The Course of the American War in Vietnam, 1965-1968 – Group 2
America’s mission in the Vietnam War was contradictory in many ways. The inherent contradictions emanated from failures in the strategies used by the U.S military. These strategies include the use of excessive power, the search and destroy strategy, and operation rolling thunder.
The U.S went into the war to save South Vietnam from the verge of collapse. It intended to keep the war limited to prevent the Soviet Union and China from intervening. However, the president and his advisers did not offer guidelines to the use of force. Left on its own, the military injected excessive power in North Vietnam, resulting in a bloody statement (Herring, 2020). Gradually the war escalated into mass slaughter, government lying, breaches of international law, and cover-up of war crimes.
Between 1965 and 1967, the U.S embarked on weakening the enemies’ regular units through search and destroy. Therefore, it committed to increasing its units by requesting more military forces bringing the total to over 500,000 with the aim of searching and killing. However, they were suppressed by North Vietnameses who tactfully, relied oh hit and run operations and ambushes on the American troupes through the integration of the diplomatic, political, and military dimensions to the war.
The U.S rolled out operation “Rolling Thunder” whose purpose was to bomb the enemies. However, this camping failed because the bombs often fell into empty jungle missing the intended Vietcong targets (Duiker, 1995). The reason is that the Vietcong guerillas knew the forest very well, and so, they made elaborate underground tunnels and bases that sheltered them from the American bombs. Often, the Vietcong soldiers reused unexploded American weapons against U.S troupes.
In concussion, the Vietnam War becomes a long divisive and costly conflict that did not yield any positive results for America. State policy, military, and intelligence failings contributed to the U.S losing. Had the strategies been well designed, probably the contradictory outcomes could not have been experienced.