OVERALL DEATH STATISTICS:
Second Indochina War: 4 Million. Source: Necrometrics and British Medical Journal, 2008
Resulting Khmer Rouge Genocide: 1.7 Million. Source Necrometrics
[Create protected villages that vietnamese had to move to]
[need number of dates, number of troops]
[Highlight mcBundy - protege of roosevelts defense secretary]
[JOHNSON PUT A HUGE # of troops in vietnamese.]
[ted offense catatrophe for n. vietnam]
[a started under truman, b escalated under johnson]
Many Western ideas about "The Vietnam" war are highly misleading. First off, even this name itself is wrong, because it was really the "Indochina War." The war itself also ran a lot longer than most Americans realize. The Indochina war actually began right at the end of World War II, when the allied powers refused to accept Vietnam's independence (despite the Viet Minh fighting and dying to defeat the Japanese.) America got involved in supporting the French in 1950 under the direction of Truman in {EDIT MORE HERE}the name of keeping the world safe from communism - or helping France maintain control over their colony. Yet despite more than 20 years of war in the region, 4 million deaths, the most brutal bombing campaign seen in the 20th century, and the chemical spraying of agent orange over 4.5 million acres of land that have destroyed the country side and given millions of Vietnamese birth defects and cancer - despite all these atrocities - the Northern communists still ended up winning the war in 1975.
The other grim reality is the genocide in Cambodia that was unleashed in the aftermath of the war. Due to Cambodian disenchantment with the West, 700,000 bitter and disillusioned Cambodians joined the Khmer Rouge. They unleashed a genocidal campaign in Cambodia to strip the country of all Western influences, and impose a radical communist transformation of society. An estimated 1-3 million Cambodians were killed in this genocide.
So not only was this a barbaric war that will exist as a black mark on America's history, and as a criminal war crime against the people of Indochina, but it was also a pointless war, and a stupid war. Another fact that some people don't consider, is that this was a war that was the by-product of the corruption of the political Left. And the chief architects of the war, McGeorge Bundy and Robert McNamara, went on to become key figures in the Liberal Establishment. McGeorge Bundy went on to become the head of the Ford Foundation and Robert McNamara went on to serve as the head of the World Bank.
We will go into this in more detail below.
THE U.S. DOUBLE CROSSES HO CHI MINH IN WORLD WAR II
PROMISES FREEDOM - SUPPORTS COLONIALISM
During World War II, the U.S. looked to creating allies in China and other Southeast Asian regions in order to pose a threat to the Japanese military whenever possible. The Viet Minh, a Vietnamese liberation movement against Japanese occupation emerged under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh in the early 1940's. Yet they were also seeking liberation from French Imperialism. When the Germans defeated the French in 1940, Ho saw it as an opportunity for the Vietnamese Nationalist cause. He began to use the name "Ho Chi Minh," which translated roughly to "Bringer of Light."
On October 1943, a memo from the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) proposed that the United States “use the Annamites [the Vietnamese]…to immobilize large numbers of Japanese troops by conducting systematic guerrilla warfare in the difficult jungle country.” The missive went on to suggest the OSS’s most effective propaganda line was to “convince the Annamites that this war, if won by the Allies, will gain their independence.” (History Net)
Roosevelt himself said: Each case must, of course, stand on its own feet, but the case of Indo-China is perfectly clear. France has milked it for one hundred years. The people of Indo-China are entitled to something better than that [1].
Relations between Ho Chi Minh and the American forces in Vietnam during World War II were very positive, but this was not to last.
Shortly after Japan surrendered, Ho Chi Minh declared independence in Vietnam, and even used the American Declaration of Independence as his template (See Vietnamese Declaration of Independence). Banners of “Welcome to the Allies” (specifically, the United States) flew in the streets.
Yet as the British were freed from dealing with Japanese hostilities, they began to interfere in the local politics, and eventually declared martial law. They refused to recognize the new Viet Minh government, (the Democratic Republic of Vietnam), and instead deferred to the French. On September 23, 1945, with the knowledge of British Commander in Saigon, French forces overthrew the local DRV and declared French authority in Indochina restored.
For years afterwards, Ho Chi Minh wrote letters to the United States, asking for aid against the French. But these letters went ignored. The letters stopped when U.S. President Truman began to send financial support to the French side of the war in May, 1950.
[1] From Major Problems in American Foreign Policy, Volume II: Since 1914, 4th edition, edited by Thomas G. Paterson and Dennis Merrill (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company, 1995), p. 189.
THE FIRST PART OF THE INDOCHINA WAR (1945-1954)
Death Statistics: 400,000. Source: Necrometrics
The first part of the Indochina war (1945-1954) began when the Viet Minh fought for liberation against French Colonization. The first few years involved a low-level rural insurgency against French authority. However, after the Chinese communists reached the northern border of Vietnam in 1949, the conflict turned into a conventional war between two armies with modern weapons.
American Involvement: In May 1950, President Truman began sending financial aid to the French side, and the steady build up of U.S. military advisors began.
