"Nixon has ended the war, because you don't see the war on the tube any more. So the war has ended, though we are bombing the hell out of those poor people, more than ever." Lieutenant William Calley, testifying at Court-Martial in defense of his actions in My Lai, that not only is Nixon (the government) hiding the truth of the war from the general public, but he is continuing to bomb Vietnam, "more than ever." During the My Lai massacre between 400 and 500 unarmed civilians, Some of the women were gang-raped and their bodies mutilated, which makes it that much more obvious that not only was this a case of extreme social injustice but intolerance as well.
The Vietnam war was primarily a consequence of the Cold War, but had many smaller components that escalated it faster. The US slowly made its way into the war between 1950 and 1965, creeping into the action from the sideline. The US considered the National Liberation Front and the government of North Vietnam (led by Ho Chi Minh) to be their main enemy in Vietnam, so any action taken by either party was considered an act of war. When President Kennedy sent 400 Special Operations Forces-trained (Green Beret) soldiers to South Vietnam to teach the soldiers how to fight, he turned a point in the war, and also started a counterinsurgency war against Communism in South Vietnam. In August 1964 President Lyndon B Johnson made a functional declaration of war, committing the United States fully to the war. In February and March 1965, President Johnson authorized the bombing of Vietnamese targets north of the 17th parallel, as well as dispatching 3,500 marines to south Vietnam, marking the point of no return for the US in the Vietnam War.
In 1949, when the Communist Party came to power in China, some in Washington came to fear that Vietnam would become the next “Asian Domino,” which heavily influenced Truman's decision to give aid to the French who were fighting the Vietminh. He also hoped that assisting the French in Vietnam would help the nations on the sideline that were developed, but untouched or uncontrolled by communism.
The Vietnam War could be considered one of the longest wars the US has ever been involved in, lasting from December 1956 to April 1975. While President Johnson was the one who ordered America's first true combatants to take part in the war, Nixon closed the bloodshed, even if he hid the true brutality of it from the general public. Through decades of attempting to resolve the problem, billions of dollars, 60,00 american lives, and a vietnamese death count of 882,000, the US failed to achieve their objective. A Major factor that influenced the US's’ failure was the governments lack of support, although as singular presidential candidates Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy received broad support.
Anti war efforts in 1965 were minimal at the start of the war, and hidden deep in the inner pages of the newspaper, so public opinion on the governments actions on foreign soil against foreign powers didn’t turn downhill until later in the war, when the government couldn't fully hide the bloodshed from its people.
Due To the war not being fought between conventional army forces, it was hard to identify the enemy. The Viet Cong masked themselves with the general population and hid behind the neutral people so they could attack by ambush and catch American Forces by surprise. The US responded with large scale bombing campaigns, most of them landing on target, but they still failed in making the North Vietnamese surrender.
While only a minor percentage of Americans felt the government was ill intended, many suggested it was time to pull out and cut the losses. In January 1973 Nixon signed a ceasefire, ending all hostilities in Vietnam, which in turn allowed the Northern Vietnamese to overrun the south and unite them as a communist nation in 1975.
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