History UsefulNotes / TheVietnamWar

* One of the flashbacks in ''Film/TheClassic'' features Joon-ha, the past LoveInterest to the main character's mother, as one of the South Korean soldiers who fights in the war. [[spoiler:He comes back alive, but blinded from his injuries.]]

* ''Film/HoaBinh'' - an orphaned boy struggles to support himself and his sister in Saigon; made in 1970 while the war was still raging

* French film ''[[Creator/ClaudeChabrol Le Boucher]]'' (1969) concerns how life in a tranquil isolated country village is turned upside-down by the vicious murder of a young woman. The murderer turns out to be the newly-returned village butcher, a man with acute PTSD issues following his service in Vietnam with the French Army.

Creator/JaneFonda, a major anti-war activist, went to North Vietnam in 1972 and was photographed sitting on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun, an act she later apologized for. It forever demolished her pin-up girl image, although according to her: "[T]he truth is that my career, far from being destroyed after the war, [[NoSuchThingAsBadPublicity flourished with a vigor]] it had not previously enjoyed." Fonda received two Oscars during the 1970s, along with the undying hatred of millions of Americans. This venom led to a ([[http://www.snopes.com/military/fonda.asp false]]) rumour that Jane Fonda also delivered a letter that an American prisoner entrusted to her to give to his American superiors into the waiting hands of the prison camp commander, which inevitably made conditions far worse for the soldier and his fellow prisoners[[note]]However, she did participate in Radio Hanoi's propaganda broadcasts and argued in newspapers that American prisoners were not tortured by the Vietnamese, calling POWs who claimed it was systemic "liars" (whereas in reality [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_prisoners_of_war_during_the_Vietnam_War#Severe_treatment_years torture of American POWs was both systemic and brutal]]) and refusing to apologise for either of these acts[[/note]]. [[NeverLiveItDown To this day]], at the U.S. Naval Academy, when a plebe shouts out "Goodnight, Jane Fonda!", the entire company will reply "Goodnight, bitch!" (Note, however, that the practice has officially been prohibited since 2013.)\\\

'''Important Note''': As if you couldn't tell by this article, this war and its outcome is still a ''very'' strong point of contention in the USA more than 40 years later, even among people who weren't even alive at the time! Along with the Civil Rights Movement, [[NewAgeRetroHippie hippies]], [[UsefulNotes/RichardNixon the Watergate Scandal]], and all the lingering cultural debates of TheSixties and TheSeventies, it was/is one of the key controversies in [[BrokenBase modern American politics]]. Communists, socialists, anarchists and most modern liberals – as well as most libertarians, paleoconservatives, the far-right [[TheExtremistWasRight John Birch Society]] and most moderate conservatives – still consider the war a [[WhatASenselessWasteOfHumanLife senseless waste of human life]] and point to the 'My Lai Massacre', President-for-life Diem's dictatorial rule, and 'Operation Phoenix' as evidence that there wasn't much difference between the "good guys" and the Communists. By '''''stark''''' contrast, neoconservatives, nationalists, and "old-style" liberals continue to believe that the USA – and France before them – would have won if not for the (left-wing) public's "betrayal" of the country's military forces, that the BananaRepublic of South Vietnam was still ALighterShadeOfGrey than its Communist counterpart, and contend that more people died because the USA left than were killed by the USA's troops or by its enemies during the war[[note]]In what had once been South Vietnam, ''far'' more people were 're-educated' than executed, though said process wasn't all daisies, sunshine, and rainbows, and it still resulted in many excess deaths. Furthermore, 2 million South Vietnamese (c. 10% of the population) fled as "boat people", of which 1.64 million successfully settled elsewhere, 125,000 were forcibly repatriated, and an estimated 250,000 (per the U.N. High Commissioner For Refugees) had died in their attempts to flee by 1986. Possibly hundreds of thousands of other civilians, mostly ethnic minorities like those represented by the FULRO coalition, were killed in the communist government's repression campaigns during the post-war insurgency. But even this paled in comparison to what was going on just across the border in Cambodia, where the anti-Soviet/Chinese-backed communist regime ''[[Film/TheKillingFields exterminated one-quarter of its own population]]'' (1.4–2.2 million), something that was at least delayed by US air power hammering the Khmer Rouge and preventing them from overthrowing the ramshackle BananaRepublic there (and massively ''aided'' by the North Vietnamese training them, arming them, sheltering them, and fighting alongside them). The common argument is that if the USA had stayed on, they would have prevented Pol Pot – and the other Communist leaders – coming to power, or at least have intervened had the signs become obvious. As it was, the genocide dragged on until Soviet-backed ''Communist Vietnam'' toppled their regime and installed a puppet government of their own there in response to [[LeeroyJenkins Cambodian cross-border invasions]] and massacres of Vietnamese villages.[[/note]] and would have been killed if the war had continued. Most historians tend to agree with the former viewpoint, and [[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/22/opinion/vietnam-was-unwinnable.html argue that]] a US military victory in Vietnam is infeasible.\\\

