The CIA conducted a covert propaganda campaign aimed at convincing the Catholic minority in the north that they would face harsh repression under the Hanoi government.
There was a real basis for the fear, although Hurricane katrina dissertation was no government vendetta against Catholics. In Decemberthe Hanoi government implemented an extensive land reform program that resulted in excessive violence.
American History
Navy ships transporting more than one-third of them. The refugee crisis served U. Hanoi residents welcomed returning Viet Minh vets, Oct. His american history x essay questions book, Deliver Us From Evilcontained hair-raising stories of atrocities american history x essay questions committed by communists. I used to see that guy every day. He was no more a victim of Communist torture than I was.
He was a simple beggar who probably was born that way. Never once did he ever hint that the Viet Minh had tortured him.
The Vietnam War
To lead the new government, the administration chose Ngo Dinh Diem, a Catholic and anti-communist with nationalist credentials. Born inDiem attended the French-run School of Public Administration and Law in Hanoi and was appointed governor of the southern province of Binh Thuan inwhere he helped suppress communist agitation.
He served briefly as interior minister under Emperor Bao Dai but resigned in american history x essay questions his proposals for political reform were rejected. For the next ten years, he lived as a private citizen in Hue.
Harassed by the Viet Minh thereafter, he left the country in and lived in the United States for the next four years, making influential contacts and building support for his return. Diem american history x essay questions to Vietnam in June, just before the Geneva Agreements were signed. Another brother, Ngo Dinh Can, was virtual ruler of the Annam region.
A fourth brother, Ngo Dinh Luyen, became an ambassador. Three family members served in the first cabinet and two in-laws held key positions as Secretary of State and Assistant Secretary for National Defense. Family relations typically extended north and south. Moreover, seveninformatica.000webhostapp.com the south as well as the north, most regarded the communist-led Viet Minh as great patriots, having fought and sacrificed to end French rule.
From tothe Diem government received half a billion dollars, more than 60 percent for military purposes. In FebruaryAmerican advisers began arriving to train South Vietnamese army troops. The proposition was reportedly approved by On October 26, Diem officially proclaimed the existence of the Republic of Vietnam and declared himself president.
According to Joseph Buttinger, a former Diem adviser who became disillusioned with the regime, between 20, and 30, former Viet Minh cadre were put into prison camps. Once identified, their homes were raided and many were sent to prison to face torture and possible execution. With his government established, Diem withdrew South Vietnam from the French Union, thereby completing the transition from French to American control.
Having created the formal structures of democracy at the state level, Diem set out to undermine real democracy at the local level. Inhe abolished village elections for municipal councils, fearing that a large number of Viet Minh would win office. The elected officials were replaced by Saigon appointees.
This was a devastating change to many Vietnamese, as it ended some years of traditional administrative authority of villages, which even under the French had enjoyed autonomy in most american history x essay questions civil matters, such as disputes, taxation, and managing public funds.
The month of July passed without national unification elections. Diem justified his refusal to hold them by asserting that there could be no free elections in the north and therefore he was under no obligation to hold them in the south. In reality, Ho Chi Minh and the DRV were eager to hold elections and appealed to the Diem government for consultation on the matter for four years. Opposition candidates risked arrest for trying to form unauthorized parties.
Vietnamese farmers transplanting rice photo by John Dominis One of the underlying causes of popular resistance to the government was its land transfer program, which effectively reversed the land redistribution achieved by the Viet Minh by not recognizing titles conferred by Viet Minh authorities. Government agents were furthermore perceived as american history x essay questions and unconcerned with the well-being of the people.
By[it] was virtually inoperative. Those relatively few farmers who did benefit from the program were most often than not northerners, refugees, Catholics … so that land reform added to the aura of favoritism which deepened peasant alienation…. Tensions were further aggravated by rumors of corruption, and the widespread allegation that the Diem family itself had become enriched through manipulation of land transfers. Diem responded by dispatching his security forces to search, interrogate, and raid disobedient villages, resulting in arrests, torture, and imprisonment.
According to the Pentagon Papers: Enough evidence has now been accumulated to establish that peasant resentment against Diem was extensive and well founded. Moreover, it is clear that the dislike of the Diem government was coupled with resentment toward Americans. In the United States, analysts and reporters who paid attention were aware of the repression in South Vietnam.
All the techniques of political and psychological warfare, as well as the pacification campaigns involving extensive military operations have been brought to bear against the underground. The West is backing, with its eyes open … a reactionary police state.
The Asians are intelligent people, and well able to contrast the declaration of principles of. Many Americans could not fathom this raw contradiction to stated principles and, knowing little about Vietnam, were inclined to believe administration propaganda. Yet Vietnam was not a unique case. Carlos Castillo Armas in Guatemala. The administration officially denied any involvement in these clandestine overthrows, thus relieving it of having to explain its unprincipled actions.
In the case of South Vietnam, however, american history x essay questions U. A party directive on revolutionary strategy in the south in ordered party members to carry out peaceful political struggle in support of the Geneva Agreements and to avoid precipitating an armed conflict.
The southern rebels felt compelled to take stronger action, not only to protect themselves but american history x essay questions to retain the support of peasants who were becoming increasingly militant in the face of growing attacks by the Diem regime. In January, Hanoi approved the use of armed force in the south along with the establishment of base camps in the Central highlands and the return of southern soldiers who had settled in the north during the day migration period that followed the signing of the Geneva Agreements.
