can u tell me about the Vietnam war?

Question

anything at all?

Answer 1

Vietnam once had a king, as did such countries as Burma and Thailand (which still does). The royalty was famous for their prized orange or pink pearls that usually came from snails. The French took control, for a time, then regained Vietnam after WWII when the Axis powers controlled both Vietnam and France. The French lost the independence fight, but the freedom fighters were, as in Korea, divided among those who wanted communism and those who did not.

Americans sent "advisors" to help the Republic of South Vietnam, but it was a very corrupt government and did not really have the strong support of the people--most of which were more interested in simply being and living as Vietnamese. In the North, however, the famous liberator Ho Chi Minh was a communist who wanted to do for Vietnam what Mao did for China. Of course, both China and the USSR were happy to help him. Eisenhower sent a few advisors, Kennedy quite a few more.

After Kennedy was assassinated, Johnson escalated the matter greatly, especially after the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (something akin to the USS Pueblo capture in North Korea, except our ship fought off the North Vietnamese gunboat attackers). In the famous Tet Offensive, the emboldened North Vietnamese military directly struck at the American forces. I remember listening to Radio Havana on my shortwave and the Voice of Hanoi or something was telling of attacks with much, much bigger numbers. It wasn't but another week or two before Americans heard about the all-out attack.

After that there was a real escalation and the North stopped openly attacking en masse like that in most places. There were places where massed attacks happened, but rarely on such broad scale. We began trying to stop the military support traffic for the underground (often literally) fighters called the Viet Cong. That meant incursions into Laos and Cambodia next door. It also involved bombing in North Vietnam.

Meanwhile, Americans, as today, had lost their stomach for war and grew impatient and beligerent against our involvement. Nixon was then president and upped the efforts, mining the harbor at Haiphong and shooting up every truck or train coming across from China to resupply, essentially what we did in northern Italy during WWII when the Germans in the middle of Italy wouldn't budge. Henry Kissinger was Secretary of State and he arranged peace negotiations. As with Korea, when the negotiations started falling apart, the military began to tighten the noose even more. The North Vietnamese finally agreed to an armistice or truce of sorts. When the peace was established (sort of, as in North Vietnam stopped overtly fighting), then the US withdrew. Shortly afterwards, however, the North then directly attacked the south. The south essentially melted away before them. There was a hurried airlift of refugees (including a disasterous baby flight when our new C-5 failed and crashed, killing hundreds of children). I dated a girl whose family was on the last or next to last helicopter out of the US embassy. She almost didn't get to go, as did they. The family that was scheduled to go wasn't there, so they got the spot. The girl was adopted and as they were short on room, she was the last one from the family onboard the chopper. Her name was So and was very pretty and I would have loved to have married her, but her mother forbid her to see me. I didn't go to Vietnam, too young, but many friends and relatives did. While I see our Iraq thing as different in many ways, I do understand the similarity as some people claim. We squandered our best on people who sometimes were greatly appreciative and sometimes would hurt their own people when they couldn't hurt us directly--knowing that it was so disgusting to our sensibilities. It was such a pity because there were some truly wonderful people that could have and should have been helped, but their countrymen wouldn't permit it for reasons often incomprehensible to us.

Answer 2

Vietnam was a French colony that was fighting for independence. In the late 50s when the French were withdrawing the US became involved because the national forces were led by a communist Ho Chi Minh, The US thought of all communists as the enemy. They would also nationalize all industry including the oil reserves controlled by the American company Shell oil. The country was split (like Korea) with the North being communist and the southern section agents of America. Our involvement cost 52,000 Americans their lives and fell to the communists in 1975

Answer 3

The French came to us for aid in the conflict in Vietnam, and once again big brother helped them out. We sent in training troops under Kennedy to help the people defend themselves against the Red Chinese Communists. Similar to the Koreans. But in the invent that Kennedy was killed, the war escalated tremendously so we needed to send more troops which was horrible, many men died for nothing. The protection of the vietnamese was one thing but the placement of their country in Asia was the real purpose for that hold, between Russia and China, we needed to have a piece of that pie just like half of Korea. Personally I think we should own Japan and Germany as well. since we beat them hands down. But c'est La vie, we always get the fuzzy end of the lolly pop. The political aspects of this was a real tragedy we formed the oil industry with the Arabs at that time and then became a real threat for Russia was at our back door all the time. And we needed to stall the chinese as well, till we developed enough weaponry to be a real threat and that was the first man on the moon in 1969. That gave us world power status. Wars are not always fought for one motive, there are many reasons. It's like magic, the hand is quicker than the eye. While they keep you busy in one place they are doing things going un-noticed in others. Like right here in America? What is going on here while we are concentrating on Iraq? I wonder?

Answer 4

Started with the Vietnamese fighting against the french for their independence after WW2.

The French started pulling out after their defeat in Dien Bien Phu & the US negotiated for Vietnam to be partitioned into the North & South which would be reunited & elections held (which was hoped to prevent communism from taking over the whole of Vietnam.

The North fell under communist rule under Ho Chi Minh's leadership & China's patronage whilst the South was ruled by an American supported leader who turned out to be corrupted, power hungry & did not hold elections.

