Tuesday, May 6, 2014

The Most Crucial Stage of the Vietnam Conflict

As we discussed in class, the Vietnam war can be divided into three stages -- 1) US involvement in Indochina (without US troops actively fighting); 2) Escalation; and 3) Vietnamization.  The majority of your readings over the weekend take place during the Escalation period. 

What were some of the goals set forth in the escalation plans?  What knowledge do you think was driving the military actions?  How would you evaluate them (feel free to use the last document if you need help with your criticism)?

16 comments:

  1. Escalation was the biggest stage of the Vietnam War because it drove the entire war to its climax and brought huge harm to both the US and Vietnam. According to the material, the goals set forth in the escalation plans were:
    1. Use a larger amount of military to end the war ASAP;
    2. Press the Northern Vietnam military, decreased its morale by stabilizing US force-level, installing a barrier (more troops), stabilizing the Rolling Thunder Program, and pursing a vigorous pacification program;
    3. Take more quicker actions in order to bring a huge damage to Northern Vietnam in a relatively short time.
    But actually, both in my opinion and the comic shown in the last page, the escalation plans were just a big black hole that could caused more deaths and failures and wouldn't bring victory to the US.

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  2. The goal of escalation plan was very clear. It was to help the south win the war, to have capitalist influence on the nation. Johnson kept sending troops into Vietnam however as he is doing so. He had to watch out how much troops he was sending in because US was afraid of the intervention of Chinese government, or the bigger supporter the USSR. what drove the military action? I think it could be the loss of US aircrafts, constant attacks from the the to US military base and the loss of American soldiers' life. Victory was wanted badly by soldiers and politicians. It was a difficult situation to do for American. If they back up from it, Vietnam would immediately become Communists.

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  3. The first and most important goal of the escalation plan is to evaluate the situation at hand, the U.S. military must listen to the recommended actions, and, specifically in Vietnam, it was important to stabilize U.S. force-levels. These three goals were imperative in our war with Vietnam. The knowledge that was driving the military into action was not only the prospect of their friends dying and being, “hung from a tree by hooks in [their] armpits,” but also the ideology that the U.S. military were helping the Vietnamese people live a better life. Also, our fear of communism continued to play a large role in the war. This fear pushed us to use more force, further escalating the war.

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  4. Escalation plans include an increase of the U.S.military population in Vietnam, starting the rolling thunder programs. The plan aims for quicker results and bigger damages. However, the situation in Vietnam is not a typical european warfare style, and the Viet-Com has Chinese as a strong back up. There are too many unknown factors ahead for U.S. It is definitely too precarious for U.S. to instill more troops and forces. There is no promising victory for the escalation plan. On the other hand, people who are against the Vietnam War in U.S. are blind-eyed to the situation in Vietnam and unwilling to help the Vietnamese to seek their freedom. The cartoon "The Dilemma of Vietnam" accurately depicts the qualm of the Civil War. One side is the escalation plan keeping on growing without the ability to foresee the situation; the other side is the "repent" group that ignore the Communist problems in Asia.

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  5. There were many goals set forth in the escalation plans. According to the reading, some of there goals/ plans were to push the military to new levels and do whatever it takes to help the South win the war. "The American commitment to Vietnam was very much part of the overall U.S. Cold War strategy". I agree with Andrew when he said that Johnson kept sending in the military excessively as a plan to win the war fast, however the US had to be careful about how many troops they were sending over because it leaves room open for others to attack the US at any given moment.

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  6. Part of escalation included bringing in as much US troops as possible, however the problem with this, as stated in McNamara's piece, is that the enemy will only respond with much more troops. This can lead to a stalemate and gruelingly long war along with the loss of excessive amounts of money. I very much agree with him that our goals during escalation to fight the war for the Vietnamese were very wrong. Like McNamara said, "In essence, we find ourselves...no better, if anything, worse off. This important war must be fought and won by the Vietnamese themselves." However, the first soldier's letter struck me because it gave some insight a to why a soldier may want to fight. I guess the last cartoon describes the situation best. Those that support and those that repent escalation are both "blind" in their arguments. Neither were acting out of awareness in the world, they are just acting to act.

