The American Experience in Vietnam was a tragedy of great proportions, but dismissing the conflict as an aberration is a mistake. Many well-intentioned people thought they were doing the right thing in resisting Communist domination of Vietnam.

The origins of the American experience in Vietnam go back well over 100 years, for it was the French involvement in Vietnam—or as it was called for a time, French Indochina (which included Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia)—that led to the American involvement. Vietnam became part of the French Empire under Emperor Napoleon III in the 1860s. French colonial rule of Vietnam was harsh and exploitative, and early in the 20th century various nationalist movements began to try to end France's colonial rule. This nationalist resistance eventually fell under the leadership of a Vietnamese revolutionary named Nguyen Ai Quoc, or “Nguyen the Patriot,” who later changed his name to Ho Chi Minh.

Ho was born on May 19, 1890, and was given the name Nguyen Sinh Cung at birth. His father was a Confucian classics scholar and teacher, and Cung grew up with a love of learning. When he was eleven his father, according to Vietnamese tradition, gave Cung the new name of Nguyen Tat Thanh, meaning “He who will succeed.” Young Thanh continued to read and study and was soon sent off to study classics with a friend of his father. His tutor was strongly patriotic, and Thanh adopted not only his patriotic attitudes, but also the humanitarian focus of classical Confucian writings; he began to write his own patriotic verse.

By the time he was a teenager, Thanh's patriotic feelings had been enhanced by his learning of the cruel treatment many Vietnamese suffered under their French rulers. At age seventeen he was admitted to the National Academy in Hue, where his father now lived. He had already adopted the notion that if he was to defeat the French, he would have to learn about their language and culture. He was also intrigued by the ideals of the French revolution—liberty, equality, fraternity—even though they were not practiced by the French in Vietnam.

Thanh gradually became active in anti-French protest activities and was eventually expelled from the Academy. He soon joined his father, who had moved to Saigon, and who had also been in trouble with the authorities. Living near the docks in Saigon and working at various simple jobs, Thanh began to think of traveling abroad to further his education. He soon signed on as a cook's helper on a ship and spent much of the next two years at sea.

Thanh's travels took him all over the world and he visited many countries in Africa, Asia and Europe. Eventually his ship stopped in New York , and Thanh decided to seek employment in the city and spent several months in the United States where he observed social conditions of the working classes closely. The record of his travels is vague, but he apparently left the United States in 1913 or 1914 lived for a time in Great Britain, where he continued to work and study. Still gravitating towards France, the oppressor of his people, Thanh eventually made his way to Paris and was in the city as the Versailled Treaty was bringing a formal end to World War I. In Paris he once again began to attract attention for his anticolonial activities, and eventually he even came to the notice of President Woodrow Wilson, whose famous Fourteen Points Thanh had come to admire because of its call for self-determination for all people. Associating with other Vietnamese patriots in Paris Thanh joined the French Communist Party and adopted the name of the Nguyen Ai Quoc, or “Nguyen the Patriot.” As he became more deeply involved with Communist ideology he began to study the writings Karl Marx intensely, espcially Marx's anti-colonial ideas. Under steady surveillance by French authorities as he grew ever more active in anticolonial movements, Nguyen Ai Quoc left Paris for Moscow in 1923.

Somewhat disillusioned by the realities of Bolshevik Russia, Nguyen Ai Quoc nevertheless became involved with the Comintern. He took up studies at the Communist University of the East in Moscow and continued to be active in political affairs, becoming acquainted with many Communist leaders, including future Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai. Having risen to a position of prominence in Moscow, Nguyen Ai Quoc nevertheless always intended to return to Asia. In 1924 he made his way to Canton, China, where he quickly became involved with Chinese Communist operations. He continued to work and travel and eventually arrived in Hong Kong in 1930, where he founded the Vietnamese Communist Party.

Nguyen Ai Quoc continued to monitor anti-colonial developments in Vietnam (which were not going well) and traveled widely in Asia over the next few years, helping to form Communist parties throughout the region. In 1934 he returned to Moscow and resumed his revlutionary work and studies and finally, in 1941, just as World War Two was breaking out in Asia, he returned to Vietnam.

