Vietnam War





The Vietnam War was a war fought between 1964 and 1975 on the ground in
South Vietnam and bordering areas of Cambodia and Laos (see also, Secret
War), and in bombing runs (Rolling Thunder) over North Vietnam. Fighting on
one side was a coalition of forces including the Republic of Vietnam (South
Vietnam), the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea.
Fighting on the other side was a coalition of forces including the
Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) and the National Liberation
Front (NLF, Viet Cong), a communist-led South Vietnamese guerrilla movement.
The USSR and China provided military aid to the North Vietnamese and to the
NLF, but they were not military combatants. The war was part of a larger
regional conflict involving the neighboring countries of Cambodia and Laos,
known as the Second Indochina War. In Vietnam, this conflict is known as the
American War.

Origins of the War

The Vietnam War was in many ways a direct successor to the French Indochina
War, sometimes referred to as the First Indochina War, in which the French
fought, with the economic support of USA, to regain control of their former
colony in Indochina, after the Japanese surrender, against the independence
movement, Viet Minh led by Communist Party leader Ho Chi Minh. After the
Viet Minh defeated the French colonial army at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu
in 1954, the colony was granted independence.

According to the ensuing Genova Conference, Vietnam was partitioned,
ostensibly temporarily, into a Northern and Southern zones of Viet-Nam. The
former was to be ruled by Ho Chi Minh, while the latter would be under the
control of Emperor Bao Dai. In 1955 the South Vietnamese monarchy was
abolished and Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem became President of a new South
Vietnamese republic.

The Geneva accords specified that elections to unify the coutry would be
scheduled to take place in June, 1956, but such elections were never held.
The RVN government of President Diem, with the support of US President
Eisenhower, had no interest in holding elections that threatened to bring
Communist influences into the South's government. This was especially true
after the north implemented a massive agricultural reform program, that
distributed land to poor peasants, with an obvious influence on the
electorate of the south. In addition the Communists were seen as highly
unlikely to allow a free election in their half of Vietnam. Regardless,
neither the US nor the two Vietnams had signed the election clause in the
accord, and were thus not bound to honor it. Initially, it seemed that a
partitioned Vietnam would become the norm, similar in nature to the
partitioned Korea created years earlier.

After the communists consolidated their power in the North, they formed the
National Liberation Front (NLF or Viet Cong) as a guerrilla movement in
opposition to the South Vietnamese government. (The RVN and the US referred
to the NLF as Viet Cong, short for Viet Nam Cong San, or "Vietnamese
Communist" The NLF itself never called itself by this name). In response to
the guerilla war, the United States began sending military advisors in
support of the government in the South. North Vietnam and the USSR supported
the NLF with arms and supplies, advisors, and regular units of the North
Vietnamese Army, which were transported via an extensive network of trails
and roads through the neutral nation of Laos, which became known as the Ho
Chi Minh trail.

US Escalation

US involvement in the war was a gradual process, with  [Image:vietcong.jpg]
combat personnel arriving 1950. As its military
involvement increased over the years under successive   Vietcong casualties
U.S. presidents, both Democrat and Republican (including Eisenhower,
Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon), despite warnings by the US military leadership
against a major ground war in Asia. There was never a formal declaration of
war but there were a series of presidential decisions that increased the
number of "military advisers" to the region. One of the first occurred on
July 27, 1964 when 5,000 additional US military advisers were ordered sent
to South Vietnam which brought the total number of US forces in Vietnam to
21,000.

The single notable element of actual increased U.S. involvement in the
Vietnam War during 1964 was a program of covert GVN operations, designed to
impose "progressively escalating pressure" upon the North, and initiated on
a small and essentially ineffective scale in February. The active U.S. role
in the few covert operations that were carried out was limited essentially
to planning, equipping, and training of the GVN forces involved, but U.S.
responsibility for the launching and conduct of these activities was
unequivocal and carried with it an implicit symbolic and psychological
intensification of the U.S. commitment.

South Vietnam and Kennedy

The Kennedy administration efforts to contain North Vietnam occured
simultaneously with an effort to modernize the regime of the South. Kennedy
strongly believed that if South Vietnam was a stable and democratic country,
it would largely discredit the North and its Communist rhetoric. Aid to the
South was often made on the condition that the government would undertake
certain political reforms. Soon, US Government advisors were playing a
prominent role in every level of South Vietnam's government. South
Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem had little time for these reforms, and
was quite uncooperative. He would often go through the motions of these
US-prescribed reforms, but in very superficial ways that ended up quite
embarrassing for the US. For example, when he ran for election, only one
opposition candidate was allowed, and there were widespread allegations of
vote-rigging. Diem did not believe that US ideas of democracy were
applicable to his government, since the country was still so young and
unstable. Kennedy was accused of being overly naive and utopian in his
belief that US values could be instantly imported into any country, no
matter what their culture or history.

