In this lesson, you are to find out about one of the major wars in recent history. Choose one of the wars below and write a report of about 500 words in length about the war:
Your report should cover the following questions:
(1) What caused the war?
(2) What were the outcome and consequences of the war?
(3) What are the lessons learnt from the war?
You are to post your report on your blog. Invite at least 2 classmates to read your report and post their comments. The comments should be about 100 words in length.
(4) Vietnam War
The Vietnam War occurred during the period of the Cold War, from 1945 to 1997, starting when Ho Chi Minh and his People's Congress created the National Liberation Committee of Vietnam to form a provisional government, and Japan transferred all its power to Ho's Vietminh. Ho Chi Minh then declared the independence of Vietnam.
What sparked off the war was the death of an American due to a case of mistaken identity, mistaken to be a Frenchman. Lieutenant Col. A. Peter Dewey, head of the American OSS mission, was killed by Vietminh troops while driving a jeep to the airport. The Indochina War followed this, which was a result of steadily deteriorating relations between France and Vietnam when France recognized Vietnam as a "free state" within the French Union and French troops replaced Chinese in the North. Negotiations between France and Vietminh broke out before the Indochina War.
The war officially ended when US and Vietnam exchanged ambassadors: Douglas "Pete" Peterson, a prisoner of war for 6 years during the Vietnam War, was named US envoy to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, while H.E. Le Van Bang assumed the position of Vietnamese ambassador to the United States. This happened sometime after Bill Clinton was elected as the US President. The war occurred in not only Vietnam but Laos and Cambodia too.
The war officially ended in 1997, but the warfare ended earlier, in 1975, 30th April at the capture and fall of Saigon. Warfare started in 1st November 1955. The first part of the war, the Indochina war, was fought between North and the government of South Vietnam, who were supported by its communist allies, and the U.S along with other anti-communist nations, respectively.
The U.S. government viewed involvement in the war as a way to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam and part of their wider strategy of containment. However, the North Vietnamese government viewed the war as a colonial war, fought initially against France, backed by the U.S., and later against South Vietnam, which it regarded as a U.S. puppet state.
North and South Vietnam were reunified the following year.
The war exacted a huge human cost in terms of fatalities. Estimates of the number of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed vary from less than one million to more than three million. Some 200,000–300,000 Cambodians, 20,000–200,000 Laotians, and 58,220 U.S. service members also died in the conflict. About 350,000 other U.S. service members were severely injured. This was one of the many tragic consequences caused by the infamous Vietnam War.
Even though this war was a tragic incident, there are a lot of interesting things I learned from it. In the Kuching War, the Vietnamese soldier used their size to their advantage. The dug tunnels so small that only Asians their size could fit in to. When the American soldiers entered the tunnel and tried to hunt down the Vietnamese soldiers, many of them got stuck and were trapped, vulnerable to the Vietnamese attacks. The Vietnamese, however, could crawl through these tunnels with ease. The Vietnamese were then shooting fishes in a barrel, killing all of the trapped American soldiers with ease. Minority of the American soldiers who could squeeze through the tunnels were lost inside the dark tunnel, and the Vietnamese, who were very familiar with their own tunnels that they built, killed off the survivors in the tunnel either by themselves or with the booby traps they set up at strategic locations. All of the booby traps were extremely cruel and brutal, although very effective. Most of them involved the victim losing a body part or two before being mercilessly killed. Those that survived the booby traps in its first attack suffered a much worse fate: being tortured to death slowly. This resulted in America fighting a psychological warfare at the same time as the war itself. Many of the survivors were traumatized and too frightened to fight on after watching how their less lucky comrades had been killed violently by the several booby traps, and the Vietnamese had an easier job of killing these weakened soldiers. The Vietnamese also setup mines all over the area, which took out a huge part of the army as well. The American soldiers then had to resort to aerial attack, dropping bombs from above. The Vietnamese soldiers were well prepared, hiding in the tunnels, which they seemingly built for more than one use. The tunnels managed to protect and shield them from even the toughest of bombs.
Even though America was eventually on the winning side, the Vietnamese soldiers were very patriotic, and fought till their deaths. They had a lot of determination and perseverance. As the saying goes, ‘If there’s a will, there’s a way!’ I learned from the Vietnamese not to give up easily even when they were losing, and their will led them to many ways. Instead of fighting the American soldiers head-on, they used their intelligence against them, building traps using scrap metal and unexploded bombshells, and using their familiar environment to their advantage. The Americans, naturally big-sized, were stuck and trapped inside due to their size. This shows that ‘size does no matter’. The Vietnamese, being Asian, were small-sized, quick and agile, and used these natural gifts and qualities to win the part of the war.
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