About 4, soldiers returned to the south in and These actions had an appreciable effect on the guerrilla struggle in the south. Rebel attacks on government military posts grew bolder and more frequent.
The program incited more resistance than the land transfer program, as it forced peasants to abandon their homes, cultivated fields, and ancestral graves in exchange for inadequate housing and plots in the Agrovilles. In Saigon, meanwhile, eighteen prominent South Vietnamese leaders, including ten former cabinet ministers, met at the Caravelle Hotel in April They issued a american history x essay questions but devastating criticism of Diem in a public letter known as the Caravelle Manifesto.
Continuous arrests fill the jails and prisons to the rafters, as at this precise moment, public opinion and the press are reduced to silence…. Political parties and religious sects have been eliminated…. Today the people want freedom.
President, liberalize the regime, promote democracy, guarantee minimum civil rights, recognize the opposition so as to permit the citizens to express themselves ehr thesis statement fear, thus removing grievances and resentments.
Embarrassed by the letter, Washington officials instructed U. Ambassador Elbridge Durbrow to urge Diem to open the political process to just the sort of people who signed the Caravelle Manifesto. Roosevelt offering New Deal programs. He harassed and arrested the signers, and published false information about them in order to ruin their reputations. The following month, three American Special Forces teams arrived in Vietnam to train and assist Vietnamese Special Forces in counterinsurgency warfare, the goal being to establish effective control over the population through military and administrative means.
Like the Viet Minh organization nineteen years earlier, the NLF combined political, military, and economic goals. By OctoberSouth Vietnamese troops and officials could not drive american history x essay questions than a few kilometers out of any given provincial capital without running into sniper fire. In one month alone, to the disgust Lesson 4-2 problem solving angle relationships in triangles U.
Williams, the Saigon army lost over one thousand weapons. Still, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam,strong, looked good on the parade ground. Kennedy President John F. Kennedy carried forward the Cold War rationales and policies of his predecessors. One hundred and twenty Americans were killed in action between and Jawaharlal Nehru, prime minister of India, warned Kennedy that any dispatch of U. Such advice often came with proposals for a return to the Geneva Conference Agreements, which meant accepting a unified Vietnam under a single government that allowed for communist participation, if not leadership.
Kennedy was resolutely opposed to this diplomatic solution. Kennedy insisted that the U. Vice President Lyndon B. Although aided by the North, the overwhelming majority 80 to 90 percent of the fighters were of southern origin.
In October, Kennedy sent his personal military adviser, General Maxwell Taylor, to assess the situation. Kennedy hesitated, wondering aloud whyARVN troops could not defeat 16, guerrillas.
His caution was reinforced by Undersecretary of State Chester Bowles, who warned that the deployment of U. The discussion narrowed to how and when to increase the fighting capacity of the ARVN. Yet the added firepower also increased the severity of attacks check my essay for plagiarism villages suspected of supporting the NLF, which were many.
This proved counterproductive to the larger goal of winning the loyalty of the villagers. David Marr, a young marine intelligence officer who was one of Marines in the first Marine helicopter squadron, wrote of his experiences in the summer of On one assignment, he accompanied a division-sized ARVN unit on a search-and-destroy operation that american history x essay questions helicopters, fighter bombers, and armored personnel carriers. hire someone to write a paper villagers regarded the program as punishment for american history x essay questions supporting the NLF or being insufficiently loyal to the Diem regime.
Initially viewed as a success, by August the NLF had taken over the whole ieshimacountryclub.net They chose their battles carefully. In the summer ofthe NLF received its first aid from China, delivered through Hanoi — 90, guns of various types.
Frustrated by the lack of progress in the counterinsurgency war, U. That the government of South Vietnam was illegally created, propped up by a foreign power, and abusive toward its own people were further causes for alienation and rebellion. Yet most had no cause for animosity toward the communist-led NLF and only wanted to survive and be paid.
Hence when called to action, the results were often disappointing to U. A case in point was the battle of Ap Bac on January 2,in which lightly armed guerrillas routed a larger force of 2, ARVN soldiers equipped with Colt AR rifles and light-weight jungle radios, and backed by aircraft and armored vehicles. The ARVN had one of the highest desertion rates in the history of modern warfare. Sixty-five percent of ARVN soldiers were forcibly conscripted, and many ARVN officers were patronage appointees who served the French and used their positions for personal gain.
On May 8, the 2,th birthday of the Buddha, the GVN decided to enforce a law banning the display of any flag other than the national flag. Two days later, ten thousand Buddhists marched in protest. Diem responded by jailing leading Buddhist monks and placing american history x essay questions guards around pagodas.
On the morning of June 11, a sixty-six-year old Buddhist monk, Quang Duc, sat in the middle of a busy Saigon intersection and assumed a lotus posture. As other monks chanted nearby, math problem solving for grade 10 helpers doused the seated monk with gasoline.
Quang Duc then lit a match and set himself on fire, sitting motionless and silent as the flames consumed him. The press had been alerted beforehand and photographs were taken.
They appeared on the front pages of newspapers around the world the following day. Americans reacted with shock and confusion. The self-immolation of a religious monk demonstrated just how hated the Ngo Dinh family was in South Vietnam. At the same time, they began discussing possible replacements for Diem. The latter discussion reached a turning point in Augustwhen Diem sent his elite, U. Paul Kattenburg, help with assignment writing State Department specialist on Vietnam who had just returned from Saigon, sat in disbelief as he listened to the conversation.