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  7. the Escalation plan was mainly to bring in more troops to fight as everyone else said. The US brought more than half a million of soldiers to fight however the Viet Cong showed a lot of power by bringing them as well a lot of more soldiers and having even more troops than the US. /the US had been too confident by thinking that their plan would work because they were one of the most powerful and richest countries by the time but this helped them to open their eyes and realize that it was not like that.

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  8. The escalation plan was meant to bring in more troops, they needed more people to be brought into vietnam to fight even though they had more soldiers than the us. The us went in over confident and cocky, acting as if no one could beat them no matter what they did. They just wanted to do what they thought the US could do best. The US soldiers going to vietnam was a tricky task because if too many soldiers left, it made the United STates itself vulnerable with no military left to defend it. it seems as though , lik everyone else said, everyone was acting just to "act" but they were doing it so blindly.

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  9. The Escalation Plan was very straightforward. Based on the reading, the purpose of the Escalation plan was to increase the U.S military troops US installed in Vietnam. The reason why America initiated the plan was because during the cold war era, americans believed that the United States had a responsibility to help the south to win the war so that the U.S can have make Vietnam a capitalist country, not a communist country. Johnson sent military continuously in order to win the war fast, however, the problem was that sending in too many military troops from the United States might leave the U.S vulnerable.

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  11. Our military leaders realized that even with the continuous bombing from the Rolling Thunder air campaign, the enemy still had not lost its morale. They were fighting a war of attrition against our national will to fight and they were winning, all they had to do was wait. This is why some commanders pushed for escalation. With greater forces, we could bring devastating blows to the enemy so that waiting would no longer seem like a viable option for them. This would be able to lead us to feasible peace talks or even a final military victory.
    Frankly, I do not entirely agree with the arguments for escalation. The North Vietnamese simply wanted a victory more than us or the South. They would continue to fight ruthlessly even if we sent in another quarter-million troops. Since it was mostly guerrilla warfare, greater numbers in soldiers would not make much of a difference anyways. Also, even if we were to defeat the North Vietnamese, the Chinese would invade in overwhelming numbers as they did in Korea in order to protect communism. If a final victory in Vietnam was possible, it surely wasn't worth the exorbitant loss of money and lives that it would cost.

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  12. Escalation played a huge role in the Veitnam War. The fall of the escalation would eventually lead to the ending of the Veitnam War. Some goals set forth in the escalation period was to use more warfare and military bases to be more violent and end the war. Also create damages to the North in such a short time period they will not be able to fight back. This ultimately was a poor decision because more deaths and war would not create an end to the war, but rather more people angry.

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  13. When executing the plan of escalation, the main objective was to help the South win the war, an to do this we needed to implement more troops. We wanted this to happen because we did not want another communist state in the east so we felt like we had to do something about it and help them win. Like i said before the knowledge we had before was that communism was spreading and we didn't want it to spread. I do not tim we should ever have gotten involved with the war because it benefited us in no way and seeing us pull out and not finish the war showed a weakness on our part.

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  14. Some of the goals set forth in the escalation plans just basically include increased U.S. involvement through more troops in an effort to defeat the Communist north and insert American influence in South East Asia. I think the knowledge (or lack thereof) that was driving the force in Vietnam was the misconception that this would be a quick war when in reality, it was an incredibly expensive war that cost both hundreds of thousands of lives, billions (almost a trillion in 2011) of dollars, and lasted almost a decade. I believe that the continued effort to "liberate" Vietnam was incredibly foolish and showed the thick-headed and narrow view held by then President Johnson. On the other hand, I think also it would have been slightly more foolish to let Communism spread around the world without trying to stop it.

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  15. Some of the goals set forth in the escalation plans was the increase in military and this helped bring the war to an end. Quicker was the key and his plan was to end the war very quickly. It was a very basic plan to increase the soldier in Vietnam. The escalation plan was basically the climax of the war. Like everyone has been saying this plan is built on 4 goals and or ideas.

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  16. Clearly the step of US involvement in indochina was done in order to introduce the idea of US moving towards the Vietnam area. Escalation then came into place doing just what the title infers. It tries to escalate the situation in Vietnam, to get the people to side with him I order to have a full military attack and most importantly to help the South win the war.

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