American Policymakers, on the Whole, Failed to Heed the "Lessons" of the past During the Vietnam War.

George Santayana has argued that those who spate non remember the bygone ar condemned to repeat it?. Of course, recollect the antecedent(prenominal) does non guarantee success in the present. It does, however, reduce the similarlihood of repeating ago errors by providing a frame of university extension for making decisions. This establish argues that, on the whole, Ameri preempt policymakers failed to heed the littleons of the chivalric during the Vietnamese contend. more specifically, the United States (U.S.) goernment and its multitudes and policy-making collective leadership failed to tump over the historic context of the Vietnam contend; did not regard the reputation of preceding conflicts in Vietnam; down the stairsestimated the strong realize of leave alone, the resolve and the sheer(a) commitment of the enemy that had been exhibited in previous wars; and did not consider the actual constitution of the war that it was fighting. These ponderous errors considerablely reduce the chances of U.S. victory. The essay does not content that this harm to infer the pass was the merely reason for the U.S. bastinado. Some commentators hand that the U.S. actually won the war on the tactical take except unconnected on the sole(prenominal) level that matters - the strategical, semi governmental level . Others criticise the army leadership for employing an inadequate military dodge to vanquish a communist insurgent movement, for jerry- built the civilian leadership and the American people by providing to a fault optimistic assessments that the war was being won, and for being more touch virtually their careers than agreeable the war. Similarly, it has been argued that the civilian leadership placed so many policy-making constraints upon the military leaders responsible for conducting the war that they made it unrealizable to win. Whatever the merits of these various contri merelyions, this essay argues that an c ause of the past in Vietnam may leave lesse! ned the result of the defeat and its plump up on the American psyche . This impact has been summarised by total heat Kissinger: Vietnam is still with us. It has created doubts ab proscribed American judgement, about American credibility, about American power - not only at infrastructure but U.S. function end-to-end the world. So we paid an horrid price for the decision that we made in groovy faith. An discernment of the basics of Vietnamese archives would dumb entrap been a good starting period for U.S. policymakers. Over the centuries, the Chinese, the Japanese, and the french reserve attempt to exert control over Indochina. Vietnam?s history is a litany of defense to much(prenominal)(prenominal) attempted inter discipline domination. For example, in twain the 13th and the 15th centuries, Vietnam initially roughshod to Chinese invaders but subsequently success adepty rebelled against the invading power. western sandwich invasions commenced in 1858 with a seri es of cut military thrusts. By 1883, the whole of Vietnam was under cut control and administered as spark of French Indochina. French colonial rule continued until whitethorn 7, 1954, when the French were defeated by the Vietnamese at Dien Bein Phu. currently by and bywards, in a land with a long history of revolting unconnected invaders, the United States entered the conflict. It did not take the cartridge toter to examine the lessons learned from the French employment in Indochina. through and throughout these centuries, and out of the experiences of these long wars and resistance to invaders, the Vietnamese people withstand forged a strong collective identity. Though slow militarily at various times, this identity has always re-asserted itself, leading(a) to renew political expression. This political expression has been greatly assist by a single, common language, a shared tradition, and a join territory with a history of heroic resistance to contrary rule. Leaders who fulfilled this image could attract deep ! dedication and enormous sacrifice from the race. nevertheless those leaders who succumbed to foreign pressure, or accommodated foreigners for personal gain could not count on normal support, except from a small percentage of the world - that packet that had benefited from foreign exploitation. Arguably, few U.S. policy makers understood the spirit and the govern of these past conflicts. Rather they regarded the war as a re-run of the Korean fight ? a war to stop the hand out of Communism ? and did not get wind that the Vietnamese viewed the conflict with the U.S. as just a continuation of 2000 years of foreign oppression. And, found on its history, this was an invasion that could be repelled. Crucially, the U.S. did not conflictingly visualize the political and military go away and determination of the Vietnamese, based on their past and on their culture, and in particular did not appreciate that the plow union Vietnamese were fain to undertake limitless casualtie s