Eventually, the Kennedy administration grew increasingly frustrated with
Diem. In an embarrassing incident that was widely reported in the US press,
Diem's forces launched a violent crackdown on Buddhist monks. Since Vietnam
was a predominantly Buddhist nation, this action was viewed as further proof
that Diem was completely out of touch with his people. US messages were sent
to South Vietnamese generals encouraging them to act against Diem's
excesses. Though there is some debate as to whether or not this was
Kennedy's intention, the South Vietnamese military interpreted these
messages as a call to arms, and staged a violent coup d'etat, overthrowing
and killing Diem.

Far from uniting the country under new leaderhip, the death of Diem made the
South even more unstable. The new military rulers were very unexperienced in
political matters, and were unable to provide the strong central authority
of Diem's rule. Coups and counter-coups plauged the country, which in turn
served as a great inspiration to the efforts of the North.

Shortly after Diem's death, Kennedy himself was assassinated, and Vice
President Lyndon Johnson was suddenly thrust into the war's leadership role.

Gulf of Tonkin and Johnson

On July 31, 1964, and after a six month suspension, the American destroyer
USS Maddox, began a reconnaissance mission in the Gulf of Tonkin. The
purpose of the mission was to obtain information about the North Vietnamese
coastal defense forces. The night before the USS Maddox was to resume her
patrols off the North Vietnamese coast, South Vietnamese commandos raided
two North Vietnamese islands.

Apparently mistaking the Maddox for South Vietnamese, three North Vietnamese
torpedo boats launched a torpedo and machine gun attack on her. Responding
immediately to the attack, and with the help of air support from the nearby
carrier USS Ticonderoga, the Maddox destroyed one of the attacking boats and
damaged the other two. The Maddox, suffering only superficial damage by a
single 14.5-millimeter machine gun bullet, retired to South Vietnamese
waters, where she was joined by the USS C. Turner Joy.

On August 3, GVN again attacked North Vietnam; the Rhon River estuary and
the Vinh Sonh radar installation were bombarded under cover of darkness.

On August 4, a new DESOTO patrol to North Vietnam coast was launched, with
the Maddox and the C. Turner Joy. The latter got radar signals that they
believed to be another attack by the North Vietnamese. For some two hours
the ships fired on radar targets and maneuvered vigorously amid electronic
and visual reports of torpedoes. Later, Captain John J. Herrick admitted
that it was nothing more than an "overeager sonarman" who "was hearing
ship's own propeller beat."

The U.S. Senate then approved the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on August 7,
1964, which gave broad support to President Johnson to escalate U.S.
involvement in the war. On March 8, 1965, 3,500 United States Marines became
the first American combat troops to land in South Vietnam and by 1968, over
500,000 troops were stationed there, and the toll of American soldiers
killed, as reported every Thursday on the evening news, was over 100 a week.
The air war escalated as well; On July 24, 1965, four F-4C Phantoms
escorting a bombing raid at Kang Chi became the targets of antiaircraft
missiles in the first such attack against American planes in the war. One
plane was shot down and the other three sustained damage. Four days later
Johnson announced another order that increased the number of US troops in
Vietnam from 75,000 to 125,000. The day after that, July 29, the first 4,000
101st Airborne Division paratroopers arrived in Vietnam, landing at Cam Ranh
Bay.

Then on August 18, 1965, Operation Starlite began as the first major
American ground battle of the war when 5,500 US Marines destroyed a Viet
Cong stronghold on the Van Tuong peninsula in Quang Ngai Province. The
Marines were tipped-off by a Viet Cong deserter who said that there was an
attack planned against the US base at Chu Lai.

On October 12, 1967 US Secretary of State Dean Rusk stated during a news
conference that proposals by the United States Congress for peace
initiatives were futile because of North Vietnam's opposition.

