During the Vietnam War there were many tactics used by either side with varying degrees of success. One of the more distinct methods was the use of a very unconventional style of warfare used by the Vietnamese that was called guerrilla warfare. This baffled the Americans as they had never encountered this style before and were only used to the conventional style of warfare. The Vietcong was a very different enemy to any that the US had ever faced before and would challenge their fighting techniques and methods. It could be argued that guerrilla tactics was the main reason that the Americans lost the Vietnam War.
Guerrilla warfare was very significant as it was very new to the Americans and it had been seen to be used to a success before as …show more content…
The main US failing was that they failed to gain the support of the peasantry in the south of Vietnam. One of the reasons for this was due to the ferocity of the bombing campaign. As Walsh says the American bombing campaign had many successes such as how “It certainly damaged North Vietnam’s war effort and it disrupted supply roots.” This shows that even though it had successes for the US cause however Jeremy Smith (2005) disagrees because of the events of one of the first battles of Vietnam in Ia Drang, where eve though the North had more men “The North Vietnamese lost the battle, but they learnt a valuable lesson. They didn’t have the firepower to match the United States. For the rest of the war they would use the same guerrilla tactics that had helped them to defeat the French.” Smith’s statement about this battle shows that it would have been the largest mistake of the war and by definition would have no successes attributed to it. This is because it created the enemy that the US was unable to destroy because of the tactics that they themselves forced the enemy into …show more content…
This resulted in many instances of fragging which was the execution of a commander by their own troops and, because it was the first televised war, many people at home started to object to the war and protest the war at home. Brian Fitzgerald (2005) states that “As president Johnson continued to pour troops into Vietnam, public unease back home became more and more vocal.” One of the things that made the war even more unpopular was the use of conscription. Fitzgerald states “The possibility of being drafted quite literally became a lottery. The process of conscription changed from drafting the oldest man first to selecting civilians according to their date of birth.” This would remove any sense of duty to the situation and would then see it as a lottery to die. As Fitzgerald quotes Dr. Barry Spatz who was a conscientious objector “I think that I, and those like me, are the true patriots, the true dissenters, who tried to stop 50,000 of our generation coming home in bags.” This showed that the war was becoming very unpopular with those at home because of the extremely high body count of the soldiers coming home and the unwillingness of the soldiers to travel 8ooo miles to die in a foreign land for a cause they don’t truly believe in any
Guerrilla warfare was very significant as it was very new to the Americans and it had been seen to be used to a success before as …show more content…
The main US failing was that they failed to gain the support of the peasantry in the south of Vietnam. One of the reasons for this was due to the ferocity of the bombing campaign. As Walsh says the American bombing campaign had many successes such as how “It certainly damaged North Vietnam’s war effort and it disrupted supply roots.” This shows that even though it had successes for the US cause however Jeremy Smith (2005) disagrees because of the events of one of the first battles of Vietnam in Ia Drang, where eve though the North had more men “The North Vietnamese lost the battle, but they learnt a valuable lesson. They didn’t have the firepower to match the United States. For the rest of the war they would use the same guerrilla tactics that had helped them to defeat the French.” Smith’s statement about this battle shows that it would have been the largest mistake of the war and by definition would have no successes attributed to it. This is because it created the enemy that the US was unable to destroy because of the tactics that they themselves forced the enemy into …show more content…
This resulted in many instances of fragging which was the execution of a commander by their own troops and, because it was the first televised war, many people at home started to object to the war and protest the war at home. Brian Fitzgerald (2005) states that “As president Johnson continued to pour troops into Vietnam, public unease back home became more and more vocal.” One of the things that made the war even more unpopular was the use of conscription. Fitzgerald states “The possibility of being drafted quite literally became a lottery. The process of conscription changed from drafting the oldest man first to selecting civilians according to their date of birth.” This would remove any sense of duty to the situation and would then see it as a lottery to die. As Fitzgerald quotes Dr. Barry Spatz who was a conscientious objector “I think that I, and those like me, are the true patriots, the true dissenters, who tried to stop 50,000 of our generation coming home in bags.” This showed that the war was becoming very unpopular with those at home because of the extremely high body count of the soldiers coming home and the unwillingness of the soldiers to travel 8ooo miles to die in a foreign land for a cause they don’t truly believe in any