They had forgotten ieshimacountryclub.net change course in Vietnam was at hand in Augustperhaps more than at any time since Three developments pushed in the direction of a negotiated settlement.
This near-miss of nuclear war had a sobering effect on both U. Kennedy also spoke to the larger issue of world peace in an address at American University on June 10, While this dialogue fell into the same category as reconciliation between the U.
Nhu began talking with communist representatives in July qualities of a good driver essay a possible accommodation that would allow him and his brother to remain in power while a american history x essay questions unification of Vietnam proceeded. Hanoi and the NLF were american history x essay questions to accept this delay if it meant ridding their country of foreign troops.
President Kennedy, however, was committed to maintaining a separate, noncommunist South Vietnam. This meant not only staying the course in Washington, but also preventing the Vietnamese from working out a peace agreement among themselves. According to mulherescomsaude.000webhostapp.com diplomatic historian Fredrik Logevall: The coup against Ngo Dinh Diem in November happened in part because Kennedy administration officials feared that Diem might opt for an end to the war through an agreement with the enemy.
Reports that the successor government led by Duong Van Minh might have similar intentions caused Washington to become disenchanted with it as well. The agreement was welcomed american history x essay questions the world as a step toward reducing Cold War tensions. Along with de Gaulle, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan helped to convince Kennedy that a negotiated solution in Laos was the most realistic option and would not hurt U.
After conferring with Kennedy in MarchMacmillan wrote to de Gaulle: De Gaulle worked behind the scenes for two years to convince President Kennedy to accept a neutral, unified Vietnam, but to no avail. On August 29,sensing that the U. With France no longer threatening to dominate Vietnam, French cultural, economic, and political ties took on a more benevolent quality. There were French people in Vietnam, Vietnamese people in France, and biracial children in both places; thousands of Vietnamese children attended French schools; the Vietnamese educated class spoke French; France was the top importer of Vietnamese goods; and the French government maintained official contacts case study yahoo answers both South and North Vietnam.
British and German leaders were with the French on this issue, quietly prodding the U. The American journalist Walter Lippmann warned of the alternative: It had significantly increased American firepower and the number of military advisers in Vietnam, but it had also resisted Pentagon requests for ground troops.
In early OctoberKennedy authorized the withdrawal of 1, military personnel from Vietnam, slated forbut this was contingent on the ARVN successfully prosecuting the counterinsurgency war against the NLF. Kennedy in contemplated no major alteration of American Vietnam policy in the near term.
Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy all claimed that U. Rather than protect the people, the U. Eisenhower prevented unification elections and Kennedy prevented South Vietnamese leaders from exploring negotiations toward unification. The trio of presidents also maintained that U. Yet most international leaders believed that the U.
Rather than protect the world, the U. Most international leaders urged the U. They were encouraged when the U. Implicit in this concept was the message that the U. The concept reflected an american history x essay questions mentality american history x essay questions held that the U. This belief could withstand an inordinate amount of evidence to the contrary. These assumptions and beliefs served to justify and propel U. Once american history x essay questions as ideological truths, they acted as blinders, shutting out contrary evidence and views, and narrowing the debate to instrumental objectives.
Had Americans been willing and american history x essay questions to unpack these ideological wrappings and examine Vietnam on its own terms, the slaughter in Southeast Asia might have been avoided.
When nothing a short essay on quaid e azam in english of this, the NLF renewed its offensive. If he did the bidding of the American president, he would be resented by the population and the rebellion would grow. If he moved toward a peace settlement and ameliorated some of the suffering caused by U. Minh tested the latter option. He also stated his opposition to the bombing of North Vietnam, arguing that it would hurt innocent people and alienate popular opinion in the south.
Nguyen Khanh With behind-the-scenes support from the U. There would be no more talk of peace negotiations or easing up on the NLF-linked villages. McNamara, returning from a visit to Saigon Bajar formato de curriculum vitae en word gratis early Marchreported that Khanh would do very well.
He would allow U. Khanh headed the military junta from January until February This secret plan, now declassified, amounted to a declaration of war against North Vietnam.
President Ho Chi Minh and Prime Minister Pham Van Dong were willing to make limited concessions in the interest of peace, but they would not allow their american history x essay questions to be permanently divided. When the time comes, we will talk around a table. The reunification of the country presupposes a single government, but we will respect the interests of the South, sincerely, without any pressure. Like Kennedy, President Johnson had ample opportunity to negotiate his way out of Vietnam.
In addition to French mediation efforts, United Nations Secretary-General U Thant of Burma initiated a separate initiative in early american history x essay questions the same end.
But Johnson was dead set against any negotiations that did not recognize a separate South Vietnam under a noncommunist government. He claimed that even talking about peace negotiations would undermine the fighting will of the ARVN.
The German government in Bonn would not even send a medical unit. The governments of India, Pakistan, Burma, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Japan all favored neutralization and negotiation proposals; only Australia, Taiwan, and South Korea endorsed the American-backed counterinsurgency war. The NLF, moreover, was increasingly armed with weapons buy essay cheap the United States, whether through capture or sale by corrupt officials.
At a news conference on March 7, Johnson pledged to send as much U. He and the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon were eager to implement the next stages of Operations Plan A, but he hesitated to take any action that might american history x essay questions his election prospects in November. The latter sentiment was stronger in Vietnam was 10, miles away and posed no threat to the United States, except what could be conjured up by ideological association with the Soviet Union and China.
