Vietnam War

During my cruise to Asia in the fall of 2012 we made a visit to Ho Chi Minh City; formerly known as Saigon, Vietnam. Our last stop in Ho Chi Minh City was the Vietnam War museum. It was very interesting to visit a war museum created by the victors in a war my country, the United States, lost. I didn't have a lot of time to spend in the museum so I took a lot of pictures of the information that was presented so I could evaluate it when I got home. Check out the pictures of some of the US military equipment that was left behind when the US left Vietnam at the end of the article. All of this equipment, and a lot more, is displayed in the plaza in front of the museum.

During the height of the Vietnam War in the late 1960s/ early 1970s I was a college student. I had a student deferment until the Nixon administration and the Congress elected to cancel student deferments and conducted the first draft lottery in the fall of 1969. My future was on the line the night of the lottery drawing. My lottery number was 310, high enough to never be drafted.

Unlike many of my peers I never protested the Vietnam War. I was from a military/government family and I believed in the US government when I was young. I was more focused on achieving my own goals rather than the actions of the government that didn't impact me. As I got older I came to realize that the US government was completely wrong in the way it approached the situation in Vietnam. It is very hard for me to understand what motivated the US government decision makers regarding the decision in Vietnam. However, my long held belief is that the United States government became extremely arrogant after its World War II victories and decided that it could control the world. This was my perspective before walking into the museum in Ho Chi Minh City. I am presenting an abbreviated version of the history of the Vietnam War from the material presented in the museum.

In World War II, the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor organization to the Central Intelligence Agency, trained a military force led by Ho Chi Minh in a jungle in North Vietnam. The OSS group was based in Con Minh in Southwest China. In researching this point I found that the fact that the US allied itself with Ho Chi Minh is documented in "The OSS and Ho Chi Minh - Unexpected Allies in the War against Japan" by Dixee R. Bartholomew-Feis. Although the OSS did not bring Ho Chi Minh to power, Bartholomew-Feis shows that its apparent support for the Viet Minh played a significant symbolic role in helping them fill the power vacuum left in the wake of Japan's surrender.

The August Revolution was carried out successfully on September 2, 1945. President Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam at the Ba Dinh Square in Hanoi putting an end to the French colonialist yoke over Vietnam for nearly 100 years.

The French expeditionary forces suffered heavy causalities in the Frontier Campaign (September 1950). 8,300 French troops were killed or captured as prisoners of war. As the French got bogged down the US administration strove to help the French colonialists. In September 1950, the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG-1) was activated in Saigon with the first US Army personnel operating in Vietnam.

In May of 1953 the Navarre Plan was created that had the objective of defeating the Viet Minh within 18 months. Vice President Richard Nixon visited Dong Giao in October 1953. After the trip the US government committed $385M of military aid to the French for Fiscal Year 1953. After fighting day and night for 55 days, on May 7, 1954, the People’s Army of Vietnam completely smashed the Dien Bien Phu group of fortresses and captured 16,000 French troops. French General de Castries surrendered unconditionally to the liberation army. On July 20, 1954 an agreement was signed in Geneva ceasing hostilities in Indochina and recognizing the independence, unity and territorial integrity of Vietnam. On May 16, 1955 the last French unit left Vietnam ending the nearly 100 year colonial domination by France.

After the French left the US sponsored Ngo Diem Dinh as President of the Republic of Vietnam and funded its military operations. Backed the US Ngo Diem Dinh attempted to sabotage the terms of the Geneva agreements. Ngo Diem Dinh was killed in a military coup on November 1. 1963. In 1963 the US began steadily increasing its military forces in Vietnam. On September 23, 1965 Senator Wayne Morse states in the US Senate that in Vietnam the US has flouted the rule of law, flouted the United Nations Charter and violated the Geneva Accords for more than ten years.

The US military build-up continued until it peaked in 1969 at a force level above 500,000 and was followed by a phase out of US forces. The last helicopter of US personnel left Saigon on April 29, 1975. The People’s Army entered Saigon and captured the city on April 30, 1975, ending the Vietnam War.

There were two exhibits in the museum that numerically described the incredible damage done to North Vietnam by the US military. One of them describes the human and physical destruction done to North Vietnam by the US bombing. Approximately, 200,000 people were killed and injured. The physical damage to a country with limited infrastructure is almost indescribable. For example it is claimed that 100 percent of power plants were destroyed. The second panel describes the areas contaminated by Agent Orange and other herbicides and defoliants. I was shocked to see how much of the country was sprayed by the US during the aerial spray missions from the mid 1960s to 1971. It is no wonder that it has taken decades for Vietnam to begin to recover economically from the destruction that occurred during the Vietnam War.

After reading this history and seeing the exhibits in the museum, Americans must ask themselves what Communist threat was worth the carnage suffered by all sides during the Vietnam War. What were our leaders thinking? What was really motivating them? I doubt that there will ever be a simple answer. Each time I walk through the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, it is tough to look at the names on the black walls of the Memorial that are cut into the earth. Over 50,000 Americans died serving our country in Vietnam.

Why?