Public Opinion of the Vietnam War

[Willel]

How far do you think that public opinion at home was to blame for the failure of the American campaign in Vietnam?

[dothawkes]

Don't know what the history books have to say about it these days, but here in Lancashire we had it every few nights on the news when I was in my early teans and it used to be very hard to follow what it was all about, there were lots of protests here as well as in the U.S.

[bernardo]

I think 100%.  The USA lost 57,000 soldiers and the Vietnamese lost about 2 million people.  The Vietnamese fighters worked by the principle that every American death would result in a further reduction of support from USA domestic opinion, and the Vietnamese had (for this purpose) an indefinite supply of people to "sacrifice" to attain this goal.  In other words "you will run out of support before we run out of people".  I do not know much about the details of the Vietnam War, but I have heard it said that the American forces lost the war in spite of winning very single battle.

[jno]

yes, a major part in the defeat I think. It was the first media war - covered every night on American TV. (Since then Washington has learnt much more about media manipulation - 'embedding' reporters with regiments, for instance, so they'll naturally empathise with them and hopefully slant their stories.) Everything that went wrong was felt at home, and every death noted. There were many anti-war demonstrations, far more than against the Iraq invasion; young people were particularly scornful - and they were affected, because conscription was in force. The public eventually decided they'd had enough.

[Peter Pedant]

Come on Willel - this is an assignment question which you are not meant to answer in 3 minutes.

Refer to your course materials - presumably you will have been given a bit about tet 1968 - The Viet Cong lost an arm and a leg (ie lots) however they set up a 'command post' in the American Embassy yard for 6 hours, which was played and replayed on tv

The sieges at Da nang and Khe Sanh - Johnson demanded written assurances from Westie that he could hold Khe Sanh

The effect Jane Fonda had in visiting Hanoi anti-aircraft emplacements and saying that she thgouth the American (ie her lot) were engaged in a war of genocide

and so on...

[Octavius]

You're going to have to write the essay in your own words eventually... 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_to_the_Vietnam_War

Has some info, including the infamous 'execution' picture.

[brionon]

I believe that there was a greater tonnage of bombs dropped on Vietnam than in the whole of WW2, not to mention poisons like Agent Orange to defoliate the jungle. The Americans thought that if they could see the Vietcong they could destroy them, Iraq shows the fallacy of that idea.

[puttycake]

I'd agree with brionon - the Americans fought a hight-tech campaign with urban soldiers against a massive gurrilla force who were in their own environment. the Americans were utterly ill-equipped and trained to fight jungle warefare, and eventually realised that they would never trtiumph by sticking their army into someone else's country because they didn't like the other country's politics. The American government got their arses roundly kicked, but it doesn't seem to have taught their sucessors any lessons does it?

[davver]

Puttycake - I am afraid that wars are not won or lost by whether it is right or wrong to go to war 'in someone else's country because they didn't like the other country's politics' They are won by the might of the armies involved. In this case, whilst they were free to commit adequate resources, the Americans absolutely steamrollered over the Vietcong, however romantic the idea of a primitive people beating the know-it-all techies after all might be. The US military campaign stuttered because, given media coverage as never before, the public saw a few realities of the nasty business of war and cringed. As public opinion turned against the war, and as casualty figures began to rise, the government was less and less willing to provide resources, so the underfunded and underprovided army began to have to retreat, eventually leading to complete withdrawal. See casualty figures mentioned above, and find diagrams of where the front line was at various points of the war.

[ladymoll]

davver is largely right, but there is another crucial reason why the USA didn't "win" during its involvement in the Vietnam conflicts - if the NVA had been defeated, then China would have come into the conflict. The Chinese were not simple peasants, and the US knew that Chinese involvement would open up a whole different ball game (which the US stood every chance of losing in a spectacularly bloody fashion). This fact, combined with growing domestic discontent over US involvement in Vietnam, was largely what spurred the withdrawal of troops. Now, to find out why they carried out their withdrawal in such an inhumane and wasteful manner, you'll have to look at American social, economic and cultural history from its very first rumblings, through the Vietnam Era, right up to the present day (and that includes the current abysmal treatment of New Orleans citizens). ;>

[sinbag]

 

 I agree with puttycake, the Americans did the same in Korea if it wasn't that the Brits,Dutch, Aussies in fact the so called U N come to their rescue, its called sticking your nose where its not wanted. The Americans are good at that and we in the UK are a very close second