The Vietnam War | Part 2 | The Open Book | Education Videos

The longest war America fought
The Vietnam War was the longest war that the USA was involved in.
Vietnam is a nation in South East Asia bordering the Indonesian peninsula.
In 1960 John F. Kennedy sent a team to check out the situation and they came back with the report that USA’s interference was necessary in military, economic and technically.
This came to be called the domino theory which propagated that if one country fell to communism others would follow. Kennedy increase military aid but stopped short of interference.
A coup took place and some of Diem’s own generals killed him and his brother. In the meanwhile Kennedy was assassinated and there was unrest in South Vietnam. Kennedy’s successor also increased aid and when some of the US military torpedoes were attacked and killed he retaliated.
Soon Johnson the new President was given powers to take decisions regarding Vietnam. In1965 he decided to send military forces into Vietnam and he sent even more troops as the days went by. Smaller troops were sent to South Vietnam by other countries too and the same happened with North Vietnam. It turned out to be a fully fledged war.
The war dragged on till 1968 and now anti war sentiments were being expressed by the Americans as they saw their own kith and kin being killed and living in dire conditions.
By now there was a change in Presidency and Nixon took over. He started what was called as Vietnamization and slow withdrawal of American troops.
On one hand America was talking of peace and on the other there was large scale massacre of unarmed civilians. Killing on both sides continued till June1972 and finally in 1973 North Vietnam and America signed a peace treaty.
In 1976 Vietnam was unified as Socialist Republic of Vietnam though sporadic violence continued to take place.
Trade and diplomatic relations with America resumed in the 1990’s. The troops returned home in 1973 but the effects lingered.
Psychologically, the effects ran even deeper. The war had pierced the myth of American invincibility and had bitterly divided the nation. Many returning veterans faced negative reactions from both opponents of the war (who viewed them as having killed innocent civilians) and its supporters (who saw them as having lost the war), along with physical damage including the effects of exposure to the toxic herbicide Agent Orange, millions of gallons of which had been dumped by U.S. planes on the dense forests of Vietnam.
Even today this war has left an indelible mark on the lives of many people both in America and Vietnam. Many consider it a war unnecessarily fought by America since it had to do with two parts of a country and was an internal affair.