It was not something they wanted to repeat. President Johnson, if he were to send U. The congressional resolution was drafted by an interagency group and discussed at a top-level meeting on June It was decided that the resolution should be introduced when events were most propitious for its passage.
The domestic propaganda campaign was initiated under National Security Action Memorandumsigned by the president on June Manning, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, to generate and to coordinate a broad program to bring to the American people a complete and accurate picture of the United States involvement in Southeast Asia, and to show why this involvement is essential.
Maddox The engineered crisis took place on August 2, In the wake of a american history x essay questions of covert raids by South Vietnamese commandos against North Vietnamese coastal targets in the Gulf of Tonkin, three North Vietnamese patrol boats approached the U. Commander Pat Paterson tells the story of what happened: Weather conditions were clear, thesis statement on athens and sparta seas were calm.
Atthe destroyer detected three North Vietnamese patrol boats approaching her position from the west. Aware of North Vietnamese intent from the earlier SIGINT [signals intelligence] message, Captain Herrick american history x essay questions gun crews to open fire if the fast-approaching trio closed to within 10, yards of the destroyer, and at about three 5-inch shots were fired across the bow of the closest tourghepquynhon.net In return, the lead vessel launched a torpedo and veered american history x essay questions.
Re-engaging, the first PT boat launched a second torpedo and opened fire with her They are responding out of pride i’m done my homework on the basis of defense considerations.
On August 4, during a american history x essay questions storm, the crew of the Maddox thought it was under attack once again and fired away into the night. This turned out to be an error, a misreading of sonar instruments, as confirmed by Navy pilot James Stockdale, commanding officer of the VF fighter squadron.
This boy, our friend Hubert, is just destroying himself with his big mouth. Yesterday morning he went on the TV and just blabbed everything he heard in a briefing, just like it was his personal knowledge, and almost wanted to claim credit for it. missing angles homework year 5 [the reporters] said, for instance, how would you account for these PT boat attacks on our destroyers when we are innocently out there in the Gulf sixty miles from shore.
But the damned fool just ought to keep his … big mouth shut on foreign affairs, at least until the elections are over. Senator Morse was prophetic in his comments. So I am not going to go along with this kind of a program, in South Vietnam, at least with my vote, that in my judgment is going to kill needlessly untold numbers of American boys, and for nothing. If they did not, the U. That fall, Johnson expanded the war in the south without fanfare, increasing U.
It was still not enough. During the fall election campaign, Johnson portrayed himself as sufficiently american history x essay questions on the communists in Vietnam but not so reckless as to get the U. He depicted his opponent, Senator Barry Goldwater, as a warmonger. Johnson certainly had the domestic mandate to negotiate a peace settlement rather than go to war. Had President Johnson been sincere in wanting the people of Vietnam to work out their own destiny, he would have allowed the peace process to take place.
The international community, including the Soviet Union and China, strongly favored a negotiated settlement. In the aftermath of his election, he waited only for the right moment to bomb North medical editor and to deploy large numbers of U. The moment came on February 7,when NLF soldiers attacked Camp Holloway, a american history x essay questions airbase near the city of Pleiku, killing nine Americans and woundingand destroying ten aircraft.
Johnson immediately initiated a bombing attack on four pre-selected phutungmayxucnhapkhau.com in North Vietnam Operation Flaming Dartcarried out by U.
A few days later, on February 13, he approved a sustained bombing campaign Operation Rolling Thunder against North Vietnam. China, meanwhile, declared on February 15 that it would enter the war if the United States invaded North Vietnam. Stone, analyzed the White Paper in detail in his weekly newsletter.
It is in this story that the White House Paper does not tell, and the popular discontent it does not mention, that the rebellion and the aid from the North had their origins. The attack on the U. One month before the attack, General William Westmoreland noted that the U. A Louis Harris Poll in late February reported that 83 percent of Americans supported the bombing of North Vietnam in the wake of Cell phone addiction persuasive essay Pleiku attack, but also that 75 percent favored asking for negotiations to end the war.
A sizable number of newspapers, including the New York Times, were critical of the expansion of the war. On Capitol Hill, senators began a lengthy debate on Vietnam on February On February 24, UN Secretary-General U Thant, having tried and failed to broker a peace agreement, appealed american history x essay questions to the American people, suggesting that the Johnson administration had not been fully candid about its war plans and operations: I am sure the great American people, if only they knew the true facts and background to rakamyblog.000webhostapp.com developments in South Vietnam, will agree with me that further bloodshed is unnecessary.
And that the political and diplomatic methods of discussions and negotiations alone can create conditions which will enable the United States to withdraw gracefully from that part of the world. As you know, in times of war and hostilities, the first casualty is truth.
President Johnson and his advisers engaged in numerous and elaborate deceptions in order to keep American public opinion on their side, or at least sufficiently confused so as to not interfere with their war plans. Added to these were continuing deceptions fostered by previous administrations concerning the Geneva Agreements, the nature of the South Vietnamese government, and the origins of the war. To some degree, Johnson administration officials also deceived themselves, predicting that massive bombing of the north and the introduction of U.
If anything, a larger American presence in the South would exacerbate the problem by making the regime seem more like a puppet than ever before…. Among Asians generally, sympathy for the Vietcong and its North Vietnamese allies would increase as essay about bingo took on a very big, very white, western power, in the same way that the Vietminh before them had taken on the French.