The continued escalation of American involvement came as the Johnson
administration, as well as the commander of U.S. forces, General William
Westmoreland, repeatedly assured the American public that the next round of
troop increases would bring victory. The American public's faith in the
"light at the end of the tunnel" was shattered, however, on January 30,
1968, when the enemy, supposedly on the verge of collapse, mounted the Tet
Offensive (named after Tet Nguyen Dan, the lunar new year festival which is
the most important Vietnamese holiday) in South Vietnam (and, to a lesser
degree, in the 1969 Post-Tet Offensive). Although neither of these
offensives accomplished any military objectives, the surprising capacity of
an enemy that was supposedly on the verge of collapse to even launch such an
offensive convinced many Americans that victory was impossible. There was an
increasing sense among many people that the government was misleading the
American people about a war without a clear beginning or end. When General
Westmoreland called for still more troops to be sent to Vietnam, Clark
Clifford, a member of Johnson's own cabinet, came out against the war.

Facing a troop shortage, on October 14, 1968 the United States Department of
Defense announced that the United States Army and Marines would be sending
about 24,000 troops back to Vietnam for involuntary second tours. Two weeks
later on October 31, citing progress with the Paris peace talks, US
President Lyndon B. Johnson announced to his nation that he had ordered a
complete cessation of "all air, naval, and artillery bombardment of North
Vietnam" effective November 1. Peace talks eventually broke down, however.

The credibility of the government suffers when the New York Times, and later
the Washington Post an others newspapers, start to publish the Pentagon
Papers. It was a top-secret historical study, contracted by the Pentagon,
about the war, that shows how the government was misleading the US public,
in all stages of the war, including the secret support of the French in the
first Vietnam War.

Opposition to the War

There had been a small movement of opposition to the war within certain
quarters of the United States starting in 1964, especially on certain
college campuses. This was happening during a time of unprecedented leftist
student activism, and of the arrival at college age of the demographically
significant "Baby Boomers." World War II ended in 1945, and the Korean
conflict ended in 1953; thus most, if not all, of the "Baby Boomers" had
never been exposed to war. In addition, the Vietnam War was unprecedented
for the intensity of media coverage--it has been called the first television
war--as well as for the stridency of opposition to the war by the so-called
"New Left." The international opinion condemn the US intervention in
Vietnam, with massive rallies in almost all countries.

Many young men feared being sent to Vietnam, and hundreds of them fled to
Canada or Sweden to avoid the draft. At that time, not all men of draft age
were actually conscripted; the Selective Service Board used a lottery system
to select draftees. Some men found sympathetic doctors who could find a
medical basis for classifying as 4F, making them ineligible to be drafted.
Others took advantage of a student deferment. Still others joined the
National Guard (as President George W. Bush) or entered the Peace Corps as a
way of avoiding Vietnam. All of these issues raised concerns about the
fairness of who got selected for combat, since it was often the poor or
those without connections who were assigned to combat units. The draft
itself also initiated protests when on October 15, 1965 the student-run
National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam staged the first
public burning of a draft card in the United States.

The US people became polarized over the war. Many supporters of the war
argued for what was known as the Domino Theory, which held that if the South
fell to communist guerillas, other nations, primarily in Southeast Asia,
would succumb in short succession, much like falling dominoes. Military
critics of the war pointed out that the conflict was political and that the
military mission lacked clear objectives. Civilian critics of the war argued
that the government of South Vietnam lacked political legitimacy, and that
support for the war was immoral.

The growing anti-war movement alarmed many in the US government. On August
16, 1966 the House Un-American Activities Committee began investigations of
Americans who were suspected of aiding the Viet Cong, with the intent to
introduce legislation making these activities illegal. Anti-war
demonstrators disrupted the meeting and 50 were arrested.

On February 1, 1968, a suspected Viet Cong officer was summarily executed by
Nguyen Ngoc Loan, a South Vietnamese National Police Chief. Loan shot the
suspect in the head on a public street in front of journalists. The
execution was filmed and photographed and helped sway public opinion in the
United States against the war. Then on October 15, 1969 hundreds of
thousands of people took part in National Moratorium antiwar demonstrations
across the United States.

The U.S. realized that the South Vietnamese government
needed a solid base of popular support if it was to survive the insurgency.
In order to pursue this goal of "winning the hearts and minds" of the
Vietnamese people, units of the United States Army, referred to as "Civil
Affairs" units, were extensively utilized for the first time since World War
II.

Civil Affairs units, while remaining armed and under direct military
control, engaged in what came to be known as "nation building": constructing
(or reconstructing) schools, public buildings, roads and other physical
infrastructure; conducting medical programs for civilians who had no access
to medical facilities; facilitating cooperation among local civilian
leaders; conducting hygiene and other training for civilians; and similar
activities.