in its conflict with the United States. The coupling Vietnamese political leader, Ho Chi Minh brutally set out his parameters for victory: You can kill ten of my men for everyone I kill of yours. tho counterbalance at those odds, you will lose and I will win. Ho Chi Minh and his allies were prepared to do whatever was necessary to resist this la quiz foreign occupation. They were prepared to swallow limitless casualties to attain their objective. popular Vo Nguyen fling, the Communist commander, discounted the life history of thousands of man beings. He spoke of fighting ten, fifteen, twenty, fifty years, careless(predicate) of cost, until nett victory. Even if the battle was to be that of a ? hemipteron against a leviathan? , the essential reality of the struggle was that the north- interchange Vietnamese were imbued with an al close to fanatical sense of dedication to a reunified Vietnam. The enemys diligence was affirm by American civilians and soldiers w ho served in Vietnam. Patrick J. McGreevy, a CIA ana! lyst, recognize in 1969 that no price was too high for Gap as long as he could deplete American forces, since he measured the situation not by his casualties, but by the traffic in homebound American coffins. Konrad Kellen, a RAND potbelly expert, noted that short of being physically destroyed, collapse, surrender, or putre faction was - to put it bizarrely - simply not within their capabilities?. The great power to accept the casualties which the U.S. war of attrition imposed was central to the success of northeastward Vietnamese strategy. Their attacks were designed to claim utmost psychological effect. They were up to(p) to choose the time and place of most of their attacks that were most profitable to them. Therefore, with the exception of the TET offensive, they were able to control their casualties by avoiding contact with opponent forces when desired. In effect this attrition strategy was a test of wills which the United States could not endure. This essential fa ct largely escape American strategists who based their analysis on their own determine rather than those of the Vietnamese. U.S. General Westmoreland believed that by hemorrhage? them, he would awake their leaders to the realization that they were draining their population to the point of depicted object disaster for generations, and then shackle them to sue for peace. After the war, Westmoreland noted that an American commander who took the aforesaid(prenominal) losses as General Gap would have been plundered overnight?. Neither could intense assail of the unification Vietnamese break their resolve. The United States rail line Force dropped 7.8 one thousand thousand tons of bombs during this war, an amount greater than the tote up dropped by all aircraft in all of reality fight II. Since the northmost Vietnamese, unlike Germany in World struggle II, did not be possessed of munitions plants or industries vital to its war effort, infrastructure such as roads, bridg es, and transportation complexes were targeted. Such! targets, however, could be quickly repaired, moved, or circumvented and whence had to be bombed again and again. Nor could intensifier battery inhibit the attend of men and supplies over the Ho Chi Minh trail. certainty suggests that the heavier-than-air bombing only increased the resolve of the trades union Vietnamese resistance. Strategic targets in major population centres could not be bombed due to political considerations. General Curtis Lemay, U.S. station Force, conscious bombing them into the stone age.? Yet, in 1972 after the most intensive bombing of the North had destroyed virtually all industrial, transportation, and communications facilities built since1954, flattened three major cities and twenty-nine country capitals, the Norths party leaders replied that they had defeated the U.S. air war of destruction. ill-judged of nuclear destruction (or an all out invasion of North Vietnam, as some advocates suggested) the air war alone could not force the North Vietnamese to succumb to pressures that the British and Germans had survived during World contend II. Only much later did American officials mother to cover the determination of the North Vietnamese. Dean Rusk, secretary of adduce under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, finally admitted in 1971 that he had personally underestimated the ability of the North Vietnamese to resist. General Maxwell Taylor, who had contributed to Kennedy?s decisions on Vietnam and served as Johnsons ambassador in Saigon, neatly summarised the lack of readying and cognizeledge of the U.S.: First, we didn?t live ourselves. We thought we were going into some other Korean war, but this was a different country. Secondly, we didn?t know our southmost Vietnamese allies. We never understood them, and that was another surprise. And we knew even less about North Vietnam. Who was Ho Chi Minh? zero right full moony knew. So, until we know the enemy and know our allies and know ourselv es, wed violate upkeep out of this dirty kind! of business.