Creator/JaneFonda, a major anti-war activist, went to North Vietnam in 1972 and was photographed sitting on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun, an act she later apologized for. It forever demolished her pin-up girl image, although according to her: "[T]he truth is that my career, far from being destroyed after the war, [[NoSuchThingAsBadPublicity flourished with a vigor]] it had not previously enjoyed." Fonda received two Oscars during the 1970s, along with the undying hatred of millions of Americans. This venom led to a ([[http://www.snopes.com/military/fonda.asp false]]) rumour that Jane Fonda also delivered a letter that an American prisoner entrusted to her to give to his American superiors into the waiting hands of the prison camp commander, which inevitably made conditions far worse for the soldier and his fellow prisoners. [[NeverLie To this day]], at the U.S. Naval Academy, when a plebe shouts out "Goodnight, Jane Fonda!", the entire company will reply "Goodnight, bitch!"\\\

** "The Vietcong Tunnels" discusses the massive TunnelNetworks built by the North Vietnamese Army and their Viet Cong allies. Their uses ranged from being used as staging points and supply bases for NVA and VC units, to being air raid shelters for Vietnamese civilians caught in the crossfire.

As for the Vietnamese? While the conflict's outcome is a point of pride, it really was just one of the many Indochina Wars that had been fought over the 20th century.[[labelnote:*]]The general consensus seems to be less "we defeated the Americans" and more "we successfully retained our independence"[[/labelnote]] After America left Indochina, Vietnam went on to fight Pol Pot's regime in Cambodia in response to its atrocities and border raids and then fought China ([[WeUsedToBeFriends both former allies]]) in another series of border wars. Ironically, many Vietnamese these days [[DefeatMeansFriendship are strongly pro-American]] if only because the Vietnamese [[EnemyMine see China as their greatest threat]], a sentiment that has lasted thousands of years longer than any hostile feelings they've had towards America. This unfortunately resulted in several ugly incidents in the 2010's, such as China's building of artificial islands and oil rigs in waters the Vietnamese dedeemed as theirs, which in turn led to [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Vietnam_anti-China_protests nationalist riots in 2014]] that led to several factories, mostly owned by the Taiwanese, getting looted and destroyed.\\\

* Despite his various back stories being retconned (just trust us, too long to list here), one constant fact that stays true throughout the ''Franchise/MetalGear'' series is that Big Boss served in the Vietnam War, for three different parts of the US Army, no less. Big Boss's involvement in Vietnam started first as part of a top secret mission in the early 1960s which isn't given much detail on what it was about, then as a Military Adviser assessing the progress of the war in its early days, and then as an actual commander in the field. In addition, during the Big Boss section of the Metal Gear Solid saga (ie, ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid3SnakeEater'', ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolidPortableOps'' and ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolidPeaceWalker''), there were references to Vietnam throughout the story, namely in regards to weapons of the era and the war's relationship to the Quagmire of the Cold War as a whole. Peace Walker also implies that several of the soldiers within the Peace Sentinels had just gotten out of Vietnam, and some of their statements (when recruited into the Militaires Sans Frontieres) imply that they only served the Peace Sentinels/the MSF because they had nowhere else to go thanks in part to their being told down by the people.