This policy of attempting to win the "Hearts and Minds" of the Vietnamese
people, however, often was at odds with other aspects of the war which
served to antagonize many Vietnamese civilians. These policies included the
emphasis on "body count" as a way of measuring military success on the
battlefield, the bombing of villages (symbolized by the phrase "it was
necessary to destroy the village in order to save it"), and the killing of
civilians as such locations as in the My Lai massacre. In 1974 the
documentary "Hearts and Minds" dealt with these problems, and won an Academy
Award for best documentary amid considerable controversy. The South
Vietnamese government also antagonized many of its citizens with its
suppression of political opposition, through such measures as holding large
numbers of political prisoners, torturing political opponents, and holding a
one-man election for President in 1971.

Despite the increasingly depressing news on the war, many Americans
continued to support President Johnson's endeavors. Aside from the domino
theory mentioned above, there was a feeling that the goal of preventing a
communist takeover of a pro-Western government in South Vietnam was a noble
objective. Many Americans were also concerned about saving face in the event
of disengaging from the war or, as President Nixon later put it, "achieving
Peace with Honor."

However, anti-war feelings also began to rise. Many Americans opposed the
war on moral grounds, seeing it as a destructive war against Vietnamese
independence, or as intervention in a foreign civil war; others opposed it
because they felt it lacked clear objectives and appeared to be unwinnable.
Some anti-war activists were themselves Vietnam Veterans, as evidenced by
the organization Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson began his  [Image:vietnamdem.jpg]
re-election campaign. A member of his own
party, Eugene McCarthy, ran against him for  Anti-Vietnam war demonstration
the nomination on an antiwar platform. McCarthy did not win the first
primary election in New Hampshire, but he did surprisingly well against an
incumbent. The resulting blow to the Johnson campaign, taken together with
other factors, led the President to make a surprise announcement in a March
31 televised speech that he was pulling out of the race. He also announced
the initiation of the Paris Peace Talks with Vietnam in that speech. Then on
August 4, 1969 US representative Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese
representative Xuan Thuy began secret peace negotiations at the apartment of
French intermediary Jean Sainteny in Paris. The negotiations eventually
failed, however.

Seizing the opportunity caused by Johnson's departure from the race, Robert
Kennedy then joined in and ran for the nomination on an antiwar platform.
Johnson's vice president, Hubert Humphrey, also ran for the nomination,
promising to continue to support the South Vietnamese government.

Kennedy was assassinated that summer, and McCarthy was unable to overcome
Humphrey's support within the party elite. Humphrey won the nomination of
his party, and ran against Richard Nixon in the general election. During the
campaign, Nixon has been said to have claimed knowledge of a secret plan to
end the war; this did not actually occur. His opponent for G.O.P.
nomination, Gov. George Romney of Michigan, asked him "Where is your secret
plan?" It has since been accepted that Nixon claimed to have a secret plan.

Opposition to the Vietnam War in Australia followed along similar lines to
the United States, particularly with opposition to conscription. Whilst
Australian disengagement began in 1970 under John Gorton, it was not until
the election of Gough Whitlam in 1972 that conscription ended.

Vietnamization

Nixon was elected President and began his policy of slow disengagement from
the war. The goal was to gradually build up the South Vietnamese Army so
that it could fight the war on its own. This policy became the cornerstone
of the so-called "Nixon Doctrine." As applied to Vietnam, the doctrine was
called "Vietnamization." The goal of Vietnamization was to enable the South
Vietnamese army to increasingly hold its own against the NLF and the North
Vietnamese Army. During this period, the United States conducted a gradual
troop withdrawal from Vietnam. Nixon continued to use air power to bomb the
enemy, and American soldiers continued to die in combat. Ultimately, more
American soldiers died, and more bombs were dropped, under the Nixon
Presidency than under Johnson's.

Many significant gains in the war were made under the Nixon administration,
however. One paticularly significant achievement was the weakening of
support that the North Vietnamese army received from the Soviet Union and
China. One of Nixon's main foreign policy goals had been the achievement of
a "breakthrough" in relations between the two nations, in terms of creating
a new spirit of co-operation. To a large extent this was achieved, and
through his many meetings with the leaders of the two Communist superpowers
Nixon was able to convince them that North Vietnam was clearly the loosing
side in the war. China and the USSR had been the principle backers of the
North Vietnamese army through large amounts of military and financial
support. The eagerness of both nations to improve their own US relations in
the face of a widening breakdown of the inter-Communist alliance
successfully led to the weakening of aid to North Vietnam.

