The Impact of Vietnam War to the Vietnamese Society

While most analysts hunt down to consider American involvement in Vietnam as really much an artifact of the 1960s and the Cold struggle, the reality is that American foreign policy had incorporated almost degree of alliance in Vietnam's nationalistic struggle since the 1940s. Roberts and Martin (1989) have pointed out that by the late 1940s, the U.S. had assumed a large part of the cost of France's effort to regain control of its Indochina possessions (i.e., Vietnam) as the force of Ho Chi Minh grew almost exponentially, (915). The price escalated during the early 1950s and by 1952 the U.S. shouldered roughly one-third of the cost of the state of war; between 1950 and 1954 American contributed $2.6 billion to France's war effort, (Roberts and Martin 1989). This sum was insufficient: France was otiose to defeat Ho's Vietminh, and in 1954 the war reached a crisis stage when the french were soundly defeated at Dien Bien Phu. President Eisenhower refused to supply force tending without the consent of Congress and Great Britain, and then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson openly conflicting spending America's money (and her boy's lives) to perpetuate colonialism and "White man's exploitation in Asia," (Roberts and Martin 1989, 921). Strangely enough, Johnson would, as President, "inherit" President Kennedy's decision to entrust not only money but men to Vietnam to aid the South against the communists; this decision would lead to his bankruptcy to seek re-election for a second full term in o

Perret, G. (1989). A Country Made by War. smart York, NY: Random House.

Lamb (1978) has stated that public support for America's friendship in Vietnam was very similar to that for the war in Korea 15 years earlier: the initial stages of the ground war generated some enthusiasm, as citizens felt a certain glow of insolence in their nation's power, (425). As the months turned into years, and the cost in lives in dollars escalated, and no particular goal was achieve, public support deadened away. A student protest movement, in which the emerging complaisant Rights Movement and anti-war protest merged somewhat, focused attention at home on growth discontent with America's foreign policy.

Johnson's failure to seek re-election is just one indication of how deeply this growing discontent affected American politics. Officials divided into two camps, of "hawks" and "doves," jibe to their sentiments regarding the war. Every night, the idiot box news programs carried footage about the war and America's losings - the "body count" - which made it increasingly clear that the war was "going nowhere," and that American troops were not "winning." Ge mutilaterey Perret (1989), in his epitome of America's participation in this and other war efforts, has noted that television coverage of the war shaped both public opinion and influenced military activity, (498). Lyndon Johnson succeeded in getting almost unlimited dominance to wage war in Vietnam from the Congress via the Gulf of Tonkin village; this legislation, passed after the North Vietnamese sunk American skips off the Vietnamese coast, was passed almost in the heat of the moment and reflected weakened American pride as much as Congresses' willingness to award Johnson extraordinary powers similar to those given to Roosevelt in World War II.

General William Westmoreland, attempting to fight a conventional war against insurgent forces, sought and received increasing supplies of men and materials throughout the 1960s. Nev
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