Vietnam War

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On the anti-communist side, South Korea had the second-largest contingent of foreign troops in South Vietnam after the United States. The first South Korean troops began arriving in 1964 and large combat battalions began arriving a year later, with the South Koreans soon developing a reputation for effectiveness. Indeed, they conducted counterinsurgency operations so well that American commanders felt that Korean area of responsibility was the safest.
 
On the anti-communist side, South Korea had the second-largest contingent of foreign troops in South Vietnam after the United States. The first South Korean troops began arriving in 1964 and large combat battalions began arriving a year later, with the South Koreans soon developing a reputation for effectiveness. Indeed, they conducted counterinsurgency operations so well that American commanders felt that Korean area of responsibility was the safest.
 
            
 
            
=Aftermath=
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==Aftermath==
 
An estimated 300,000 Indochinese died in the renewed Communist offensive to conquer South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia after the American withdrawal.  Professor R.J. Rummel calculates that Communist Vietnam directly killed between 400,000 and 2,500,000 Vietnamese and Cambodians after the end of the war in democide alone.<ref>http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP6.HTM</ref>  The Communist forces controlling Vietnam were also credited with the killing of an estimated 1.8 million people (not counting war casualties) in domestic and foreign democide as they warred to take power.<ref>http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/LESSER.HTM</ref><ref>http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP6.HTM</ref>
 
An estimated 300,000 Indochinese died in the renewed Communist offensive to conquer South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia after the American withdrawal.  Professor R.J. Rummel calculates that Communist Vietnam directly killed between 400,000 and 2,500,000 Vietnamese and Cambodians after the end of the war in democide alone.<ref>http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP6.HTM</ref>  The Communist forces controlling Vietnam were also credited with the killing of an estimated 1.8 million people (not counting war casualties) in domestic and foreign democide as they warred to take power.<ref>http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/LESSER.HTM</ref><ref>http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP6.HTM</ref>
  
Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, fell to followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, commonly known as the [[Khmer Rouge]], on April 17, 1975.  Over the next four years, the Khmer Rouge enacted a genocidal policy that would kill over one-fifth of all Cambodians, or more than a million people.  Investigators have uncovered and examined the remains of 1.1 million Cambodians (later raised to 1.3 million) found in mass graves near Khmer Rouge execution centers whose cause of death has been determined to have been execution by the former Khmer Rouge regime.<ref>http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/deaths.htm</ref><ref>http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/toll.htm</ref><ref>http://welcome.to/dccam</ref>  Because only about 1/3 to ½ of those killed by the Khmer Rouge were executed (the rest having died from other causes like state-created famine, the deliberate withholding of basic necessities by the state, the refusal by the state to allow foreign aid, the abolishing of medicine and hospitals by the state, systematic overwork and slave labor, and brutal mistreatment by the state), the Documentation Center of Cambodia estimates that the former regime killed or otherwise caused the unnecessary deaths of, between 2 and 3 million Cambodians; or about 2 ½ million people.<ref>http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/deaths.htm</ref>  A UN investigation reported 2-3 million dead, while UNICEF estimated 3 million dead.<ref>William Shawcross, The Quality of Mercy: Cambodia, Holocaust, and Modern Conscience (Touchstone, 1985), p115-6</ref>  Demographic estimates went as high as 4 million killed by the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1978.<ref>http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomsky/labedz.pdf</ref>  Even the Khmer Rouge acknowledged that 2 million had been killed—though they attributed those deaths to a subsequent Vietnamese invasion.<ref>Khieu Samphan, Interview, Time, March 10, 1980</ref>  By late 1979, UN and Red Cross officials were warning that another 2.25 million Cambodians faced death by starvation due to “the near destruction of Cambodian society under the regime of ousted Prime Minister Pol Pot,”<ref>New York Times, August 8, 1979.</ref><ref>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,912511,00.html</ref> who were saved by American and international aid.  After repeated border clashes in 1978, Vietnam invaded Cambodia and ousted the Khmer Rouge.  According to R.J. Rummel; the Vietnamese invasion and occupation, puppet regime in Cambodia (led by former Khmer Rouge officials turned “moderates”), ongoing guerilla warfare, and ensuing famine had killed another 1.2 million Cambodians by 1987.<ref>http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP4.HTM</ref>  The bloodshed from 1970 to 1987 affected Cambodia so severely that its actual population in 1987 was 5 million short of what had been predicted in 1970.<ref>http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/DBG.FIG9.2.GIF</ref>
+
Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, fell to followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, commonly known as the [[Khmer Rouge]], on April 17, 1975.  Over the next four years, the Khmer Rouge enacted a genocidal policy that would kill over one-fifth of all Cambodians, or more than a million people.  Investigators have uncovered and examined the remains of 1.1 million Cambodians (later raised to 1.3 million) found in mass graves near Khmer Rouge execution centers whose cause of death has been determined to have been execution by the former Khmer Rouge regime.<ref>http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/deaths.htm</ref><ref>http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/toll.htm</ref><ref>http://welcome.to/dccam</ref>  Because only about 1/3 to 1/2 of those killed by the Khmer Rouge were executed (the rest having died from other causes like state-created famine, the deliberate withholding of basic necessities by the state, the refusal by the state to allow foreign aid, the abolishing of medicine and hospitals by the state, systematic overwork and slave labor, and brutal mistreatment by the state), the Documentation Center of Cambodia estimates that the former regime killed or otherwise caused the unnecessary deaths of, between 2 and 3 million Cambodians; or about 2 ½ million people.<ref>http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/deaths.htm</ref>  A UN investigation reported 2-3 million dead, while UNICEF estimated 3 million dead.<ref>William Shawcross, The Quality of Mercy: Cambodia, Holocaust, and Modern Conscience (Touchstone, 1985), p115-6</ref>  Demographic estimates went as high as 4 million killed by the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1978.<ref>http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomsky/labedz.pdf</ref>  Even the Khmer Rouge acknowledged that 2 million had been killed—though they attributed those deaths to a subsequent Vietnamese invasion.<ref>Khieu Samphan, Interview, Time, March 10, 1980</ref>  By late 1979, UN and Red Cross officials were warning that another 2.25 million Cambodians faced death by starvation due to “the near destruction of Cambodian society under the regime of ousted Prime Minister Pol Pot,”<ref>New York Times, August 8, 1979.</ref><ref>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,912511,00.html</ref> who were saved by American and international aid.  After repeated border clashes in 1978, Vietnam invaded Cambodia and ousted the Khmer Rouge.  According to R.J. Rummel; the Vietnamese invasion and occupation, puppet regime in Cambodia (led by former Khmer Rouge officials turned “moderates”), ongoing guerilla warfare, and ensuing famine had killed another 1.2 million Cambodians by 1987.<ref>http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP4.HTM</ref>  The bloodshed from 1970 to 1987 affected Cambodia so severely that its actual population in 1987 was 5 million short of what had been predicted in 1970.<ref>http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/DBG.FIG9.2.GIF</ref>
  
 
In response, China invaded Vietnam in 1979.  The two countries fought a brief border war, known as the Third Indochina War, which cost over 200,000 casualties, including tens of thousands of deaths.  According to figures from the UN Commission of Refugees, mass expulsions by Communist Vietnam led to the deaths by drowning of 200-400,000 South Vietnamese “boat people,” while more than 600,000 South Vietnamese were killed after the Communist take-over.<ref>Associated Press, June 23, 1979, San Diego Union, July 20, 1986.  See generally Nghia M. Vo, The Bamboo Gulag (McFarland, 2004)</ref>
 
In response, China invaded Vietnam in 1979.  The two countries fought a brief border war, known as the Third Indochina War, which cost over 200,000 casualties, including tens of thousands of deaths.  According to figures from the UN Commission of Refugees, mass expulsions by Communist Vietnam led to the deaths by drowning of 200-400,000 South Vietnamese “boat people,” while more than 600,000 South Vietnamese were killed after the Communist take-over.<ref>Associated Press, June 23, 1979, San Diego Union, July 20, 1986.  See generally Nghia M. Vo, The Bamboo Gulag (McFarland, 2004)</ref>
  
