Research Paper on "Vietnam War Cultural Cohesion"

Research Paper 5 pages (1670 words) Sources: 3

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Vietnam War

Cultural Cohesion

No one who is well acclimated with history can claim that the United States had a unified effort in its involvement in the Vietnam War. From the domestic support of troops and soldiers in the conflict, to the representation of the progress of the war depicted by various media outlets, to even the disparate military factions that comprised the martial efforts of this nation, there was virtually always conflicting sentiments and disparate points-of-view about the best way to find success in this lengthy belligerent affair that lasted the better part of 20 years. This internal conflict manifested itself a number of times, perhaps most saliently in the impaired usage of foreign culture and the ineffective use of interagency capabilities. Had the U.S. been a little more savvy in both of these areas, this martial conflict more than likely would not have dragged on for as long as it did and consumed as many lives and destroyed as much property as it did. These statements should not imply that the U.S. ability to utilize aspects of foreign culture and its communication and involvement of varying military agencies was inept. However, in these two areas of its Vietnam War involvement, the U.S. learned slowly and largely through the means of painful experience, which could have been avoided had the nation had more solidarity in its involvement in this martial affair.

For the vast majority of the duration of the war, the U.S. was heavily reliant upon the South Vietnamese government as its principle contact within this region. U.S. involvement in this affair centered upon the preservation of the government of South Vietnam, which was capitalist and which the U.S. was hoping to keep as such to avoid the communist takeover that had previously occurred in the northern segment of the country. Although initially the American government hoped that the southern section of Vietnam would be able to wage conflict against its northern supporters (and communist supporters in the south known as the Viet Cong), it remained dependent upon the government of the South for the knowledge of foreign culture for the duration of the conflict. Still, the government's lack of prudence in Vietnamese culture was evinced during failed initiatives such as the Strategic Hamlet Program, which began in 1961 and was a joint effort between American military forces and the government of South Vietnam to relocate the population of the latter into secure camps (Herring 1971). Both governments hoped that doing so would preserve the innocent population group from the forces or renegade communist supporters as well as give the U.S. more control over that section of the country. Other aspects of the program strove to provide healthcare and even education to anti-communist South Vietnamese supporters.

Although such intentions sound lofty, the implementation and facilitation of these measures were tenuous at best, for the simple fact that the U.S. government widely forsook certain aspects of the South Vietnamese culture in false assumption about what was favorable for them. Many citizens had sentimental, religious, and cultural ties to their traditional locations, and objected to the forcible relocation to quarters that were inherently foreign (as provided by the U.S.) in nature. Even more significant was the fact that such a substantial resettlement of a population would not be successful without agrarian concerns for farming and the ownership of the land, which was still in the hands of a minority group of wealthy landowners, which the U.S. was not willing to reform. As a result, the Strategic Hamlet Program was eventually infiltrated by communist Vietnamese supporters, and failed to provide the ambitious goals of its original design. A greater understanding of Vietnamese culture and the tools necessary to implement such a move could have prevented this failure, however.

A retrospective examination of America's application of force in the Vietnam War as exerted by the various agencies that comprised its military prowess is indicative of the lack of uniformity between the governance of these forces. The assassination of South Vietnamese President Diem on November 2, 1963 provides an excellent example of the disunity between extensions of the U.S. military that should have ideally been a lot more streamlined. Posterity has recorded the fact that Diem was killed by South Vietnamese generals whom the Central Intelligence Agency had successfully influenced to murder both the President and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu. However, the CIA actions were primarily autonomous, and definitely independent of the authority of the White House and then President John F. Kennedy, which the following quotation demonstrates.

Records of the Kennedy national security meetings…show that none of JFK's conversations about a coup in Saigon featured consideration of what might physically happen to Ngo Dinh Diem or Ngo Dinh Nhu. The audio record of the October 29th meeting…also reveals no discussion of this issue. That meeting, the last held at the White House to consider a coup before this actually took place, would have been the key moment for such a conversation (Prados 2003).

Furthermore, the ramifications of this aberrant action of the CIA would go on to have resounding effects in vital cultural and political aspects of the Vietnamese war. The murder of Diem would spur a lengthy period of political turmoil in which there was little central government in South Vietnam and increasingly frequent coups. This lack of central authority required the U.S. To escalate its involvement and authority in this region when, at the time at which Diem was assassinated, the U.S. government had largely fancied itself as merely supporting South Vietnam, which was supposed to lead the principle effort against communist forces. South Vietnamese military campaigns, which had been tenuous during Diem's presidency, became even more apathetic and categorized by defeats at the hands of the Viet Cong. Before long, the U.S. would change its military involvement in this region from one of advisory and assistance to an offensive stance that would result in more cultural blunders.

One of the foremost cultural mistakes the American military made in its role during the Vietnam War to indiscriminately bomb large sections of both Vietnam and the countries surrounding it. It was only after the President's death that the U.S. was forced to take more of an assertive role in the conflict against the communist supporters in the North. One of its principle means of doing so was to utilize its aerial superiority with the frequent deployment of aerial raids that resulted in the bombing of several key areas in the northern section of this country. However, such air raids were oftentimes highly indiscriminate in nature, and instead of aiding in the conviction of the Northern Vietnamese population to disengage from communist governments and their supporters, it had the effect of alienating and even further polarizing them against the U.S. -- especially when bombing targets came to include parts of Laos and Cambodia. An officer involved in this conflict reflected upon the alienating effects of the indiscriminate bombing of the U.S. air force by saying "this is a political war and it calls for discriminate killing. The best weapon…would be a knife…the worst is an airplane" (Courtwright 2005, p. 210). In light of this quotation, the prowess of the U.S. Air Force, which was responsible for the indiscriminate bombing, actually had an adverse effect on other branches of the military, such as the Marines, who had to contend with the effects of the alienation and the ire incurred by the bombings in their ground encounters.

Moreover, this quotation alludes to the fact that the U.S. government and its various military branches largely misunderstood the conception of the Vietnamese war as it was regarded by the Vietnamese themselves. The Viet Cong and their communist supporters in the North largely viewed this conflict as one in which they could exorcise the influence of… READ MORE

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