Did they simply ignore them, choosing to listen to more optimistic assessments? Were they fanatics at heart, like Ahab in search of Moby Dick, seeking victory at all costs? According to insightful insiders such as James C. Thomson and analysts such as George McTurnan Kahin, Johnson and his top tier of advisers vacillated between wishful thinking that the next action would bring the desired results and fear of humiliation for both the nation and themselves as architects of the Vietnam policy.
They never flinched from imposing more death, destruction, hardship, and suffering on the Vietnamese people. This was couched in Cold War defensive rhetoric, to be sure, but thinking like an empire was not essentially rooted in the Cold War rivalry, as became apparent after the Cold War ended.
From the vantage point of advancing U. Such punishment, irrespective of political results, would serve as a visible warning to all other would-be challengers to U. Judging by other U. Such was the case with the Dominican Republic best websites to write your essay the spring of The American people were told that the 20, U. As in Vietnam, internal developments in the Dominican Republic were touted as a threat to the United States, when in fact there was no threat whatsoever, only a desire on the part of U.
On February 26,President Johnson quietly approved a request from General William Westmoreland for two combat battalions of marines. The troops arrived at Danang on March 8 — a milestone in the expansion of the war. The Americanization of roman gladiator homework Vietnam War proceeded rapidly thereafter.
In April, Johnson authorized U. By mid-May, the number of American military personnel in Vietnam had risen to 47, In July, at the request of General Westmoreland, an additional 50, troops were sent, and authorization was given for U.
Johnson lied outright in declaring that the additional troops indicated no change in the U.
By the end ofthere wereU. Marines arrived at Danang, March 8, Despite the added troops and firepower, the underlying political dynamics of the war remained the same.
The Saigon government was detested by most of the people, and no amount of U. Ruled out was the possibility that communists and non-communists could live in peace in Vietnam, co-existing like Catholics and Buddhists.
Ruled out was the possibility that these factions could argue out their Goddess lakshmi essay in the political arena rather than fight on the battlefield.
The inability of U. Largely ignorant of Vietnamese history, culture, politics, and philosophical orientations, including communism, U. The Pentagon has chosen the year to commemorate its 50th anniversary of the war, which is slated to last for thirteen years.
The first involved the formation of South Vietnam in the aftermath of the Geneva Convention and U. Phase two began with the South Vietnamese government on the brink of collapse.
Following the withdrawal of all U. On January 27,with 58, Americans american history x essay questions died in Vietnam and american history x essay questions three-quarters of the American public favoring a complete withdrawal, a peace treaty was signed in Paris that called for all U. The post-American War american history x essay questions phase entailed two more years of fighting before the GVN finally surrendered on April 30, Moreover, writes the international relations scholar John W.
China would have spared no efforts to outflank the United States by supporting insurgencies elsewhere in Southeast Asia. It american history x essay questions required that the U. Neither objective was accomplished. To be clear, the U. Unable to speak the language, American soldiers attempted to identify communists and their supporters among the american history x essay questions curriculum vitae psychologist With the introduction of U.
Given the widespread animosity toward the GVN, if not outright support for the NLF, the American War quickly turned into a war against the rural population. The targets included not only the communist-led NLF but also any person or village that offered support to NLF cadre or american history x essay questions to expel them from their villages.
The idea that Americans could distinguish between communists and non-communists, and between civilians and guerrillas, in a foreign world of thatched huts, straw mats, and wooden plows was predictably illusory, with debilitating consequences. The count typically included civilians South carolina bar exam essay questions sometimes prisoners of war.
According to the historian George C. Throughout the chain of command there was heavy pressure to produce favorable figures, and padding occurred at each level until by the time the numbers reached Washington they bore little resemblance to reality…. Many American soldiers sent to Vietnam were raised on heroic tales of World War II that reinforced their belief in the protective and liberating mission of the United States.
In the Philippines, as in Vietnam, U. SomeFilipinos died as do over moment essay result of that war. The death, destruction, and misery resulting from the U.
American History X
We have to get the Indians american history x essay questions away in many of the provinces to make good progress. The assumption that the U. American conduct in the Vietnam War was indeed savage in its effects. While purporting to save Vietnam, the U. As George Herring writes: The massive bombing and artillery fire disrupted the agriculture upon american history x essay questions the South Vietnamese economy depended, produced huge numbers of american history x essay questions casualties, and drove millions of noncombatants into hastily constructed refugee camps or into the already overcrowded cities.
American military operations further undermined the american history x essay questions fabric of an already fragile nation and alienated the people from a government which never had a firm base of popular support.
They were sent to fight and possibly ieshimacountryclub.net under false pretenses, and they were empowered with advanced weaponry and ordered to kill the american history x essay questions. Sixty-one percent of the 58, Americans who died in the war were twenty-one years of age or american history x essay questions. Between 7, and 11, American women served in Vietnam, the majority being nurses.
In living out the fiction that the U. Some became opponents of the war, joining the GI antiwar movement. Most returned scarred from the war, psychologically or physically. It remained from american history x essay questions to end, an authoritarian, repressive, and corrupt client-state of the United States.
It was also constantly in turmoil. To please the U. Thi was soon banished to the U. Ky was born in Hanoi and had been trained as a pilot by the French in Algeria.
He was described by Ambassador Taylor as having all the qualities of a successful juvenile gang leader. Their main demand was a return to civilian government, which they believed would be amenable to a negotiated end to the war. In Hue, nine Buddhists immolated themselves in protest and a group of youths burned down the U.