The morality of US conduct of the war continued to be an issue under the
Nixon Presidency. In 1969, it came to light that Lt. William Calley, a
platoon Leader in Vietnam, had led a massacre of Vietnamese civilians
(including small children) at My Lai a year before. The massacre was only
stopped after two American soldiers in a helicopter spotted the carnage and
intervened to prevent their fellow Americans from killing any more
civilians. Although many were appalled by the wholesale slaughter at My Lai,
Calley was given a light sentence after his court-martial in 1970, and was
later pardoned by President Nixon.

In 1970, Nixon ordered a military incursion into Cambodia in order to
destroy NLF sanctuaries bordering on South Vietnam. This action prompted
even more protests on American college campuses. Several students were shot
to death by National Guard troops during demonstrations at Kent State.

One effect of the incursion was to push communist forces deeper into
Cambodia, which destabilized the country and which in turn may have led to
the rise of the Khmer Rouge, who seized power in 1975. The goal of the
attacks, however, was to bring the North Vietnamese negotiators back to the
table with some flexibility in their demands that the South Vietnamese
government be overthrown as part of the agreement. It was also alleged that
American and South Vietnamese casualty rates were reduced by the destruction
of military supplies the communists had been storing in Cambodia.

In an effort to help assuage growing discontent over the war, Nixon
announced on October 12, 1970 that the United States will withdraw 40,000
more troops before Christmas. Later that month on October 30, the worst
monsoon to hit Vietnam in six years caused large floods, killed 293, left
200,000 homeless and virtually halted the war.

Backed by American air and artillery support, South Vietnamese troops
invaded Laos on February 13, 1971. Then on August 18 of that year, Australia
and New Zealand decided to withdraw their troops from Vietnam. The total
number of American troops in Vietnam then dropped to a record low of 196,700
on October 29, 1971 (the lowest level since January 1966).

In the 1972 election, the war was once again a major issue in the United
States. An antiwar candidate, George McGovern, ran against President Nixon.
Nixon's Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, declared that "Peace is at
Hand" shortly before the voters went to the polls, dealing a death blow to
McGovern's campaign, which had been facing an uphill battle. However, the
peace agreement was not signed until the next year, leading many to conclude
that Kissinger's announcement was just a political ploy. Kissinger's
defenders assert that the North Vietnamese negotiators had made use of
Kissinger's pronouncement as an opportunity to embarrass the Nixon
Administration to weaken it at the negotiation table. The US did halt heavy
bombing of North Vietnam on December 30, 1972.

The End of the War

On January 15, 1973, citing progress in peace negotiations, President Nixon
announced the suspension of offensive action in North Vietnam which was
later followed by a unilateral withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam. The
Paris Peace Accords were later signed on January 27, 1973 which officially
ended US involvement in the Vietnam conflict. The first American prisoners
of war were released on February 11 and all US soldiers were ordered to
leave by March 29. Unlike previous American wars, soldiers returning from
the Vietnam War were not treated as heroes, and soldiers were sometimes even
condemned for their participation in the war.

The peace agreement did not last.

Although Nixon had promised South Vietnam that he would provide military
support to them in the event of a crumbling military situation, Congress voted
down any further funding of military actions in the region. Nixon was also fighting
for his political life in the growing Watergate scandal, so none of the
promised military support to defend the South Vietnamese government was
forthcoming. Although some small amounts of economic aid continued, most of
it was siphoned off by corrupt elements in the South Vietnamese government
and little of it actually went to the war effort. The 94th Congress
eventually voted for a total cut off of all aid to take effect at the
beginning of the 1975-76 financial year (July 1, 1975). At the same time aid
to North Vietnam from the USSR and China began to increase, as with the
Americans out, the two countries no longer saw the war significant to their
US relations. The balance of power had clearly shifted to the North.

In early 1975 the North invaded the South and quickly consolidated the
country under its control. Saigon was captured on April 30, 1975. North
Vietnam united both North and South Vietnam on July 2, 1976 to form the
Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Saigon was re-named Ho Chi Minh City in honor
of the former president of North Vietnam. Hundreds of supporters of the
South Vietnamese government were rounded up and executed, many more were
imprisoned. Communist rule continues to this day.

