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... By the early 1970s it was evident that Vietnam had evolved into a quagmire that the West could never win. This was because of the nature of the war- which was guerrilla warfare, and the lack of support not only in South Vietnam but also on the home front.
When America first landed forces in Vietnam after the French withdrawal in 1954, their intention was not to continue a conflict from 1954-1975 that would cost more than 58,000 American deaths, 504 Australian casualties and 1,500,000 Vietnamese lives including losses from other allied forces present in Vietnam (Cowie, 1994: 160-162). This is in addition to the thousands of people who became physically and psychologically scarred, due to the effects of war and drugs. ...
America’s presence in Vietnam was also to establish and demonstrate its reliability and credibility as a super power on the world stage. ... This was the United States’ chief purpose for assisting South Vietnam in their war against the impending Communist rule (Lind, 1999: 34-36). ... Ngo Dinh Diem became the president of South Vietnam in 1955 because he was pro-capitalist and anti-communist and therefore the United States recognised his regime as the legal government capable of governing South Vietnam (Cowie, 1994, pg151-156). ... Other military governments followed, but all were unsuccessful in stabilising South Vietnam. (Cowie, 1994: p156-157)
America’s occupation of South Vietnam was continuously subjected to scrutiny, censorship over Television, Radio and Newspapers were not instituted during the Vietnam War, causing public opinion to sway against their own governments in all allied nations (Cowie, 1994: 159). The United States’ Saigon Defence Department officials objected to the censorship of information in 1965 (Summers, 1999: 114) for several reasons: the United States could not implement censorship without declaring war (which it never did), television was still in its early stages of development and therefore impossible to censor.
Approximate Word count = 1357
Approximate Pages = 5.4
(250 words per page double spaced)
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