VIETNAM WAR The fervent accolades that have greeted the veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan have changed the atmosphere for all veterans, including those who served in Vietnam. Oh, I think that if you consider the Holocaust or the slaughters at the time of Indian partition, you might find things more horrible. [21] David Halberstam,The Powers that Be, (New York: Knopf, 1975): p. 514, [23]Mark Depu,Vietnam War: The Individual Rotation Policy (History Net). That we bombed and defoliated ruthlessly? Three decades after the last U.S. troops left what was then South Vietnam, the 10-year conflict that included Laos and Cambodia remains at once a lesson, a caution, and for some, a specter. Attitudes Toward Vietnam WebAmerican Views on the Vietnam War The Vietnam War was a period of American involvement in Southeast Asia from 1961-1975 in which U.S. troops fought to try to stop communist North Vietnam and its allies from overtaking South Vietnam. Historical skills (organizing information chronologically, explaining historical issues, locating sources and investigate materials, synthesizing and evaluating evidence, and developing arguments and interpretations based on evidence) are used by an analytical thinker to create a historical construction. Poll numbers began reflecting an erosion of support that had held up for three years of a growing American war, even as anti-war demonstrations increased in size and intensity in the U.S. Across most of South Vietnam, the communist attacks were quickly repulsed, cities and towns re-taken in days, killing tens of thousands of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. NVA and VC activity had been on a steady decline since mid-1967 and American military analysts believed that it meant that the communists were rapidly running out of men and material. The experience of the First World War clearly changed attitudes towards war in the developed world. Your email address will not be published. Overview They struggled to uphold their dignity and autonomy. First came the heroic time, when the ground troops the United States first sent in 1965 were seen as saving the Vietnamese. Then the appraisal shifted, as the fighting dragged on inconclusively and drafted teen-agers were propelled into villages and rural areas where they had trouble differentiating between Vietcong guerrillas and civilians who were just trying to survive. Webthe interminable bloodbath of Vietnam, and because of it, the great changes of the war's decade were ones of sensibility, awareness, and attitudes, not of institutions. In 1969, Seymour Hersh broke the story of the massacre in the village of My Lai the year before, when a U.S. Army company that had lost a fifth of its men was sent in search of Vietcong and, finding none, rounded up hundreds of old men, women, and children, herded many of them into a ditch, and slaughtered them. 1 (1979): p. 29 [JSTOR]. Those who were not disabled in combat received, as the Veterans Administration today describes it, little more than a $60 allowance and a train ticket home. Some outside research will be necessary. Initially, US citizens strongly supported the idea that it was not a mistake to fight in Vietnam. Yet from a public opinion standpoint, the Tet Offensive was a complete disaster for the United States. The most dramatic was an assault on the compound of the U.S. Embassy in the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon. Military analysts soon discovered that Tet was part of an extremely predictable yearly pattern of communist activity, and subsequentoffensives in the following years continued to grow weaker, but it was too late. What most undermined support for the war was simply the level of American casualties: the greater the increase in casualties, the lower the level of public support for the war. The result was Operation Moose (Move Out of Saigon Expeditiously), implemented mostly during 1967. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. Please add some widgets by going to. Vietnam This unit was created by Eden Heller, Haverford Hurford Center for Arts and Humanities summer intern. Television film footage of the assault was shipped by plane to Asian cities where it was processed and then transmitted by satellite to the New York headquarters of the three networks. The government most likely knew about these dangers. As you know, anti-war sentiment was widely prevalent among our armed forces both during and after service, and was certainly a factor in bringing the war to a close. By searching for virtue among its veterans, America finds some relief from its shame. Although the start of the Tet Offensive itself began to cause public opinion to waver, the final nail in the coffin came on the evening of February 27th, 1968. Changing Attitudes towards War: The Impact How Not to Win Hearts and Minds The exodus left around 7,900 American soldiers in the city. Having recently returned home from on-site reporting in Vietnam, Walter Cronkite closed out the nightly CBS news report with the following words: Walter Cronkite was probably the most trusted man in the country, said Melissa Woodbury, When he became convinced that the war was unwinnable and said it, that had a huge impact on his viewers[15] lots of people rethought[16], By November 