for mass murder. These types of events caused trauma to an average American soldier, raised a more public outcry in the United States and increased the Vietnamese hatred for the Americans. In the end, there was nothing worth celebrating by the Americans after the war.
Additionally, lack of support in South Vietnam affected United States goal. They did not manage to win over the people they were fighting for (theoretically). In view of Page (2016, p. 88), it is America that had installed a corrupt leader over the South Vietnamese. This did not work well with the citizens thus when the war erupted, it was regarded as American fight with the North Vietnamese. The American policy makers did not entirely put into consideration the significance of winning support from the local population (Spector 2006, p. 295). This is contrary to the North Vietnamese policy makers who understood the importance of winning over the local population. They used these people mainly in intelligence gathering and spying. The North Vietnamese followed the wisdom of Sun Tzu who in The Art of War stresses on the importance of intelligence.
The other major problem was to do with deployment issue. Between 1963 and 1973, the United States found itself in a conflict that it was trying to show the sense of it to its people (Kennan 1987, p. 860). There was a widespread rumour about the Gulf of Tonkin incident and whether or not it was a fictitious event. The indication in the Vietnam papers was that “this was an effort to fabricate a case for war. In any case, it was unclear to tell the aims of the war. The United States wanted to react to increasing tensions between the South and North Vietnam by threatening the north with its military might (Spector 2006, p. 280). It was unfortunate that this plan did not work. Deploying millions of personnel was not helpful, and dropping the bombs much more than the bombs dropped in the first and the Second World War and Korea combined, did not bring forth the preferred effect (Borstdorff and Goldzwig 1994, p. 513). Gratitude to the creation of demilitarized zone between South and North Vietnam and the established rules of engagement, this forbade invasion of the north by the American forces. Major armed targets were frequently off limits, and the moment things became worse, North Vietnam came back to the treaty table to settle the issues with South Vietnam. Within this structure, the American forces did not have a clear policy for victory. They were fundamentally involved in a political war with the anticipation of achieving a stalemate.
Consequently, another big problem was at home. Being the first fight to be aired on television, United States was troubled by the media, demoralizing images of napalm girl and self-immolating monk reached the American shores for the first time (Nguyen 2012, p. 53). Werner and Huynh( 1994, p. 77) explains that a New York Times journalist, Harrison Salisbury, went to Vietnam and was, later on, denied Pulitzer's prize as a consequence. The magazines kept on changing their opinion about the war thus affecting public notion. Dead bodies of both the Vietnamese and soldiers were shown on television; whereas the ex-soldiers like Simpson and Parks were describing the horrors they had witnessed (Anderson and Ernst 2014, p. 29). The My Lai report caused a major shock in the United States as it was announced 18 months after the incident occurred, 50 percent of the Americans refused to believe the story (Whitfield 1996,p. 22). After the leakage of Pentagon papers by 1971, there was a fall in public approval to 30 percent. Johnson could not stand for re-election due to this public disapproval. The Fulbright hearing that featured John Kerry along with the International War Crimes Tribunal did not help the cause.
The media contributed much to this downward spiral in public opinion, and as a result, there were widespread public protests. The cost of the war was 66 million dollars a day; this angered both black-rights and Wall Street leaders who had hope for change (Carleton 1985, p. 60). One activist argued that the blacks were fighting for the freedom they did not have themselves while another activist too suggested that they were fighting in Mississippi as an unequal figure of blacks were strained by the draw mobilization. According to Nguyen (2012, p. 70), about nine thousand, one hundred and eighteen men, including Mohammad Ali faced prosecution for tearing their draft letters. The Peace Moratorium of 1969 saw over a million of people protesting nationwide because of anger over the use of chemical weapons (Gaddis 1974, p. 398). The women too were not left back; they became consistent in turning up at the White House every Sunday for two hours throughout eight year period (Kennan 1987, p. 854). This is because they had seen their children in coffins on the television. The veterans’ opinions against the war and the act of many soldiers giving up with the War further fuelled these emotions (Whitfield 1996,p. 85). Nguyen (2012, p. 90) argues that this public perception had to force those campaigning to replace Johnson to promise peace, even if America could win the war, the public opinion about the whole matter had become cynical.
