Philip Caputo recalled: "If it's dead and its Vietnamese, it's Viet Cong, was the rule of thumb" in compiling casualty statistics. But contempt mixed with amazement at what the Vietnamese--living, in many places, still in grass huts, wearing what looked like pajamas to Americans--managed to do.
Their major roads were destroyed, but supplies moved instead through the jungles, carried by human caravans at night, or through networks of tunnels. General William Westmorland claimed that: "Human life is cheap to the Asian.
They don't feel the same way about death that we do. Brigham argues that "while some naive and simple-minded critics have claimed that the Communist Party, and Vietnamese in general, did not have the same regard for life and therefore were willing to sustain more losses in a protracted war, the Party understood that it had an ideological commitment to victory from large segments of the Vietnamese population. The US government consistently lied to the public about casualty rates, both US and Vietnamese casualties, and about the North Vietnamese ability to fight--constantly claiming that there was "light at the end of the tunnel.
This massive offensive against US and the South stunned Americans, who fell back and allowed the North Vietnamese to capture most of Saigon and even the US embassy for a few days. The US counterattacked, eventually driving the VC back and regaining most of the conquered territory. Military historians regard the Tet offensive as a defeat for North Vietnam. But widespread TV coverage of the counteroffensive only increased growing public opposition to the war, which in many people's eyes had become a crisis.
The Vietnam war and the draft galvanized opposition at home, uniting people and movements who otherwise might have had nothing in common. By the late s, mainstream journals and newspapers begin denouncing the war. The war destroyed Johnson's presidency. He might have been remembered for the most ambitious social welfare program ever undertaken, but instead he was driven from office by war and the fierce protests it evoked. He declined to run for a second term.
It is often argued that lack of public support doomed the Vietnam war effort. In this line of reasoning, public protests against the war undermined troop morale and the military's ability to fight effectively. I would argue that this is wrong. It is true that opposition to Vietnam was intense by the late sixities.
And that opposition was closely linked to the radical cultural politics of the sixties--to rock and soul music, to hippies and the alledged drug culture, and to the general critiques of "the establishment. This picture can serve to symbolize the clash of two distinct worlds: the technological, regimented, uniform world of the "military industrial complex," and the free, unstructed and anti-establshment approach of the hippies. Instead of being treated as heros, this argument goes, the soldiers were treated like the enemy when they returned home.
You may even have heard that returning soldiers were spat on by protesters. There is no historical evidence that this ever occurred. The American public had deeply mixed feelings about the war. And the fact that college students were exempt from the draft added to the gap, and the resentment, between student protestors and the soldiers and their families. Veterans often resented the fact that they served while others--often the more wealthy and priviledged--protested on college campuses.
And opponents of the war had come to consider it, by the late sixties, as not just a misguided policy but an outright evil. They sometimes regarded soldiers as complicit in this evil. The revelations of the My Lai massacre see below only strengthened this opinion.
Vietnam dramatized class divisions, and divisions of political opinion, that Americans had not wanted to confront.
Individual veterans may feel, and indeed may be right to feel, that their service to the nation went unappreciated. Students should be careful to sort out popular folklore--like the story that veterans were spat on--from historical fact. The morale of troops in Vietnam was often quite low. The average age of soldiers in Vietnam was only Again, draft deferments were available to those in college--if you were in college, you were exempted from the draft. As a result, the war was fought mostly by the children of the poor and less advantaged--and they knew it.
Racial divisions emerges--see the recollections of Michael Rodriguez. The Vietnam war was often a horrendous experience for Americans. The soldiers lacked a clear sense of what the war was about--why are we here?
In the field--"in country" there seemed to be no secure places--the enemy was everywhere. It seemed to some like a moral quagmire. Lack of public support for the war intensified as evidence of the full awfulness of the war effort mounted. They had suffered recent losses, were frustrated by their inability to find the enemy and anxious for revenge.
They rounded up unarmed women, children, and elderly civilians, raped the women, then opened fire. The killed over Vietnamese civilians, mostly women and children: Private Paul Meadlo recalled:.
We huddled them up. About the women and children in my sleep. Some days, some nights, I can't even sleep. Under the command of Lieutenant William Calley, the soldiers of Charlie Company took a break for lunch, then went back to killing and burning. They were finally stopped by two American two soldiers from an airborne helicopter division, who threatened to turn their helicopter's guns on them if they shot another woman or child.
