Vietnam War Essay

The Vietnam War was an extensive and prolonged conflict between North Vietnam’s communist government and the Viet Cong, the government’s allies in South Vietnam, and the government of South Vietnam along with its ally, the United States. The Vietnam War was a part of a larger geographical war, the Indochina wars, and was a cause of the Cold War, a war between the United States and the Soviet Union, along with the American and the Soviet Union's allies. (1) The colonialism of the French in Vietnam was over six decades long. Indochina became one of the most valuable territories for the French. French colonialism’s true purpose was to exploit and profit off of Vietnamese resources and people. (3) In the 1940s and ‘50s, the Vietnam

Thousands of soldiers and civilian deaths were the result of this. Then, on January 30, 1968, the Tet Offensive began. Tet was a Vietnamese holiday, so while soldiers from the South were on their breaks, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops surprised them with an attack and caught them off guard. The Tet Offensive was a military failure for the communists, because even though they caught the troops off guard, they still lost about 50,000 troops. Though losing that many men, the Viet Cong’s fighters took rural areas from the South Vietnamese and the South Vietnamese slowly began losing their influence. The Tet Offensive began to wear on the South Vietnamese and the United States’ relationship. Americans began to wonder if and when the war would be won.

Clifford did this with the help of the president’s other advisers and elder statesmen from the Democratic Party. On March 31, Johnson announced in a nationally televised speech that he was going to halt the bombing of North Vietnam in order to begin the de-escalation of the fight. He also added that the United States was ready to send representatives to negotiate the end of the war. Following his announcement, he stated that he didn’t plan on running for president again that year. Three days later, Hanoi said it was ready to negotiate with the Americans. They asked that the Americans stop bombing the rest of Vietnam. Meanwhile, the war still went on, harsh as ever with many lives being taken in the process. In October, Washington was told by the Soviets that the North Vietnamese would be stopping their attacks to negotiate with the United States and South Vietnam, but only if the United States would halt their entire attack on the North. On the last day of October, Johnson announced the discontinuation of the bombing. Unfortunately, this caused the South Vietnamese and the United states to begin arguing about the terms and procedures to control the conversations. Nixon, the new president, knew that the war could not be won but pressed for the war being settled honorably. He believed this