? Kissinger, like his predecessors, never found the breaking point of the North Vietnamese. He had cogitate that they would compromise only if menaced with total annihilation. The North Vietnamese concord to a cease fire in October 1972 only after he had handed them major concessions that were to jeopardize the time to suffer of the South Vietnamese government. In formulating a strategy to defeat the North Vietnamese, the U.S. military leaders arguably did not understand the nature of the war. Were they fighting a counter-insurgence war, for example, or a full conventional war against North Vietnam? Summers, in his book O n Strategy, strongly argued the disappointment of the U.S. military leadership to perceive the dandy nature of the Vietnam War. He offers the view that the North Vietnamese insurgence was a tactical screen masking their real objective, the achievement of South Vietnam through conventional means. Summers argues that the failure to invoke the national will was one of the major strategic failures of the Vietnam War. It produced a strategic vulnerability that the United States enemy was able to exploit. If the Constitutional wad for a congressional declaration of war had been accomplished, it would, he argues, have ensured public support and, through the legal sanctions against dealing with the enemy, keep public dissent. Regardless of the validity of this analysis, a key point that emerges is the impact of the act of committing American forces in a remote part of the world without a formal declaration of war. North Vietnam posed no direct threat to the U.S. Why, then, wer e nearly 1 million U.S. troops fighting in Vietnam? T! he reason for U.S. involvement in Vietnam was to contain communist expansion. However, even this policy of containment was not intended to be applied on the Asian continent. worldly concern on the history of the American people and their relationship with its army, a prolonged war will not be hindquarters up unless U.S. interests are directly threatened. In this context, Donaldson argues the need to pay back the nature of war: U.S. leaders ?must also guardedly consider, define, and pass to the American people what are U.S. vital interests and which interests that they are unforced to die for.?In conclusion, it is clear that the U.S. policymakers did not understand the historical context of the Vietnamese war nor of previous conflicts in Vietnam; uncomplete did they appreciate the sheer will of the enemy nor the nature of the war. In short, they failed to heed the ?lessons? of the past. It is not possible to conclude that that such failure led to the defeat of the U.S. forc es in the Vietnamese war. What is clear, however, is that, ultimately, through ignoring these lessons, the initiative of victory was greatly reduced. BIBLIOGRAPHYAllison, Fred H. ?Remembering the Vietnam War: ever-changing Perspectives over Time?, The Oral bill Review, Vol. 31, No. 2, 2004, pp. 69-83. Baritz, Loren. kick: A register of How American Culture Led Us into Vietnam and make Us Fight the Way We Did. sunrise(prenominal) York: Morrow, 1985. Bergerud, Eric M. Red Thunder, tropical Lightning: The World of a Combat Division in Vietnam. boulder: Westview, 1993. Cooper, Chester L. The Lost Crusade: America in Vietnam. new York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1999. Davidson, Phillip B. Secrets of the Vietnam War. Novato, CA: Presidio, 1990. Donaldson, Gary A. America at War since 1945: Politics and Diplomacy in Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf War. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1996. Elliott, David. The Vietnamese War: Revolution and Retribution, 1930?1975. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2003. Goodma n, perform A. Rolling Thunder: seam Strategy, Sele! cted References. Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University Library, 1993. Hess, Gary R. Vietnam and the United States: Origins and Legacy of War. Boston: Twayne, 1990. Jamieson Neil L .Understanding Vietnam. Berkeley: University of calcium Press, 1993. Kinard, Douglas. War Managers. New Hampshire: University Press, 1977. Michael, S. ?Vietnam War and the US: Haunting Legacy?, saving and Political Weekly, Vol. 36, No. 21, 2001, pp. 1793-1795. Santayana, George. The Life of Reason, Volume 1. Amherst, N.Y: Prometheus Books, 1905. Shivkumar, M. S. ?Reconstructing Vietnam War History?, Political Investigation, Vol. 31, No. 1, 1996, pp. 21-22. Summers, Harry. On Strategy. atomic number 20: Presidio Press, 1982. Turley, William. The Second Indochina War. New York: Westview Press, 1986. Zinoman, Peter. The Colonial Bastille: A History of Imprisonment in Vietnam, 1862?1940. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website: BestEssayCheap.com

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