Following the Sino-French War of 1884–5, which ended in a decisive French victory, UsefulNotes/{{Vietnam}} was no longer a tributary of the Empire of the Qing, and soon integrated into France's Asian colony of Indochine. The [[UsefulNotes/{{Thailand}} Kingdom of Siam]] was preserved as a neutral buffer state between Indochine and the [[UsefulNotes/TheRaj British Raj]], which had extended into modern-day Myanmar[[note]] Then known as Burma [[/note]]. Dissatisfaction with French rule was long and hardly unjustified – the Third (later Fourth) Republic and its entrepreneurs proved rather more interested in developing the region's economic potential (mines, rubber and tropical hardwood plantations, and general agricultural products) than educating the locals or providing healthcare and other public works for them. While ostensibly there for the Viet people's benefit and with [[BreadAndCircuses more than a bit of truth to that]] given the aforementioned developments and the fact that the French were more pragmatic and dog-petting than [[UsefulNotes/DynastiesFromShangToQing the usual occupiers]], a lot of people didn't buy it. Chinese occupation and warfare had dominated Vietnam for nearly a millennium on and off and had imprinted on Vietnamese culture, which meant that huge swaths of the Vietnamese population had a tradition of going OccupiersOutOfOurCountry at the slightest opportunity and even more were prepared to support them.

All things considered – including the half a dozen or so armed rebellions – it's probably a slight miracle that total war did not come sooner. That's probably because the French were better at playing both the PR game and the "stomp resistance flat" game than the Chinese had managed. After about a decade or so following the conquest, they were even able to maintain some degree of domestic harmony in spite of the obvious tensions and what they did, to the point where a major Vietnamese nationalist made a point of complaining that other Viet nationalists were more focused on triumphs over Cambodia, Siam, and China while being buddy with the French. However, this didn't mean that the Viets had become happy being a non-voting colony of France; it just meant that most were happier to try and fix it peacefully and were leaning towards some sort of negotiated self-rule in Indochina. On top of this, a ton of small revolts ''still'' peppered colonial history throughout the "quiet" 1900s; they just didn't go anywhere.

However, the tipping point probably came when a romantic and nationalist revival sprung up around the turn of the century, and increasing exposure to Western education and ideals collided and mixed. Suddenly huge swaths of the traditionally independent, traditionally militant Viet society started to imagine what ''their'' modern Vietnam would be like, and when France tried to keep things under control according to the same-old-same-old, things started turning into a ticking time bomb. As early as the end of UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, a formal request was made for self-government by the Indochinese after participating in "The War to End All Wars" for the causes of democracy, liberty, and self-determination (mostly as colonial workers at home and in the Western Front). Ironically, it was during the Treaty of Versailles negotiations that a young Vietnamese waiter approached United States President UsefulNotes/WoodrowWilson to ask for help in negotiating with the French on behalf of Vietnam and the rest of French Indochina. Wilson – due to a combination of [[NobleBigotWithABadge racism]] and [[PunchClockHero having bigger fish to fry]] [[{{Realpolitik}} that entailed complex negotiations with the French, not to mention the rest of the victorious Allies]] – refused. The Viet's name was Ho Chi Minh, who went away from the meeting much disillusioned and went to study in UsefulNotes/{{Moscow}}. He ended up spending several years as a lecturer on socialist ideology at [[UsefulNotes/NoMoreEmperors Canton's Whampoa Military Academy]] under Academy Director [[UsefulNotes/ChiangKaiShek Chiang what's-his-name]]. There he helped lead a cadre of Vietnamese expatriates who shared his views on effecting political change in his homeland by means of [[DeadlyEuphemism direct action]].