Eight days later, GVN troops invaded and took over the city. Rather than resist, Buddhist leader Thich Tri Quang went on a hunger strike that american history x essay questions led to his death. Elections were held in September under repressive conditions and Thieu and Ky were respectively elected president and vice-president.
Runner-up presidential candidate, Truong Dinh Dzu, whose ballot symbol was a dove of peace, was subsequently imprisoned by Thieu along with twenty labor, religious, and political leaders who had expressed doubts about continuing the war.
It is therefore not surprising that, as U. Since Americans called the shots, the thinking went, let them fight the battles. In time, however, after reading about the history of Vietnam, he came to a american history x essay questions view. This request had not come from the South Vietnamese people, it had come from the South Vietnamese government, whose Computer organization and architecture homework was due american history x essay questions to American support and interests.
The ARVNs, many under the age of 17, had no choice in fighting and were often sympathetic to the cause of the Viet Cong. Tran Thi Gung, a southerner who joined the NLF in at the age of seventeen, after her father had been killed by the Diem government, told the historian Christian Appy in an interview some forty-five years later: Whenever anyone asks me about the suffering of the war, I have a terrible nightmare that very night in which I relive these experiences.
I miss my comrades very much and often see them again in cover letter conclusion sentence dreams. But I american history x essay questions felt guilty about the killing I did. I think it was justified. But if I went to America and killed people american history x essay questions, I would feel very sorry and guilty.
Mission in Vietnam had been reorganized three times in 15 months and each reorganization had been designed primarily to improve the management of the pacification effort and raise its priority within the overall effort. Moreover, as the war intensified, concern for the well-being of villagers american history x essay questions further.
Official propaganda for the New Life Hamlet program listed eleven goals, including improvements in health and education and land reform, but the american history x essay questions one that really mattered to U. They would have to ally with the GVN and U. About one in four South Vietnamese became a refugee american history x essay questions and If one does not, then perhaps his wife, or her husband, or a neighbor has a relative fighting for the National Liberation Front.
They have not seen the government people who have been truthful to them. Discipline was not always kept, but the NLF could ill-afford to alienate the local population, being dependent on villagers for food, refuge, information, and recruits.
Often, they would dialogue with ARVN troops in the vicinity, whether to persuade them to desert and join the NLF or to prevent them from conducting sweeps in the villages. John Paul Vann, who american history x essay questions from the Army in mid and returned to Vietnam in to become the provincial pacification director for the Agency for International Development, overseeing twelve provinces, believed that pacification programs could r�diger dissertation histoire A centralized data bank was developed that identified alleged communist leaders for interrogation or elimination.
The program was modeled after counterinsurgency programs targeting the Hukbalahap in the Philippines and the Communist Party in Indonesia, in which abuses of human rights were legion.
McNamara and its belief that statistical quantification and data management through use of computers could enable greater military efficiency, as in the corporate world. Phoenix agents used statistical indicators to measure their progress toward the goal of decapitating the NLF hierarchy.
Many were local village officials in NLF-dominated areas, which encompassed most of the countryside. Kalyvas and Matthew A. Kocher estimated that Phoenix victimized thirty-eight innocents for every one actual Viet Cong VC agent. NLF leaders were often able to evade capture by having access to safe houses and the support of a well-developed american history x essay questions infrastructure.
Army Center of Military History, including 22, rallied, 33, captured, and 26, killed. The intimidation factor went well beyond these numbers, which is one reason that U. These methods led to wide-scale torture. Barton Osborn, a U. Army intelligence officer, testified before a Congressional subcommittee in July what he had witnessed: The starving to death [in a cage] of a Vietnamese woman who was suspected of being a part of the local political education cadre in one of the local villages.
One suspect had tiny electrodes put into his brain to see if he could be american history x essay questions. Many of Phoenix operatives were recruited from religious or ethnic minorities, including Catholics and Cao Dai with deep grievances against the communists. Others were recruited from criminal gangs which had skills conducive to the clandestine arts. Some of these units set up american history x essay questions plans: Among the gadgets were radio transmission devices designed to look american history x essay questions household utensils and camouflaged rocks that american history x essay questions hidden messages inside along with silencer How to form a research paper thesis statement used in assassinations.
Prisoners endured poor facilities and overcrowding, abusive treatment, and a lack of judicial process and access to fair trial or counsel. Some of the worst abuses took place at the infamous Con Son prison, located on an archipelago kilometers off the southern Vietnamese coast, where inmates reported american history x essay questions worked nearly to death in the fields, severely beaten by trustees, and left on the verge of starvation.
According to Phoenix operative Col. Aides in Vietnam Scorn Phoenix Project. On July 19,Phoenix program director William Colby testified american history x essay questions a Congressional subcommittee. He was asked by Rep.
Individual members of it, subordinate people in it, may have done it. But as a program, it is not designed to do that. He nevertheless acknowledged that 20, suspects had been killed under his tenure. The following day, K. Barton Osborn testified to having witnessed beatings, electrocution, dropping suspects out of helicopters, and other atrocities.
The Colby and Osborn testimonies made front page news across the country. Operation Phoenix can ultimately be seen to embody the repressive consequences of U. The Phoenix concept grew out of a larger web of clandestine policing operations american history x essay questions aimed to root out leftist and revolutionary movements said to threaten U. American leaders calculated that costly military engagements could be avoided through carefully calibrated political policing operations designed to liquidate the revolutionary opposition.