During the war he adopted the name Ho Chi Minh and began work on the the process of ending French colonial rule and bringing Communism to all of Vietnam. This quest was interrupted by the war as Vietnam was occupied by the Japanese, who proved to be harsh rulers. When the war ended, Ho and his Communist friends were confronted with the problem of trying to keep the French from reasserting their domination of Vietnam. Because of long-standing animosity between China and Vietnam, which had resulted in intermittent warfare over the centuries, Ho and his followers decided to compromise with the French to deter the Chinese from interfering in Vietnam, and so the French returned once again to Vietnam.

Following World War II, the United States was plunged into the Cold War, and its crusade against Communism was focused mostly on Europe. President Truman's assistance to Greece and Turkey, the Marshall plan, and the Berlin airlift were all anti-Communist initiatives aimed at Europe. Meanwhile, Mao Zedong took control of China in 1949, and the Korean War broke out in 1950, shifting America's focus to Asia. The French meanwhile found themselves in an intense struggle against the North Vietnamese Communists, who were led by Ho and his compatriot, General Vo Nguyen Giap. Giap's Viet Minh defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, and French colonialism in Southeast Asia came to an end.

The French had asked for American aid in their fight in Vietnam, but presidents Truman and Eisenhower had been reluctant to get deeply involved. Following the French defeat negotiations in Geneva in 1954 led to the partitioning of Vietnam into North and South, the North being led by the Communists under Ho, the South, by the Emperor Bao Dai and his hand-picked premier, Ngo Dinh Diem. Fearing that if all of Vietnam fell to communism, other nations in the region would soon followunder the so-called domino theory, President Eisenhower offered financial and limited military support to the Diem regime. During the late 1950s Diem managed to hold his own against the North Vietnamese Communists and their Southern allies, the Vietcong, but the struggle was intense.

America and Vietnam, 1961-1973

In President Kennedy's stirring inaugural address of January 20, 1961, he said:

“To those peoples in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required—not because the Communists are doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right.”

One can easily imagine that President Kennedy had Vietnam in mind as he spoke those words. Kennedy was, above all else, a cold warrior, and his clashes with Soviet Premier Khrushchev were unsettling to the world. Following a meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna, during which Premier Khrushchev verbally abused the young and, as Khrushchev saw him, vulnerable American president, Kennedy returned vowing to take a stand against Communism. He is reported to have said “Now is the time, and Vietnam is the place.” Whether actual or apocryphal, those words were soon realized as President Kennedy sent billions of dollars in aid and 16,000 American advisers to Vietnam. America's involvement in the war was deeper than was reported at the time for American advisers, who were supposedly operating only in an advicory role but were actually engaging the enemy in combat. As American casualties, though rather few in number, began to be felt, it was clear that the American involvement in Vietnam was deepening.

In 1963 a crisis in the Vietnamese government, the assassination of Premier Diem, was followed a few weeks later by the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas. Vice President Lyndon Johnson immediately assumed the presidency, and inherited the situation in Vietnam, which pleased him little, as he had in mind the creation of what he called His “Great Society,” which was meant to be an all out assault on poverty, ignorance, racial discrimination and other social ills. The situation in Vietnam following Diem's assassination continue to deteriorate, however, and following an alleged attack by North Vietnamese gunboats on two United States destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, Congress passed the Tonkin Resolution authorizing President Johnson to do whatever was necessary for success in Vietnam.

President Johnson kept the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in his pocket until after his overwhelming landslide victory in 1964. Even after the election, however, he did little about Vietnam, but in early 1965, following an attack on an American special forces base in Pleiku, Vietnam, President Johnson decided to up the ante. He sent two battalions of Marines to Vietnam to guard the airfield from which American planes began the bombong of North Vietnam, called operation “Rolling Thunder.” A s the Marines found themselves facing a resolute enemy, Johnson followed up with army units, more Marines and air power, thus beginning a process known as escalation. The number of Americans in Vietnam grew rapidly, so that by 1966 half a million American soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen were fighting in Vietnam.