Soldiers were throwing away their medals and veterans speaking against the war only fuelled this sentiment. In 1970, on the 4th May, four students were killed at Kent State University in a protest against the war, after the State Guard had been called in (Whitfield 1996,p. 112). The Governor of Texas labelled the dead as 'Communists,' even though they were indirectly caught up in the demonstrations; this was the first time since WW1 that a Western nation had killed its citizens for protesting. All of a sudden, America's message of freedom and democracy had failed in its backyard (Carleton 1985, p. 80). This public perception, as said earlier, meant that those standing for election to replace Johnson had to promise peace, and assisted by the media, while a military victory was possible, the United States had lost the battle of morals with its people.
Moreover, before the events that took place in Kent Ville in 1970, Johnson had acquiescent, and was replaced by Nixon in 1961. He knew that he would face the opposition of not winning the war and also continuing with the war. After taking over, Nixon announced in 1970 that the American militaries had arrived in Cambodia which was a neutral land ((Spector 2006, p. 281). He said that this was the only option left for them to rescind the socialist bases that were used by the North Vietnamese forces. Many people believed that this was a lie thus leading to the widespread protest as explained in the above paragraph (Gaddis 1974, p. 402). This was the first major force towards President Nixon’s resignation.
There was the first publication of Pentagon Papers in the New York Times in 1971. These were top secret documents compiled by a Pentagon employee, Daniel Ellsberg in 1971. This paper consisted of all information and analysis about the Vietnam War (Whitfield 1996, p.35). It put clear on how the United States had lied and hidden happenings in Vietnam. The document also mentioned that the American administration had not comprehended what transpired. Ellsberg became an opponent of the war in 1969 for his reasons (Carleton 1985, p. 68). He was secretly photocopying the document which he passed to the New York Times; it was later published in 1971. This made Nixon conclude that he would try to prevent those papers from being published and prosecute Ellsberg for conspiracy and theft (Werner and Huynh 1994, p. 48). Nevertheless, the Supreme Court cleared that publication of those papers was not illegal, and so the process was allowed to continue. All the charges against Ellsberg were dropped in 1973 since Nixon had used illegal means to acquire evidence against him Werner, J., and Huynh, L.D., (1994) (Werner and Huynh 1994, p. 80). This information that was given out to the public, even though had nothing to do with him, it gave him pressure. This increased pressure upon him forced him into resignation in 1974. It was during Nixon’s tenure that the truth about the Vietnam War was told to the world.
Adding on the above reasons, there was a draft that the United States was forced to institute so as to mobilize the manpower that it needed to preserve their presence. This caused a repercussion in the United States as these deployment tours of a single year were more ineffective (Carleton 1985, p. 34). Whereas it is probable that these longer tours would have led to more resistance and diminishing confidence, a one year tour had the result of taking men off the frontage lines just as they were becoming familiar with the war (Spector 2006, p.274). During all this tour time the draftees were counting down days and praying that they do not get killed or injured before finishing their tour. Lastly, Carleton (1985, p. 80) points out that there is the fact that the American M-16 Assault Rifle was undergoing the first test where it encountered reliability problems in early models while on the other side, the North Vietnamese fighters were using the tried and approved Ak-47 which is a more reliable weapon ever made.
In conclusion, the United States military failed to attain its objectives in the Vietnam War as a result of numerous factors such as role of the media, influence of the anti-war movement, lack of understanding of the Vietnamese context, and the failure of the political will. Although the tactics, the morale, the fighting and the troops of both sides in Vietnam played a big part, it was how the United States government dealt with the situations that they found themselves in that determined much on the outcome of the war. It would be of benefit on the United States side if they could know the thing they were getting involved in. The release of Pentagon Papers to the public served a significant blow to the United States as it increased the public outcry, exerting more pressure on the government. Without the public backing, the American government had to admit to defeat secretly.
References
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