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The Vietnam War , also known as the Second Indochina War , or the Vietnam Conflict , occurred in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia from 1959 to April 30, 1975. The war was fought between the communist North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of South Vietnam, supported by the United States and others.

The Vietcong, the lightly armed South Vietnamese communist insurgency, largely fought a guerilla war against anti-communist forces in the region. The North Vietnamese Army engaged in a more conventional war, at times committing large-sized units into battle. U.S. and South Vietnamese forces relied on air superiority and overwhelming firepower to conduct search-and-destroy operations, involving ground forces, artillery and air strikes.

The United States entered the war to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam as part of a wider strategy called containment. Military advisors were sent beginning in 1950. U.S. involvement escalated in the early 1960s and combat units were deployed beginning in 1965. Involvement peaked in 1968 at the time of the Tet Offensive. Under a policy called Vietnamization, U.S. forces withdrew as South Vietnamese troops were trained and armed. Despite a peace treaty signed by all parties in January 1973, fighting continued. In response to the anti-war movement, the U.S. Congress passed the Case-Church Amendment in June 1973 prohibiting further U.S. military intervention. In April 1975, North Vietnam captured Saigon. North and South Vietnam were reunified the following year.

The war had a major impact on U.S. politics, culture and foreign relations. Americans were deeply divided over the U.S. government’s justification for, and conduct of the war. Opposition to the war contributed to the counterculture youth movement of the 1960s.

The war exacted a huge human cost in terms of fatalities, including 3 to 4 million Vietnamese from both sides, 1.5 to 2 million Laotians and Cambodians, and 58,159 U.S. soldiers.

One of the most controversial aspects of the U.S. military effort in Southeast Asia was the widespread use of agents of chemical warfare between 1961 and 1971. They were used to defoliate large parts of the countryside. These chemicals continue to change the landscape, cause diseases and birth defects, and poison the food chain.

Early in the American military effort it was decided that since the enemy were hiding their activities under triple-canopy jungle a useful first step might be to defoliate certain areas. This was especially true of growth surrounding bases (both large and small) in what became known as Operation Ranch Hand. Corporations like Dow Chemical and Monsanto were given the task of developing herbicides for this purpose. The defoliants, which were distributed in drums marked with color-coded bands, included the "Rainbow Herbicides"—Agent Pink, Agent Green, Agent Purple, Agent Blue, Agent White, and, most famously, Agent Orange, which included dioxin as a by-product of its manufacture. About 12 million gallons (45 000 000 L) of Agent Orange were sprayed over Southeast Asia during the American involvement. A prime area of Ranch Hand operations was in the Mekong Delta, where the U.S. Navy patrol boats were vulnerable to attack from the undergrowth at the water's edge.

In 1961 and 1962, the Kennedy administration authorized the use of chemicals to destroy rice crops. Between 1961 and 1967, the U.S. Air Force sprayed 20 million U.S. gallons (75 700 000 L) of concentrated herbicides over 6 million acres (24 000 km²) of crops and trees, affecting an estimated 13% of South Vietnam's land. A 1967 study by the Agronomy Section of the Japanese Science Council concluded that 3.8 million acres (15 000 km²) of foliage had been destroyed, possibly also leading to the deaths of 1,000 peasants and 13,000 head of livestock.

As of 2006, the Vietnamese government estimates that there are over 4,000,000 victims of dioxin poisoning in Vietnam, although the United States government denies any conclusive scientific links between Agent Orange and the Vietnamese victims of dioxin poisoning. In some areas of southern Vietnam dioxin levels remain at over 100 times the accepted international standard.

The U.S. Veterans Administration has listed prostate cancer, respiratory cancers, multiple myeloma, type II diabetes, Hodgkin’s disease, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, soft tissue sarcoma, chloracne, porphyria cutanea tarda, peripheral neuropathy, and spina bifida in children of veterans exposed to Agent Orange. Although there has been much discussion over whether the use of these defoliants constituted a violation of the laws of war, the defoliants were not considered weapons, since exposure to them did not lead to immediate death or incapacitation.

Casualties

The number of military and civilian deaths from 1959 to 1975 is debated. Some reports fail to include the members of South Vietnamese forces killed in the final campaign, or the Royal Lao Armed Forces, thousands of Laotian and Thai irregulars, or Laotian civilians who all perished in the conflict. They do not include the tens of thousands of Cambodians killed during the civil war or the estimated one and one-half to two million that perished in the genocide that followed Khmer Rouge victory, or the fate of Laotian Royals and civilians after the Pathet Lao assumed complete power in Laos.

In 1995, the Vietnamese government reported that its military forces, including the NLF, suffered 1.1 million dead and 600,000 wounded during Hanoi's conflict with the United States. Civilian deaths were put at two million in the North and South, and economic reparations were expected. Hanoi concealed the figures during the war to avoid demoralizing the population.

Popular culture

The Vietnam War has been featured heavily in television and films. The war also influenced a generation of musicians and songwriters. The band Country Joe and the Fish recorded "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag" in 1965, and it became one of the most influential anti-Vietnam protest anthems. The musical Miss Saigon focuses on the end of the war and its aftermath. In cinema, noted films that have shaped the popular conception of the war include Apocalypse Now , Platoon , The Deer Hunter , Hamburger Hill , Forrest Gump, Full Metal Jacket , Good Morning, Vietnam , Born on the Fourth of July , the Rambo films and We Were Soldiers , as well as Jacob's Ladder . It serves as the setting for numerous video games, such as Battlefield Vietnam , Conflict: Vietnam , Elite Warriors: Vietnam , The Hell in Vietnam , Line of Sight: Vietnam , Men of Valor , Shellshock: Nam `67 , Vietcong and its sequel Vietcong 2, and Wings Over Vietnam . It was represented on television by the series Tour of Duty . It also provided inspiration for the Colonial Marines in Aliens . A common misconception by people who were not fans of the show is that the media franchise M*A*S*H is set in the Vietnam War; it is actually set in the Korean War theater. The TV series China Beach which aired from 1988 to 1991 in the US focused on the everyday lives of the people sent to serve their country.

Notes

^ ^a ^b The Vietcong began an assassination campaign in early 1957. An article by French scholar Bernard Fall published in July 1958 concluded that a new war had begun. The first large unit military action was on September 26, 1959, when the Vietcong ambushed two ARVN companies.
^ Vietnam War > Troops Strength
^ {{citation |url=http://www.history.army.mil/books/Vietnam/allied/ch06.htm
^ Appendix B: Timeline of Korean Involvement in Vietnam War , Center for Korean Studies, UC Berkeley , http://ieas.berkeley.edu/cks/k12/ROKTimeline.doc , retrieved on 4 October 2008
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