1968, public support for withdrawal rose from 10% to 19% and public support for escalation dropped from 55% to 34%. As the ranks of those who were adult enough to remember the misdeeds in Vietnam grow smaller, todays teachers, editors, writers, and filmmakers rely increasingly on others memories, competing histories, and wishful thinking. Ronald H. Spector is Professor of History and International Affairs in the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. What most undermined support for the war was simply the level of American casualties: the greater the increase in casualties, the lower the level of public support for the war. Prior to that time, the number of American newsmen in Indochina had been smallfewer than two dozen even as late as 1964. For Melissa Woodbury, a Democrat with a political activist streak just coming out of college at the time, her own sentiment echoes the countrys memory:I still feel very strongly about the war It informed a lot of my thinking, it changed this country, not necessarily for the better I would like to be able to trust the government and have faith in my electedofficials I would like to have fact be recognized as fact, but somehow weve lost all that.[2] Yet, despite the almost universally negative outlook America shares on the Vietnam War today, public opinion at the time was far more conflicted, with most of the nation supporting both the war and its escalation in the early years while the rising popularity of TV news broadcasts continued to muddy the waters throughout the wars duration. To this day, the Vietnam War remains a strong memory in the American psyche. Changing attitudes about benefits: The World Wars to Vietnam WWI veterans received minimal benefits from the government. I still have strong feeling obviously, about the war. Email: pinskerm@dickinson.edu Another View of Vietnam Veterans [11]Interview with Melissa Woodbury, conducted via Skype, March 25, 2017. Yes, to me (who served in Vietnam with the US Army for 11 months in 1970) it seemed like an utter waste of time and resources. Having been recently married to Ronald Woodbury in 1965 after finishing school at Mount Holyoke College, Vietnam quickly became a common subject of discussion: I was in college from 62-65 and the big push hadnt really started so [my husband, Ronald] and I talked about it a lot. It ended with the election of Richard M. Nixon as president of the United States and a spacecraft circling the moon as American astronauts invoked Scripture. President Lyndon B. Johnson listens to a tape sent by Captain Charles Robb, LBJs son-in-law, from Vietnam, while sitting in the White House Cabinet Room, July 31, 1968.Photo by REUTERS/Courtesy LBJ Library. Casualties: A follow-up, (Analysis Report, May, 1969), 16-17. Tragically, American actions encouraged dependency in a nation whose independence it sought to sustain. Conflict and cooperation among social groups, organizations, and nation-states are critical to comprehending society in the United States. or is it saying that the south fought the north with america or did america never ally with the south of vietnam? Thousands of G.I.s moved to base camps outside the city (where the prostitutes soon followed), some joking that they had been Moosed. Saigon was also declared off limits for R & R. The pace was sufficiently slow that the operation was unofficially tagged Goose (Get Out of Saigon Eventually). We are in a mood to hail the military. Its response would eventually change how the media covered war and how Americans perceive it. Direct link to Carla Cristina Almeida's post I have a question about t, Posted 6 years ago. May 2, 2015. There were no waiting crowds or bands at the airport for the Vietnam guys, Wright told me recently. Webpresidential election, close to half of the electorate cited the Vietnam War as the most important problem facing the country (Converse et al., 1969). Is there honor in a losing battle? Patriotic yearning, grief, pride, and a sense of sin coexist there, as they do in the country at large. Some claimed that America dispensed aid as though it were being given to a beggar., Most of all, many South Vietnamese resented their dependence on their ally and its suffocating presence in their lives. Given the frustrations and failures and mounting casualties of the American war effort, atrocities were perhaps only a matter of time. Through the years, our varied ways of thinking about the Americans who fought that war, which ended ignominiously forty years ago this week, have been characterized by tension between a sense of virtue and a sense of shame. year deployment rule that was instated for draftees to try and improve public opinion did little more than to force the expansion of the draft and increase casualties, as the ranks of the military were flooded with inexperienced, green troops (40% of American deaths were men who were on their first three months in country compared to the 6% who were on their last three). On Feb. 22, CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite, back from a reporting trip to Vietnam, pronounced the war a stalemate and said it was time to negotiate an end. Everyone had made mistakes, in any situation I don't think it could've gone "better".
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