End of the first Indochina War: At the battle of Dien Bien Phu of 1954 the French were defeated. At the following International Geneva Conference on July 21st, 1954, the French government and the Viet Minh made an agreement to give the communists control of Northern Vietnam above the 17th parallel. This was denounced by the Southern Vietnamese forces along with the United States.
THE SECOND PART OF THE INDOCHINA WAR (1955-1975)
Death Statistics: Source Necrometrics
South Vietnamese Military: 224,000
South Vietnamese Civilians: 1.500,000
North Vietnamese Military and Viet Cong: 1,000,000
North Vietnamese Civilians: 65,000
Cambodian Civil War: 600,000
Laos Bombing Campaign: 250,000
Vietnamese Civil War: 250,000
Total: Approximately 3.8 Million
The second part of the Indochina War is what many in the West erroneously call the "Vietnam War." However, given that the war spilled over into Cambodia and Laos, it really wasn't just the "Vietnam War." It was a Cold War-era proxy war that took place in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Much like the first war, China, the Soviet Union and other communist allies supported Northern Vietnam, while the United States and other anti-communist allies fought for the South. This was a wider part of the "containment policy" developed in the Cold War Era, which was basically a war against an ideology: Communism.
A year after the peace of 1954 was established, an insurgency developed in the North against the South Vietnamese government. With China and the Soviet Union supporting the North, and America supporting the South, the second Indochina war began.
The U.S. involvement escalated in the early 1960's, with troop levels tripling in 1961, and again in 1962. A heavy bombing campaign took place against the North, in which North Vietnamese airspace became the most heavily defended in the world. The U.S. involvement crossed into Laos and Cambodia, which were heavily bombed by U.S. forces as American involvement peaked in 1968. At height of the war, America deployed around 500,000 soldiers.
Yet a large sentiment against the war began to grow in Western counter-culture. Direct U.S. military involvement ended on August 15th, 1973. The capture of Saigon (the capitol of the South Vietnamese Republic) officially ended the war and Vietnam was unified.
So after 20 years of U.S. involvement in the region, the communists still won the war.
AMERICAN LIES TO THE SOUTH VIETNAMESE
NIXON'S FAILED PROMISE TO PROTECT THE SOUTH FROM THE NORTH
Historians have attributed the fall of Saigon in 1975 to the cessation of American aid. Without necessary funds, South Vietnam found it logistically and financially impossible to defeat the North Vietnamese army. Moreover, the withdrawal of aid encouraged the North to begin a military offensive against the South. Between 1973-1975, aid to Vietnam was cut from $2.8 billion to $300 million by the Liberal Majority Congress (History.com)
Former Assistant Secretary of State Richard Armitage even compared the American withdrawal to “a pregnant lady, abandoned by her lover to face her fate." [2]
Historian Lewis Fanning went so far as to say that “it was not the Hanoi communists who won the war, but rather the American Congress that lost it." [3]
In 1973, President Richard Nixon approved the Paris Peace Accord negotiated by Henry Kissinger, which implemented an immediate cease-fire in Vietnam and called for the complete withdrawal of American troops within sixty days. Two months later, Nixon met with the South Vietnamese President Thieu and promised him "severe retaliation" against North Vietnam should they break the cease-fire.
This promised was made in a letter Nixon sent himself to the South Vietnamese President Thieu.
Nixon wrote the following on November 14th, 1972: "You have my absolute assurance that if Hanoi fails to abide by the terms of this agreement it is my intention to take swift retaliatory action."
Nixon Correspondence Letters with South Vietnamese President (PDF)
[2] Edward J. Lee, Nixon, Ford, and the Abandonement of South Vietnam (McFarland & Co., 2002), p. 105.
[3] Fanning, Betrayal in Vietnam.
PRESIDENT JOHN KERRY TESTIFIES AGAINST U.S. WAR CRIMES COMMITTED IN VIETNAM
U.S. Presidential candidate John Kerry himself testified before the U.S. Senate and described the war crimes committed in Vietnam according to the testimony of 150 U.S. veterans:
"They told the stories of times that they had personally raped, cut off the ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country." (Richmond.edu).
THE U.S. LAUNCHED A CAMPAIGN OF CHEMICAL WARFARE
SPRAYING AGENT ORANGE OVER 4.5 MILLION ACRES OF VIETNAMESE LAND
One particularly pernicious and long lasting effect of the war were the side effects caused by the massive use of the deadly chemical "Agent Orange." Agent Orange was a powerful mixture of chemical defoliants used by U.S. military forces during the Vietnam War to eliminate forest cover for North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops, as well as the crops that might be used to feed them. The U.S. program of defoliation sprayed more than 19 million gallons of herbicide over 4.5 million acres of land in Vietnam from 1961-1972. During this time the crops and water sources of non-combatants were infected. Thorough studies on the substance have shown that even minute doses can cause long lasting health effects such as muscular dysfunction, inflammation, birth defects, nervous system disorders and even the development of various cancers. Both U.S. veterans of the war and Vietnamese civilians have suffered long lasting health problems; up to half a million Vietnamese children have been born with serious birth defects and around 2 million people are suffering from cancer or other illnesses caused by Agent Orange (History.com).