Tthe war was as nasty a conflict as has ever been fought by Americans. Alongside regular North Vietnamese units, who were well-trained, determined and supported by Russian and Chinese arms and equipment, the Communist insurgents in the south, the Vietcong, added to the burdens of the American military by harassing both American and South Vietnamese units. Ambushes, rocket and mortar attacks and assassinations of political officals were all part of the Viet Cong arsenal. Although the United States military understood that the war in Vietnam was an irregular war, the military leadership never quite grasped the true nature of the conflict. Much high-tech military equipment was tested and used in Vietnam, often, however, to little advantage.

Out of frustration at what he saw as North Vietnamese intransigence, President Johnson tried to bring Ho and his followers to the bargaining table through a massive bombing campaign, known as Rolling Thunder. The bombing did little except stiffen North Vietnamese determination to drive out the Americans. The writings of Ho and Giap from the period indicate that the Communists were willing to make whatever sacrifices were necessary to defeat the Americans, whom they assumed not to have the staying power to carry on the fight to a satisfactory end.

Following more than two full years of search-and-destroy operations stretching throughout the Vietnamese countryside, the American military found itself no closer to victory then when the first Marines battalions landed in 1965. Although military officials continued to claim that progress was being made in the war, those claims were apparently blasted during the Tet offensive of 1968, when the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese rose up across the countryside and attacked many major cities. Although the Communist Tet offensive was ultimately unsuccessful, scenes of the fighting in Saigon, even around United States Embassy, helped convince the American people that the Vietnam War was unwinnable. University students, activated by the war and by other social issues such as problems of integration and segregation in the South, and a general discontent with conditions in American society, poured from campuses into the streets to protest the war in particular and American policies in general.

As United States casualties continued to mount, President Johnson decided in the spring that he would not stand for reelection, which came as a shock, not only for the nation, but even to his close advisers and family. That brought to the forefront the Republican challenger Richard M. Nixon, whose political career had seemed to be at an end when he lost both the presidency to John F. Kennedy in 1960 and the governorship of California in 1962. But Nixon gained the nomination and ran against a fractured Democratic party led by incumbent Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey. Nixon claimed during a campaign that he had a secret plan to end the Vietnam War, and that plan turned out to be what he called “Vietnamization;” namely, he turned the war more and more over to the control of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam and its political leaders.

Along with his national security adviser Henry Kissinger President Nixon pursued a peace process with the North Vietnamese, hoping that by alternately increasing and decreasing military pressure, he could bring the North Vietnamese to the bargaining table in order to conclude a successful end of America's involvement in the war. After four years and thousands more casualties on both sides, the Paris peace accords were finally signed, bringing what President Nixon called “peace with honor.” American troops had been leaving Vietnam gradually for two years when the accords were finally signed. Along with the signing and the final withdrawal of American troops, the return of the American prisoners of war from the camps in Hanoi signaled the end of America's involvement in a military sense.

American advisers, along with financial and military support continued in Vietnam, however, until the Communist offensive of 1975. In a matter of a few short weeks, the North Vietnamese quickly overran the South Vietnamese army. As North Vietnamese tanks rumbled into Saigon, soon renamed Ho Chi Minh City, the last Americans and their Vietnamese collaborators fled the country by plane, helicopter and even by small boat. Thus came the ignominious end of the American experience in Vietnam, which had resulted in 58,000 American casualties, millions of Vietnamese casualties and extensive property damage throughout the country. Not only that, but the Communists now controlled all of Vietnam, and thus America had lost its first war.

The Vietnam War left scars in America that have been a long time in healing, and as the presidential campaign of 2004 made clear, those wounds can easily be reopened. Thousands of soldiers suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, and many still bear the wounds they received in Vietnam. The financial cost of the war hurt the American economy, and the wide ranging dissent and military failure undermined the country's confidence in its leaders and its inability to guide the world towards the path of international peace. The final legacy of America's involvement in Vietnam has yet to be written.