Vietnam War

Texts, articles and content about the Vietnam or Indochina War of 1957 to 1975.

Vietnam: The collapse of the armed forces

A US military officer reports on the increasing incidence of insubordination, desertion and rebellion in the US army over the course of the Vietnam War. While we obviously don't agree with the officer's political perspective, the article contains lots of useful information on the GI resistance movement during the Vietnam War.

Introduction
The morale, discipline and battleworthiness of the U.S. Armed Forces are, with a few salient exceptions, lower and worse than at anytime in this century and possibly in the history of the United States.

The Vietnam Syndrome Revisited - Red and Black Notes

Red and Black Notes article looking at the situation in Iraq as the US becomes bogged down in a long term conflict, and comparing it to previous wars.

In the 1980's, activists produced a button that read "El Salvador is Spanish for Vietnam." Although it provided a punchy reminder of a bloody conflict, the comparison was inappropriate. While the US was supporting a repressive regime against a leftist insurgency, it committed little in the way of troops; moreover, unlike Vietnam, the US was successful in containing the insurgency.

Ending a war: Inventing a movement: Mayday 1971

After SDS committed political suicide, and after the Jackson and Kent State shootings, one of the largest mass direct actions in US history took place under the slogan "If the Government won't stop the war, we'll stop the Government."

Ending a war: Inventing a movement: Mayday 1971
Kauffman, L A

Korean workers riot in Vietnam, 1967

The riot by Korean workers at Vinnell Corporation, Cam Ranh Bay during the Vietnam War.

MACV (Military Assistance Command Vietnam, the U.S. command for all its military forces in Vietnam – ed.) had also been directed to start a civilianization program on September 15, 1967. South Vietnamese workers would be substituted for U.S. military support personnel in certain logistical units. There were many advantages. American manpower could be trimmed as technical expertise was shared.

Mutinies - Treason pamphlet

PDF pamphlet from 2003 with articles on mutinies in Vietnam and Yugoslavia.

Despite the media and the respectable leaders of antiwar movements endlessly repeating the lie that US forces withdrew from the Vietnam War due to peaceful protests in the streets of American cities we are not fooled. The US withdrew from Vietnam because it’s military was on the verge of collapse due to widespread desertion, the killing of officers and small-scale mutinies.

1948-1991: US intervention and war in South East Asia

Noam Chomsky's very brief account of US military, economic and "diplomatic" action in Indochina in the last half of the 20th century

The US wars in Indochina fall into the same general pattern as the interventions in Latin America such as Panama, Guatemala, Nicaragua,

1945-1957: Vietnam

Howard Zinn's short history of Vietnam from the defeat of Japan in 1945 through the installation of the US puppet government in Saigon to the beginning of the Vietnam War.

1957-1975: The Vietnam War

Howard Zinn's short history of the war in Vietnam from the beginning of the Communist insurgency in 1957 until the defeat of US and South Vietnamese forces in 1975.

Following the partitioning of Vietnam into the pro-independence Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the North, and the US puppet state the Republic of Vietnam in the South in 1954 (see our short history of Vietnam from 1945 to 1957) elections were due to be held on re-unification.

18. The Impossible Victory: Vietnam

From 1964 to 1972, the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the history of the world made a maximum military effort, with everything short of atomic bombs, to defeat a nationalist revolutionary movement in a tiny, peasant country-and failed. When the United States fought in Vietnam, it was organized modern technology versus organized human beings, and the human beings won.