The Pathet Lao overthrew the Royalist Government of Laos in December 1975.  They established a Communist dictatorship known as the Lao People’s Democratic Republic.  The Pathet Lao waged a campaign of genocide, exterminating an estimated over 100,000 Hmong tribespeople.  They inflicted massacres, terror bombing, concentration camps, and mass rape.<ref>Forced Back and Forgotten (Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights, 1989); and Jane Hamilton-Merrit, Tragic Mountains:  The Hmong, the Americans, and the Secret Wars for Laos (Indiana University Press, 1999)</ref>
+
The Pathet Lao overthrew the Royalist Government of Laos in December 1975.  They established a Communist dictatorship known as the Lao People’s Democratic Republic.  The Pathet Lao waged a campaign of genocide, exterminating an estimated over 100,000 Hmong tribespeople.  They inflicted massacres, terror bombing, concentration camps, and mass rape.<ref>Forced Back and Forgotten (Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights, 1989); and Jane Hamilton-Merrit, ''Tragic Mountains:  The Hmong, the Americans, and the Secret Wars for Laos'' (Indiana University Press, 1999)</ref>
  
 
More than 3 million people fled Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos as “boat people,” about half of whom have been resettled by the United States.
 
More than 3 million people fled Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos as “boat people,” about half of whom have been resettled by the United States.

Revision as of 00:43, 27 August 2010

The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, was a civil war of sorts, between the two states set up at the Geneva Conference to govern Vietnam following the French withdrawal from the area.

Due to the fact that what was essentially a civil war with a nationalist underpinning was understood in the context of Cold War ideological frameworks, much of the rest of the world was drawn into the war in some way. The anti-communist government of South Vietnam received assistance from the United States, South Korea, and Australia. The communist government of North Vietnam (which controlled the insurgents who had started the war) received assistance from the Soviet Union, North Korea, and Red China.

It was a lengthy, brutal war of attrition, characterized by heavy use of the largely defensive weapon of napalm and numerous atrocities committed by both sides. It was also the first war to be broadcast live into the homes of American television viewers, and (possibly as a result of this coverage) remains one of the most unpopular wars in United States history.

The U.S. withdrew its assistance in 1973, and the war eventually came to a close in 1975 with the North Vietnamese capture of Saigon and the unification of Vietnam into a single country controlled by the communist government.

The war exacted a huge human cost, including an estimated one to two million North and South Vietnamese[1], 100,000 to 300,000 Cambodians[2] and 30-50,000 Laotians[3]. The "most comprehensive demographic survey" ever conducted on casualties during the war, as endorsed by the Associated Press, estimated that nearly one million Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians were killed throughout the two decades of conflict.[4] R.J. Rummel puts the total at 1.2 million Indochinese killed on all sides.[5]

The war followed the First Indochina War, an attempt by France to maintain control over its former colony that cost over 500,000 Vietnamese their lives[6] and which was financed primarily by the United States. In 1954, the French agreed to divide Vietnam into a communist North and a capitalistic South. Neither side respected the legitimacy of the other; as a consequence, the division was widely regarded as temporary. A British diplomat suggested that free elections be held in the North and South to determine the future of a unified Vietnam. Contrary to commonly repeated myths; it was North Vietnam, not South Vietnam, that was the most extreme and steadfast in its efforts to prevent any such election from taking place. Nevertheless, it is true that South Vietnam consistently opposed all such arguments, claiming that the majority of South Vietnamese wanted independence, but that those North Vietnamese who wanted conquest should not be allowed to veto their just demands.

The United States was willing to accept free elections and a reunified Vietnam, Communist-led and hostile to China. Indeed, US officials favored such a default outcome; they listed it in secret communications never intended for public consumption (but released in the Pentagon Papers) under the heading "advantages."[7] The US gradually intervened, due to the insistence of the North on a campaign of military aggression, as part of its wider Cold War strategy of containment.