Rather than gain territory, the aim was to wear down the enemy by inflicting high casualties beyond its capacity to continue fielding an army, e. However, the strong nationalist consciousness in the countryside and cities of both the South and the North meant that there were ample replacements available to the poem an essay on man by alexander pope Vietnamese resistance forces.
Their strategy of resistance to both the French and the Americans was rooted in the understanding that they could outlast the outsiders who would eventually tire of a long, frustrating war. In the end, it was the United States that could not afford the casualties.
Guerrilla ambushes, sniper fire, and landmines took their toll. Secondly, search and destroy operations put U. The operations also expended a lot of military resources — ammunition, plane and vehicle fuel — for limited ends.
Most importantly, these aggressive raids turned villagers against Americans, creating fertile ground for NLF recruitment. Moral concerns went deeper. Search and destroy missions resulted in american history x essay questions civilian casualties. Fear dictated that cautionary and preventative measures be undertaken in order to protect American lives.
Hence, if sniper fire came from the direction of a village, or if a GI tripped a land mine, artillery would be called in to bomb the village before the soldiers entered.
Often, when alien American soldiers entered a village, they would call out in broken Vietnamese for everyone to come out of their huts and underground shelters built for protection against American bombs.
Those who did not or tried to run would be killed by grenades or rifle fire. The village was american history x essay questions to the ground and a number of civilians running away were shot. Four old men who could not answer questions put to them in English. Four old men who had no idea american history x essay questions an I.
There is little doubt that American firepower can win a military victory here. But to a Vietnamese peasant whose home means a lifetime of backbreaking labor, it will take more than presidential promises to convince him that we are on his side. Many Vietnamese civilians were killed or badly wounded by helicopter gunships which strafed anything that moved in areas deemed hostile.
Anyone taking evasive action could be fired upon. Evasive action was never explained to me. It normally entailed someone running or trying to evade a helicopter or any fire…. So we then hovered a few feet off the ground among them with the two helicopters, turned on the police sirens and american history x essay questions they heard the police sirens, they started to disperse and we opened up on them and just shot them all down.
Marine company on patrol, July Dropped into war zones, without knowledge of the Vietnamese language and with little, if any, understanding of local culture, U. They often became frustrated when making no contact with enemy soldiers for long periods, then seemingly out of the blue were interrupted by violent surprise attacks.
Daily treks american history x essay questions insect-filled jungles in the heat and humidity also took a toll on GI nerves. In numerous documented cases, their frustrations were taken out on civilians. The american history x essay questions routine of american history x essay questions of huts, destruction of villages, and terrorizing of residents could and did lead to unauthorized sexual assaults, random shootings, and even massacres such as that in My Lai.
Even in villages with decent relations with american history x essay questions U. The more Vietnamese bodies, the more promotions, leaves, and other privileges — an invitation, if not license, to kill as many as possible.
In the ensuing four-day combat, one out of every four American soldiers was killed or wounded. Up to that point, 1, Americans had been killed.
The Ia Drang mission added more. On January 21, they attacked the U. Marine base at Khe Sanh, located in northwest South Vietnam near the Laotian border, bombarding the garrison with rocket, artillery, and mortar shells for five months and 18 days. President Johnson ordered General Westmoreland to hold the base at all costs.
This was the first time that the U. Embassy in Saigon during Tet Offensive The Tet Offensive, named after the Tet holiday celebrating the lunar new year, was a major turning point in the war. Embassy grounds came under fire. It took ten U. Prior to this offensive, Americans had been led to believe that the U.
This capped the Vietnam commitment at , after which a new era of fighting began with diminishing numbers of U. Civilian homes destroyed in Saigon in the Tet counteroffensive The Tet Offensive was immediately followed by a massive U. The Saigon government reported 14, civilians killed, 24, wounded,made homeless across South Vietnam. John Paul Vann, chief degree in creative writing ireland the pacification effort in the provinces surrounding Saigon, thought the operation excessive in his region.
The Hue massacre controversy The city of Hue after bombing by U. Many of the bodies had their hands bound, indicating execution. Free-lance journalist Len Parkinson j. an essay on the shaking palsy estimated the number at to According to the political scientist Gareth Porter: There is evidence of several hundred political executions carried out by the Communists toward the end of the occupation in Hue….
But that the american history x essay questions than 2, callie mitchell photo essay Hue after Tet were victims of Communist executions is supported only by official assertions.
In the bloody fighting to recapture Hue, in which half the homes were destroyed, thousands — civilians and Vietcong troops — were killed and american history x essay questions in mass graves. Information Agency, who blamed the civilian deaths entirely on the insurgents and warned that more massacres could be expected should South Vietnam fall to the communists. His story was spread by U.
Regardless of the actual circumstances of the civilian deaths in Hue, U. We may american history x essay questions 4gamingsofocus.000webhostapp.com what really happened at Hue, but it is clear that mass executions did occur and that reports of the massacre there had a significant impact on South Vietnamese and American attitudes for many years after the Tet Offensive.
William Calley commanding the First Platoon — treated it as a free-fire zone, killing some unarmed men, women, children, and infants. A number of women were raped as well. Not all soldiers participated in the murders; one broke down and cried; another shot animals instead. Hugh Thompson, an Army helicopter pilot surveying the scene from above, spotted the bodies of men, women and children strewn over the landscape.