THE 2.5 MILLION TONS OF BOMBS DROPPED ON LAOS
LAOS BECOMES MOST HEAVILY BOMBED COUNTRY ON EARTH
Death Statistics: 250,000 Source: Necrometrics
Between 1964 and 1973, the United States dropped around 2.5 million tons of bombs on Laos. While the American public was focused on the war in neighboring Vietnam, the U.S. military was waging a covert campaign to cut off Vietnamese supply lines through the small Southeast Asian country. There were nearly 600,000 bombing runs, which dropped a staggering amount of explosives. So the equivalent of a planeload of bombs was dropped on Laos every eight minutes for nine years, or a ton of bombs for every person in the country. This is more than what American planes unloaded upon Germany and Japan combined during World War II. Laos remains, per capita, the most heavily bombed country on earth.
Even today, more than 100 Laotians fall victim to unexploded cluster bombs annually. There are still 80 million live explosives lurking under Laos' soil. (Mother Jones)
CHIEF ARCHITECTS OF THE VIETNAM WAR
A PRODUCT OF THE LIBERAL ESTABLISHMENT
McGeorge Bundy and Robert McNamara are two men who played a chief role in escalating the war. Bundy moved into politics in 1961 when he was appointed National Security Advisor to the administration of President John. F. Kennedy. He played a key role in all of the major foreign policy defense decisions of the Kennedy administration and was retained by Lyndon B. Johnson for part of his tenure. Bundy was involved in the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War. In 1964 under Johnson he was also responsible for coordinating government covert operations. He was a strong proponent of the Vietnam War during his tenure and claimed that the war effort was an essential battle in containing communism. He supported escalating U.S. involvement, including the commitment of hundreds of thousands of ground troops in the region and the sustained bombing of North Vietnam in 1965. Later studies of the memorandums and policy papers showed that Bundy along with other advisors understood the risks involved, but proceeded with these actions anyway for domestic political reasons, rather than out of any belief that the U.S. had a realistic chance of winning the war. [2] Later he went on to become the head of the Ford Foundation from 1966-1979.
Robert McNamara also played a role in escalating the war effort as the Secretary of Defense, serving from 1961 to 1968 under President John. F Kennedy and Lyndon B. In fact, he played such a large role that some went as far to call Vietnam "McNamara's role." McNamara did not object. He said himself "I am pleased to be identified with it...and do whatever I can to win it." Half a million American soldiers went to war on his watch and more than 42,000 died. Some say the war became his personal nightmare. Nothing he did could win the war, or stop the armies of the North Vietnamese and their South Vietnamese allies. He concluded well before leaving the Pentagon that the war was a futile effort. Yet he didn't share this insight with the public until later in life. In 1995 he took a stand against his own conduct, confessing in a memoir that the war was "wrong, terribly wrong."(New York Times).Yet much like his counterpart McGeorge Bundy, his career took him from blunder in Vietnam to becoming a major business success. McNamara became the head of the World Bank from 1968-1981.
[2] Bird, Kai. The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy: Brothers in Arms (Simon and Shuster, June 21st 2000)
LOSS OF LIVES IN VIETNAM AND DISENCHANTMENT WITH WESTERN DEMOCRACY DRIVES CAMBODIANS TO JOIN KHMER ROUGE
KHMER ROUGE UNLEASH A GENOCIDE THAT ELIMINATES 25% OF THE CAMBODIAN POPULATION
Death Statistics: 1.7 Million. Source Necrometrics
The Cambodian Genocide resulted in the death of 25% of Cambodia's population in just three short years (world without genocide). As the Vietnam War progressed, Cambodia's elected Prime Minister Norodom Sihanouk adopted an official policy of neutrality. Sihanouk was ousted in 1970 in a military coup led by his own general Lon Nol, which is a testament to the turbulent climate of Southeast Asia during this time. Lon Nol was made president of the new Khmer Republic while Prince Sihanouk and his loyal followers joined forces with a communist guerilla organization known as the Khmer Rouge. Soon after, a civil war in Cambodia began.
Although the Khmer Rouge movement was small at first, many Cambodians joined over time out of a feeling of disenchantment with western democracy due to the huge loss of Cambodian lives that resulted from the U.S. strategy to involve Cambodia in the Vietnam War. The heavy U.S. bombardment and Lon Nol's collaboration with the U.S. drove new recruits to Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge guerilla movement.
By 1975, Pol Pot's forces had grown to over 700,000 men. When he took over Phnom Phen (the capital and largest city in Cambodia) he unleashed a radical, communist transformation of Cambodian society that sought to expunge all western elements from the country. The Khmer Rouge launched a violent campaign of genocide that targeted the religious, members of the upper class, intellectuals, the media, as well as ethnic Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai and Cambodians with Chinese, Vietnamese or Thai ancestry. It is estimated that anywhere from 1-3 million Cambodians lost their lives at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. The average of official estimates, places the number somewhere around 1.7 million (necrometrics). Yet the real number is probably much higher due to the unreported numbers of people who died from starvation and disease.