United States military advisors arrived beginning in 1950. U.S. involvement escalated in the early 1960s, with U.S. troop levels tripling in 1961 and tripling again in 1962. U.S. combat units were deployed beginning in 1965. Operations spanned borders, with Laos and Cambodia heavily bombed. Involvement peaked in 1968 at the time of the Tet Offensive. After this, U.S. ground forces were withdrawn as part of a policy called Vietnamization. Despite the Paris Peace Accords, signed by all parties in January 1973, fighting continued until the collapse of South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.

On the anti-communist side, South Korea had the second-largest contingent of foreign troops in South Vietnam after the United States. The first South Korean troops began arriving in 1964 and large combat battalions began arriving a year later, with the South Koreans soon developing a reputation for effectiveness. Indeed, they conducted counterinsurgency operations so well that American commanders felt that Korean area of responsibility was the safest.

Aftermath

An estimated 300,000 Indochinese died in the renewed Communist offensive to conquer South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia after the American withdrawal. Professor R.J. Rummel calculates that Communist Vietnam directly killed between 400,000 and 2,500,000 Vietnamese and Cambodians after the end of the war in democide alone.[8] The Communist forces controlling Vietnam were also credited with the killing of an estimated 1.8 million people (not counting war casualties) in domestic and foreign democide as they warred to take power.[9][10]

Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, fell to followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, commonly known as the Khmer Rouge, on April 17, 1975. Over the next four years, the Khmer Rouge enacted a genocidal policy that would kill over one-fifth of all Cambodians, or more than a million people. Investigators have uncovered and examined the remains of 1.1 million Cambodians (later raised to 1.3 million) found in mass graves near Khmer Rouge execution centers whose cause of death has been determined to have been execution by the former Khmer Rouge regime.[11][12][13] Because only about 1/3 to 1/2 of those killed by the Khmer Rouge were executed (the rest having died from other causes like state-created famine, the deliberate withholding of basic necessities by the state, the refusal by the state to allow foreign aid, the abolishing of medicine and hospitals by the state, systematic overwork and slave labor, and brutal mistreatment by the state), the Documentation Center of Cambodia estimates that the former regime killed or otherwise caused the unnecessary deaths of, between 2 and 3 million Cambodians; or about 2 ½ million people.[14] A UN investigation reported 2-3 million dead, while UNICEF estimated 3 million dead.[15] Demographic estimates went as high as 4 million killed by the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1978.[16] Even the Khmer Rouge acknowledged that 2 million had been killed—though they attributed those deaths to a subsequent Vietnamese invasion.[17] By late 1979, UN and Red Cross officials were warning that another 2.25 million Cambodians faced death by starvation due to “the near destruction of Cambodian society under the regime of ousted Prime Minister Pol Pot,”[18][19] who were saved by American and international aid. After repeated border clashes in 1978, Vietnam invaded Cambodia and ousted the Khmer Rouge. According to R.J. Rummel; the Vietnamese invasion and occupation, puppet regime in Cambodia (led by former Khmer Rouge officials turned “moderates”), ongoing guerilla warfare, and ensuing famine had killed another 1.2 million Cambodians by 1987.[20] The bloodshed from 1970 to 1987 affected Cambodia so severely that its actual population in 1987 was 5 million short of what had been predicted in 1970.[21]

In response, China invaded Vietnam in 1979. The two countries fought a brief border war, known as the Third Indochina War, which cost over 200,000 casualties, including tens of thousands of deaths. According to figures from the UN Commission of Refugees, mass expulsions by Communist Vietnam led to the deaths by drowning of 200-400,000 South Vietnamese “boat people,” while more than 600,000 South Vietnamese were killed after the Communist take-over.[22]

The Pathet Lao overthrew the Royalist Government of Laos in December 1975. They established a Communist dictatorship known as the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. The Pathet Lao waged a campaign of genocide, exterminating an estimated over 100,000 Hmong tribespeople. They inflicted massacres, terror bombing, concentration camps, and mass rape.[23]

More than 3 million people fled Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos as “boat people,” about half of whom have been resettled by the United States.

See also


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