Realizing that a massacre was taking place, he landed his chopper and rescued ten civilians while ordering his crew american history x essay questions to shoot any American soldiers who opened fire on the civilians. On the american history x essay questions day, another U. These massacres were not acknowledged by military authorities at the time. After completing his tour of duty in Aprilhe wrote letters to the Pentagon, the White House, and twenty-four members of Congress describing the atrocities of which he had been told.
Powell found no irregularities and MACV recommended that the case be closed. However, Ridenhour had collected too much evidence and the investigation continued. In the end, fourteen soldiers were american history x essay questions with murder but only Lt. Haeberle testified that he personally saw about thirty different American soldiers kill about civilians, but he destroyed photographs of these killings, keeping only the end results.
Meadlo confirmed that Charlie Company had rounded up and shot hundreds of men, women and children. Marines through the village of Xuan Ngoc, including the gang-rape of an year-old girl and the slaughter of her family. Army soldiers in The My Lai massacre, however, surpassed these atrocities in scale and wickedness. Vietnamese memorial to the civilian victims of U. To limit the damage, the Pentagon assembled a american history x essay questions Vietnam War Crimes Working Group that gathered american history x essay questions than criminal investigation reports, testimonies, and allegations of atrocities, including massacres, murders, rapes, torture, assaults, mutilations, and the execution of prisoners.
The purpose of the working group was not to administer justice but to bury the evidence in top-secret classification. It refused to investigate many of the allegations by GIs and vets in the interest of keeping the extent of atrocities under wraps. This went beyond public image making, as the generals themselves could be charged with war crimes under international law in the tradition of the Nuremberg Trials should a american history x essay questions pattern of atrocities and cover-ups be proven.
Intwo Vietnamese speaking Quakers, Diane and Michael Jones, carried out a study american history x essay questions found that South Korean troops had committed twelve separate massacres of or more civilians, and dozens of smaller massacres and murders. She told the AP that hundreds more civilians had been killed in raids by South Koreans around that time. Provincial officials american history x essay questions that the South Koreans killed 1, civilians in Binh An alone, whose population in was roughly 6, Another village attacked was twelve miles from My Lai.
William Calley On March 29,Lt. William Calley was convicted on charges of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. Hawkish patriots immediately forged a common front of denial. Colonel in the Alabama National Guard. Calley ultimately served three and a half years of house arrest before being released in September I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were best writing essay service for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families.
I am very sorry. Two weeks later, military intelligence reported that more than 1, North Vietnamese Army troops had moved back into the area. Thus began the gradual withdrawal of U. The shift in policy may be attributed to domestic opposition to the war — a political reality — american history x essay questions than to any american history x essay questions strategy for american history x essay questions the war or american history x essay questions achieving a stalemate.
According to failure is the first step to success essay stpm of Defense statistics, U. On April 30,he american history x essay questions U. One indication of the growing reluctance of U. Gene Breeding, attempted to convince the men to comply with the order, but fifty-three american history x essay questions refused.
Although this was officially a mutiny, no disciplinary action was taken. Given the fact that the U. According to the U. State Department was friendship towards the Soviets, because the Soviets were an important ally in the war against Nazi Germany.
Kennan proposed a policy known as Containment. In reply, Kennan wrote the Long Telegram outlining his opinions and views of the Soviets; “According to Kennan, the Soviets’ view of the american history x essay questions came from a traditional ‘Russian sense of insecurity Among its most-remembered parts was that while Soviet power was “impervious to the logic of reason”, it was “highly sensitive to the logic of force”.
Answer to Dept’sFeb. I hope, therefore, Dept will bear with me if I submit in answer to this question five parts I apologize in american history x essay questions for this burdening of telegraphic channel; but questions involved are of such urgent importance, particularly in view of recent events, that our answers to them, if they deserve attention at all, seem to me to deserve it at once.
In the first two sections, he posited concepts that became the foundation of American Cold War policy: The USSR perceived itself at perpetual war with capitalism; The USSR viewed left-wing, but non-communist, groups in other countries as an even worse enemy of itself than the capitalist ones; The USSR would use controllable Marxists in the capitalist world as allies; Soviet aggression was fundamentally not aligned with the views of the Russian people or with economic reality, but rooted in historic Russian nationalism and neurosis ; The Soviet government ‘s structure inhibited objective or accurate pictures of internal and external reality.
According to Kennan, the Soviet Union did not facebook users essay the possibility for long-term peaceful coexistence with the capitalist world.
The Soviets’ ever-present aim was to advance the socialist cause. For the Soviets, capitalism was a menace to the ideals of socialism, and capitalists could not be trusted or allowed to influence the Soviet people.
Outright conflict was never considered a desirable avenue for the propagation of the Soviet cause, but their eyes and ears were always open for the opportunity to take advantage of “diseased tissue” anywhere in the world. He argued that the Soviet Union would be sensitive to force, that the Soviets were weak compared to the united Western worldthat the Soviets were vulnerable to internal instability, and that Soviet propaganda was primarily negative and destructive.
Kennan advocated sound appraisal, public education, solutions of the internal problems of U. Clifford-Elsey Report[ edit ] In JulyPresident Truman enlisted the services of one of his senior advisers, Clark Cliffordto prepare a report on Soviet relations that would provide detail on “Soviet disregard” for post-war agreements.
The President, allegedly frustrated by Soviet actions, claimed he wanted “to be ready to reveal to the whole world the full truth about the Russian failure to honor agreements”.
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