FREE ESSAY ON VIETNAM

VIETNAM

The Vietnam War was the longest and most unpopular war in which Americans ever fought. And
there is no reckoning the cost. The toll in suffering, sorrow, in rancorous national
turmoil can never be tabulated. No one wants ever to see America so divided again. And
for many of the more than two million American veterans of the war, the wounds of Vietnam
will never heal. 
Fifty-eight thousand Americans lost their lives. 
The losses to the Vietnamese people were appalling. 
The financial cost to the United States comes to something over $150 billion dollars. 
Direct American involvement began in 1955 with the arrival of the first advisors. The
first combat troops arrived in 1965 and we fought the war until the cease-fire of January
1973. To a whole new generation of young Americans today, it seems a story from the olden
times. 
In 1983, the unfolding of the Vietnam tragedy was the focus of an extraordinary
documentary series broadcast on public television. 
When first aired, the series was recognized immediately as a landmark. It had taken six
years to make. Researchers had combed film archives in eleven countries and the result
was a stunning record of the conflict as it happened. 
Program Notes 
Roots of a War
The end of World War II opened the way for the return of French rule to Indochina.
Despite the ties he had forged within the American Intelligence community, and his
professed respect for democratic ideals, Ho Chi Minh was unable to convince Washington to
recognize the legitimacy of his independence movement against the French. French generals
and their American advisors expected Ho's rag-tag Vietminh guerrillas to be defeated
easily. But after eight years of fighting and $2.5 billion in U.S. aid, the French lost a
crucial battle at Dienbienphu - and with it, their Asian empire. 
America's Mandarin
With a goal of stopping the spread of communism in Southeast Asia, America replaced
France in South Vietnam - supporting autocratic President Ngo Dinh Diem until his own
generals turned against him in a coup that brought political chaos to Saigon. 
LBJ Goes to War
With Ho Chi Minh determined to reunite Vietnam, Lyndon Baines Johnson determined to
prevent it, and South Vietnam on the verge of collapse, the stage was set for massive
escalation of the undeclared Vietnam War. 
America Takes Charge
In two years, the Johnson Administration's troop build-up dispatched 1.5 million
Americans to Vietnam to fight a war they found baffling, tedious, exciting, deadly and
unforgettable. 
America's Enemy
The Vietnam War as seen from different perspectives by Vietcong guerrillas and
sympathizers, by North Vietnamese leaders and rank and file, and by Americans held
prisoner in Hanoi. 
Tet, 1968
The massive enemy offensive at the lunar new year decimated the Vietcong and failed to
topple the Saigon government but led to the beginning of America's military withdrawal
from Vietnam. 
Vietnamizing the War
Richard Nixon's program of troop pull-outs, stepped-up bombing and huge arms shipments to
Saigon changed the war and left GIs wondering which of them would be the last to die in
Vietnam. 
Cambodia and Laos
Despite technical neutrality, both of Vietnam's smaller neighbors were drawn into the
war, suffered massive bombings, and, in the case of Cambodia, endured a post-war
holocaust of nightmarish proportions.
Peace Is at Hand
While American and Vietnamese soldiers continued to clash in battle, diplomats in Paris
argued about making peace. After more than four years, they reached an accord that proved
to be a preface to further bloodshed. 
Homefront USA. 
Through troubled years of controversy and violence, US casualties mounted, victory
remained elusive, and American opinion moved from general approval to general
dissatisfaction with the Vietnam War. 
The End of the Tunnel
South Vietnamese leaders believed that America would never let them go down to defeat - a
belief that died as North Vietnamese tanks smashed into Saigon on April 30, 1975, and the
long war ended with South Vietnam's surrender.