By Tom Morrow

Note: This is a subject that takes thousands of words to explain. The space I’m afford here can only provide an overview of a terrible Vietnam conflict.
The United States effectively was at war from 1941 to 1975. World War II from 1941-45; The Korean War from 1950 to 1953; in 1950, we started being entangled in Southeast Asia in a place most of us then knew as “French Indochina.” The name “Vietnam” was unknown to most Americans.
The 20-year war that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from Nov. 1, 1955 to the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975 was primarily between the communist North Vietnam and democratic-style republic of South Vietnam. The basic premise was stop Communism from engulfing all of Southeast Asia. It that happened eastern ocean shipping lanes could be affected. The U.S. goal was to stop Communism wherever possible.
The North Vietnamese army was supported by the Soviet Union, China and other communist allies; the South Vietnamese army was supported by the United States, South Korea, Australia, Thailand and other anti-communist nations. The war was considered part of the Cold War-era.
The Viet Cong. a South Vietnamese Communist group aided by North Vietnam, fought a guerrilla war against anti-communist forces of South Vietnam and it allies, The North Vietnamese Army (NVA), engaged in more conventional warfare.
In the course of the war, the U.S. conducted a large-scale strategic-bombing campaign against North Vietnam.
The North Vietnamese government and the Viet Cong were fighting to reunify Vietnam. They viewed the conflict as a colonial war and a continuation of the First Indochina War against forces from France and later, the United States. The U.S. government viewed its involvement in the war as a way to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam.
U.S. participation in the Vietnam War actually goes back to 1950, when American military advisors arrived. U.S. involvement escalated in the early 1960s. Regular U.S. combat units were deployed beginning in 1965.
In 1968, the Tet Offensive failed in its goal of overthrowing the South Vietnamese government, but became the turning point in the war, as it persuaded a large segment of the U.S. population that its government’s claims of progress toward winning the war became a myth despite many years of massive U.S. military aid to South Vietnam. Then-President Lyndon Johnson attributed this dramatic change in public opinion to one man: CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite, then considered dean of American news reporters. The newsman visited Vietnam in the late ‘60s and returned telling his viewers the war was unwinnable. Johnson replied, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost the war.”
Gradual withdrawal of U.S. ground forces began as part of “Vietnamization”, which aimed to end American involvement in the war while transferring the task of fighting the communists to the South Vietnamese themselves.
A large anti-Vietnam War movement developed in the U.S. The war changed the dynamics among the American public. Direct U.S. military involvement ended on Aug. 15, 1973.The capture of Saigon by the North Vietnamese Army in April 1975 marked the end of the war, and North and South Vietnam were reunified the following year. The war exacted a huge human cost in terms of fatalities; estimates of the number of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed vary from 966,000 to 3.8 million, while 58,220 U.S. service members died in the conflict. Another 1,645 American remain “Missing In Action.”
Ironically, the mounting years (since 1991) of our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan is growing closer to that of Southeast Asia. To say our nation is growing war weary is an understatement.

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