When [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII France surrendered to Nazi Germany]], Indochina was occupied by the Japanese military as part of their [[UsefulNotes/SecondSinoJapaneseWar "blockade" strategy for cutting the Kuomintang off from critically needed sources of arms and equipment from the outside world]]. The USA used the occupation of Indochina as a pretext for embargoing Japan in the hope that this would bring Japan to the negotiating table… but anyhow, the amazingly successful Japanese offensive into South-East Asia which followed – launched to seize strategic resources that the embargo had denied them – was a catalyst for nationalism in the region and worldwide, since it conclusively proved that a) The European Colonial Powers could be defeated in decisive battles by non-Europeans, and b) Non-European powers could be bastards, too, if not even bigger ones. When the Japanese realized that they were losing the war, they went about fostering nationalism and training militia and guerrilla forces in earnest throughout occupied Asia – partly as a final "screw you" to the Allies, but also because they genuinely believed in pan-Asian anti-European solidarity on some level.

This all came to a head when the French puppet regime – which had nominally continued to run Indochina up until that point – were ousted on March 11, 1945. The Việt Minh, a party of [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything Vietnamese Marxist-Nationalists, modelled off and led by people associated with the early Kuomintang of China]], had successfully played the French and Japanese off against each other – and the various opposition groups against themselves ([[OldShame up to and including selling one of the early leaders of the Anti-French resistance]] [[EnemyMine out to the French]]) before seizing the day and trying to take [[OmnicidalNeutral both major powers out]] [[YouWillBeAssimilated while trying to bring the other resistance groups under its wing]]. The day the War formally ended – September 2, 1945 – they declared the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, an independent and sovereign nation with its capital at Hanoi.

Of course, the French were not to be so quickly denied. Sino-Anglo-Indian forces had just months before broken the three-year deadlock in Burma, and were at that time marching into (formerly Japanese-Allied) Siam. When the Japanese surrendered, the Anglo-Indian army pressed on into Indochina and aided French forces in restoring French control by the end of the month. France recognized the prevailing mood could not be denied entirely and created a French-associated government in Saigon – the "State of Vietnam" – to rival the Việt Minh and their contemporaries. The State of Vietnam was led by former emperor Bảo Đại, who had abdicated his throne August 25, 1945.[[note]]His contribution to the whole conflict is often overlooked. As Emperor, Bảo Đại had the "Mandate of Heaven", but he was never very popular due to his being seen, correctly or not, as a foreign-controlled puppet – he was educated in France and was willing to work with them. When Japan invaded, they kept him on his throne and ruled through him just like the French had. Because of this questionable loyalty, Ho Chi Minh persuaded Bảo Đại to abdicate in favour of the Việt Minh. This created an immediate power vacuum and shifted the "Mandate of Heaven" onto Ho Chi Minh himself, giving him legitimacy among the people that he likely would not have had otherwise. Ho kept Bảo Đại on as an advisor until the French ousted Ho's government and Bảo Đại fled to Hong Kong. It was only at France's request that he returned in 1949, this time as Head of State for ''South'' Vietnam. During that time, he made some incredibly boneheaded decisions, not least of which was allowing literal crime syndicates to take over key portions of his government.[[/note]]

For a while, an uneasy peace punctuated by low-level fighting endured while talks were conducted between the two sides. However, despite conceding that Vietnam would have autonomy within the Indochinese Union and French Union (a political association akin to the British Commonwealth), the French promptly demonstrated exactly what they ''really'' thought of said agreement by declaring the independence of Cochin China (the southern third of Vietnam) and launching an offensive to secure the rest of Indochina. The story of the First Indochina War (December 19, 1946 – August 1, 1954) was one of ever-escalating and intensifying conflict. When the Chinese Communists won their Civil War against the Nationalist Kuomintang on the Chinese mainland in 1950,[[labelnote:†]](aside from nominally-independent Tibet and the Uyghur Muslim territory of Xinjiang, which only fell under Beijing's thumb later)[[/labelnote]] they too committed forces (off the books) to supplement the USSR's (covert) aid to the Việt Minh. The Việt Minh were not the only ones stirring up trouble, either; several large left-wing nationalist groups (Pathet Lao, Khmer Issarak, United Issarak Front) entered the fight alongside the Việt Minh, alongside many smaller groups. Initially the French States of Indochina held their own, but increasingly they had to be propped up by direct intervention from France's government and military.