On January 21, 1977 American President Jimmy Carter pardoned nearly all
Vietnam War draft evaders.

Casualties

Estimating the number killed in the conflict is extremely difficult.
Official records are hard to find or nonexistent and many of those killed
were literally blasted to pieces by bombing. For many years the North
Vietnamese suppressed the true number of their casualties for propaganda
purposes. It is also difficult to say exactly what counts as a "Vietnam war
casualty"; people are still being killed today by unexploded ordinance,
particularly cluster bomblets. Environmental effects from chemical agents
and the colossal social problems caused by a devastated country with so many
dead surely caused many more lives to be shortened. In addition, the Khmer
Rouge would probably not have come into power and committed their slaughters
without the destabilization of the war, particularly of the American bombing
campaigns to 'clear out the sanctuaries' in Cambodia.

The lowest casualty estimates, based on the now-renounced North Vietnamese
statements, are around 1.5 million Vietnamese killed. Vietnam released
figures on April 3, 1995 that a total of one million Vietnamese combatants
and four million civilians were killed in the war. The accuracy of these
figures has generally not been challenged. 58,226 American soldiers also
died in the war or are missing in action. Australia lost almost 500 of the
47,000 troops they had deployed to Vietnam and New Zealand lost 38 soldiers.

In the aftermath of the war many Americans came to believe that some of the
2,300 American soldiers listed as "Missing in Action" had in fact been taken
prisoner by the DRV and held indefinitely. "Missing in Action" is a term
applied to missing soldiers whose status cannot be determined through
eyewitness accounts of their death, or a body. While little credible
evidence has been shown for this, images of tortured, emaciated prisoners of
war (notably in the sequel to Rambo) continue to evoke anger among many
Americans. The Vietnamese list over 200,000 of their own soldiers Missing in
Action, and MIA soldiers from World War I and II continue to be unearthed in
Europe.

Both during and after the war, significant human rights violations occurred.
Both North and South Vietnamese had large numbers of political prisoners,
many of whom were killed or tortured. In 1970, two American congressmen
visiting South Vietnam discovered the existence of "tiger cages", which were
small prison cells used for torturing South Vietnamese political prisoners.
After the war, actions taken by the victors in Vietnam, including firing
squads, torture, concentration camps and "re-education," led to the exodus
of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese. Many of these refugees fled by boat
and thus gave rise to the phrase "boat people." They emigrated to Hong Kong,
France, the United States, Canada, and other countries, creating sizable
expatriate communities, notably in the United States.

Many effects of the animosity and ill will generated during the Vietnam War
are still felt today among those who lived through this turbulent time in
American and Indochinese history.

Analysis

The Vietnam war had many long term repercussions, especially for the
American society and foreign policy.

Firstly, the war was America's first significant military defeat. This was
very damaging for America's reputation as a global superpower, which had
previously seemed almost invincible. The massive American casualties and
lack of a decisive victory also created a great distaste for foreign wars
among the American public. Indeed, not until the Gulf War, nearly 15 years
later, would the United States commit comparable amounts of troops to fight
in a foreign country.

Politically, the war's poor planning and "blank check" legislation led to
Congress reviewing current terms of war, and passing new legislation to
guarantee themselves a larger, and more clearly defined role in the planning
of any future Vietnam-style conflicts. The War Powers Resolution of 1973
greatly curtailed the President's ability to commit troops to action without
first obtaining Congressional approval. The use of the defoliation agent
known as Agent Orange, designed to destroy the hiding places of the Viet
Cong, has caused many health maladies and birth defects to this day.

From a social point of view, the war was a key time in the lives of many
younger Americans, especially the so-called baby boom generation. Protestor
and soldier alike, the war created many strong opinions in regards to
American foreign policy and the justness of war. As a result, the Vietnam
was also significant in showing the degree that the public can influence
government policy through mobilization and protest.

Service in the war, though initially unpopular, soon became respected even
though the war itself was not. Past service in Vietnam became important to
the election of many future American politicians; for example, it was a
factor in the election of John McCain, a former Vietnam POW, to the US
Senate. The fact that President Bill Clinton had avoided service was a major
source of controversy during his election campaign.

After taking office, Bill Clinton announced his desire to heal relations
with Vietnam. His administration lifted economic sanctions on the country in
1994, and in May 1995 the two nations renewed diplomatic relations, with the
US opening up an embassy on Vietnamese soil for the first time since 1975.