The Army did its best to cover the incident up. The two men who stopped the massacre were threatened, and the Australian newspaper which published the first stories was sued. Eventually, thanks to the efforts of journalist Seymour Hersch, the story became public news.
In a trial that captured national attention, Calley was court-martialed and sentenced to three years. The two men who stopped the massacre were given medals by the army in , on the 30th anniversary of the massacre. By the time of the My Lai incident, public protest against the war was exceeding protest on just about any issue since the Civil War. Richard Nixon, who was elected in , claimed to have a secret plan for ending the conflict. But in fact he offered little new except the invasion of neighboring Cambodia by US troops in The invasion revived student protest, and in a famous incident four students were killed at Kent State University in Ohio, when Ohio National Guard troops opened fire on unarmed protesters.
In reaction to renewed protests, Nixon began withdrawing US troops, and arming the South Vietnamese army more heavily. This policy he described as the "vietnamization" of the war effort. US troops were reduced from , in to 60, by To compensate for the loss of these troops, Nixon greatly stepped up bombing, especially the secret, undisclosed bombing of Cambodia. Meanwhile, proof of the US government's deliberate campaign of "misinformation" and deception was leaked by Daniel Ellsberg in the " Pentagon Papers.
Daniel Ellsberg, a Defense Department official, believed that the public had the right to know the secret details of the Vietnam War, so he released copies of the study to the New York Times and Washington Post. The first of the Pentagon Papers was the lead story in the Times on June 13, Nixon challenged this in the Supreme Court, which, however, upheld the right of the newspapers to publish the documents. Nixon reacted in what for him was a typical fashion.
Schultz writes again:. In response to the Pentagon Papers incident, the "Plumbers" were formed, among them G. Gordon Liddy, E. Howard Hunt, and some Cuban dissident recruits. The "Plumbers," in an attempt to discredit Ellsberg, broke into his psychiatrist's office in search of damaging information on him. John Ehrlichmann had approved the burglary "if done under your assurance that it is not traceable. The White House "plumbers" were a covert organization Nixon's aides put together to carry out "dirty tricks.
By , the evidence was clear: the American public would no longer support the war in any form. Nixon and his National Security advisor Kissinger negotiated what they called "peace with honor," in fact simply a recognition of defeat. One month later, he halted the he bombing, and on January 27, , peace was declared. His aversion to the establishment of military alliances suggests how his strategy could never properly recognize the crucial role played by military security that was required to alleviate fears, and ensure the administration remained politically credible.
The global expansion of communism had a public psychological impact, encouraging the administration to view the struggle as a zero-sum game, whereby a loss of credibility in one territory was deemed to affect the global balance of world power.
To a large extent this can be accounted for by the influence of George Kennan on policy planning. Reflecting his realist understanding of the international system, Kennan conceived a strategic doctrine to guide U. The idea that a comprehensive containment strategy provided a consistent direction is therefore, something of a historical myth.
The militarisation of the U. Many of these ideas are credible; it seems likely military means of containment were expanded to secure power over and above the Soviet Union, whilst an ideological world view encouraged strong means of resistance where the U.
However the timing of the militarisation of containment can only be explained by a growth in the perceived power of the international communist movement from onwards, emphasized by traditional historians as the key factor in the development of the Cold War. Containment: Documents on American Policy and Strategy, , ed.
Etzold, Thomas H. Freeland, Richard M. Graebner, Norman A. Kennan, George F. The Truman Presidency , ed. Lacey, Michael J.
Lauren, Paul G. Leffler, Melvyn P. Kennan, U. Miscamble, Wilson D. Offner, Arnold A. Richardson, James L. Ruddy, Michael T. Schuessler, John M. Spalding, Elizabeth E. DeConde New York: Scribner, , pp. Lacey Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, , pp. Lacey, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, , p. Before you download your free e-book, please consider donating to support open access publishing. E-IR is an independent non-profit publisher run by an all volunteer team.
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Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Share Flipboard Email. Kennedy Hickman. Military and Naval History Expert. Kennedy Hickman is a historian, museum director, and curator who specializes in military and naval history.
He has appeared on The History Channel as a featured expert. Facebook Facebook. Updated August 09, Featured Video. Cite this Article Format. Hickman, Kennedy. The History of Containment Policy. Containment: America's Plan for Communism. What Is Communism? Definition and Examples. National Security Definition and Examples.
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