The North Vietnamese proceeded to invade South Vietnam & the Americans committed troops to defeat the communist North with many critical flaws which resulted in the Americans losing & pulling out in 1975 -

Firstly, the American leadership had forbade invading North Vietnam, Laos & Cambodia, allowing the North to use their 2 neighbouring countries for supply & manpower reinforcements, resting & formup although special forces & special bomber command groups occassionally conducted raids against the Ho Chi Minh trail.

Answer 5

"The Vietnam War was a military conflict in which communist forces of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV or North Vietnam) and the indigenous National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam, (also known as the Việt Cộng, "Victor Charlie" or "Charlie" for short, "VC" or "Cong" or "Mr. Charlie" or "Mr. Charles") fought the anti-communist forces of the Republic of Vietnam (RVN or South Vietnam) and its allies — most notably the United States (U.S.) — in a successful effort to unify Vietnam into a single independent, communist state.

The chief cause of the war was the failure of Vietnamese nationalists, in the form of the Viet Minh, to gain control of southern Vietnam both during and after their struggle for independence from France in the First Indochina War of 1946-1954.

Allies of the Vietnamese communists included the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. South Vietnam's main anti-communist ally was the United States, but also received assistance from South Korea, Australia, Thailand, the Philippines, and New Zealand. The U.S. in particular, deployed large numbers of military personnel to South Vietnam. U.S. military advisors first became involved in Vietnam as early as 1950, when they began to assist French colonial forces. In 1956, these advisors assumed full responsibility for training the Army of the Republic of Vietnam or ARVN. Large numbers of American combat troops began to arrive in 1965 and the last left the country in 1973.[2]

At various stages the conflict involved clashes between small units patrolling the mountains and jungles, guerrilla attacks in the villages and cities, and finally, large-scale conventional battles. U.S. aircraft also conducted substantial aerial bombing campaigns, targeting both logistical networks and the cities and transportation arteries of North Vietnam. Large quantities of chemical defoliants were also sprayed from the air in an effort to reduce the cover available to enemy combatants.

To some degree the Vietnam War was a "proxy war," one of several that erupted during the Cold War period that followed the conclusion of the Second World War and decolonization. These wars usually grew from localized conflicts that expanded to include the U.S. and its Western allies on one side and the Soviet Union and/or the People's Republic of China on the other. The Korean Conflict, for example, was another such war. Proxy wars occurred because the major players - especially the U.S. and the Soviet Union - were unwilling to engage each other directly due to the threat of escalation into a nuclear exchange.

The Vietnam War was finally concluded on 30 April 1975, with the fall of the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon to North Vietnamese forces. The war claimed perhaps 2-2.5 million Southeast Asian lives, a large number of whom were civilians."

Answer 6

The Vietnam War was a very sad war. It was a war which the U.S. could have clearly avoided.

Vietnam was a colonial possesion of France. Vietnam together with Laos and Cambodia, were collectively called French Indo-China. Vietnam had been fighting for her independence from French rule for 200 years. The last Vietnamese fight for independence was led by a nationalist, Ho Chi Minh.

World War 2 ended the role of Great Britain and France as colonial powers. After the war, there became a surge of aspirations for independence in the whole of Southeast Asia. Great Britain had to grant independence to its colonies (India, Burma, Singapore, Malaysia), the U.S. to the Philippines, the Dutch to Indonesia. However, France refused to grant independence to Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh raised the issue of Vietnamese independence on several occasions at the United Nations general assembly, but was ignored. He then sent a letter to U.S. President Harry Trumann pleading for help to intervene on his behalf on the Vietnamese independence issue. Trumann, not wanting to let down France who was America's ally in World War 2, never replied. Ho Chi Minh sent another letter to Trumann, but still got no reply. Ho Chi Minh, left with no other choice, resorted to armed struggle against the French. But realizing that his guerilla forces are poorly armed to fight the French, Ho Chi Minh turned to China for assistance, knowing that the U.S. wouldn't help him. China lost no time in supplying him with arms. Then Russia, China's ally at the time took advantage of the situation by suppllying him with Soviet arms together with Soviet military advisers. The Soviets trained the guerillas on various military tactics, but also started indoctrinating them with the Communist ideology. Ho Chi Minh himself, soon became a communist convert through this indoctrination. From this point on, the Viet Minh (Ho Chi Minh's guerillas) waged war against the French. This war went so long until the Viet Minh defeated the French in the battle at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. The United Nations finally acted by proposing to end the conflict and imposing a demarcation line (the 37th parallel) that divided Vietnam into North Vietnam and South Vietnam. The Viet Minh got the North, and the French got the South. However, the peace was short-lived and soon war broke out again. This war went so long until the French, unable to continue with the war any further, handed over South Vietnam to the Americans. After the French pulled-out of Vietnam, the Americans assumed to continue the war. Thus started the American bitter involvement in Vietnam.

The rest of the events that followed is already known to most Americans, and was already narrated by the other contributors to your question.

References:
The Vietnam War History (Walter Cronkite documentary film, 6 DVD's)
Vietnam War Reference Library (Vols. 1-4) - Gale
Ho Chi Minh biography (in Vietnamese)
Diplomacy (Henry Kissinger)
Twentieth Century America - A Brief History (Reeves)
The Vietnam War 1956-1975 (Osprey)
In Retrospect (Robert McNamara)
The French-Indochina War 1946-1954 (Osprey)
Nixon - The Man Behind The Mask (Gary Allen)