After the 1954 Geneva Accords, Vietnam was partitioned into two countries: the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) and the State of Vietnam (South Vietnam), which became the Republic of Vietnam after a 1955 referendum that threw Bảo Đại (already back in France) out of power and replaced him with his prime minister Ngô Đình Diệm – that referendum was marred by claims of widespread electoral fraud, with the Communists accusing the Saigon government of cooking the books to retain power and partition the country, and the Saigon government justifying partition because of Communist subversion attempts.[[note]]Although both sides did indeed have issues on this front, to avoid running afoul of the "Pox On Both Houses" Fallacy, it's necessary to note that the communists had a point; the vote was ''unmistakably rigged'' in favour of Diệm – advocacy of Bảo Đại was strictly forbidden, and Diệm ended up getting several hundred thousand more votes than there were voters, including from areas where the Viet Cong had disrupted the vote.[[/note]] As a result, the referendum was eventually scrapped, and open war broke out almost instantly thereafter. The United States replaced the French as political/military backing for the South Vietnamese regime after the French withdrawal (they had [[UsefulNotes/{{Algeria}} bigger problems closer to home]]), while the North Vietnamese regime was backed by the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China, Cuba, and North Korea. However, Chinese support soon dropped off after the Sino-Soviet pact went bad in 1960 and got worse (to the point that a war between the USSR and PRC certainly looked possible if not likely). With North Vietnam choosing the Soviet camp, relations between Ho Chi Minh and UsefulNotes/MaoZedong soured over, among other things, [[SeriousBusiness their differing interpretations of Socialist Ideology]].

American involvement was initially in the form of equipment, money and "advisors", but by the 1960s, these "advisors" were many thousands. Foreign countries began actively fighting on both sides of the conflict (most on the side of South Vietnam). American ships were supposedly attacked by North Vietnamese ones in 1964,[[note]]the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which to this day does not have an official version of what happened. Sailors claimed they were attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on two separate days, but the details were so widely varied that Johnson himself said "They might have been shooting at flying fish out there"[[/note]] and so President Lyndon Johnson ordered a massive military presence in Vietnam to "protect the freedom" of South-East Asia and curtail the advance of Communism. In strictly legal terms, the United States didn't enter a war, as Congress never wrote a declaration of war; the entire conflict was essentially an executive order. If you go into any U.S.-government-funded library, you'll likely have to search under [[http://www.history.army.mil/html/bookshelves/resmat/vw.html "Vietnam Conflict"]]. [[UsefulNotes/TheKoreanWar The Korean Conflict]] and [[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror the Overseas Contingency Operation]] are likewise not officially wars (although Korea at least was authorized by the UN).

The United States COIN (counter-insurgency) methods left much to be desired initially. Despite drawing heavily on French treatises on ''Revolutionary Warfare'' written by Indochina-War veterans and implemented in [[UsefulNotes/{{Algeria}} the North African Crisis of 1954–62]], the 'lessons learned' from the French were arguably rather skewed. While they French ''had'' effectively destroyed the FLN-insurgency in the period c.1957–61 with their twin strategies of ''Quadrillage'' (garrisons) and ''Destruction'' ('search & destroy' missions and economic development programs), the brutal methods used in the ''Destruction'' missions effectively soured the French Communist Party and most of the French political left on the war. Worse, the ''Destruction'' strategy actually had two aspects and this was somewhat LostInTranslation: ''Destruction'' (of the insurgency) was the less important part, with ''Re-Construction'' doctrine being the part that French commanders lamented as being critically unfunded and thus claimed was the chief cause of the insurgency's continued survival until the peace of 1962.

The overwhelming focus of the US military's involvement, chiefly in the 1966–7 period, was thus "search and destroy" missions. This would involve forces entering hostile territory, destroying an enemy force, then leaving. However, these missions usually involved destroying houses and rice paddies (people's only means of avoiding death in a subsistence-agriculture economy), causing a considerable number of civilian deaths… that were not balanced out (in the locals' minds) by a proportional campaign of re-construction and economic development. The resulting destruction made the US forces unpopular. Many neutrals and even friendlies switched sides to the NLF. The US forces eventually realized that French unwillingness to properly fund their 'Re-Construction' doctrine had actually allowed the FLN to survive in Algeria, and so promoted their own program of "winning hearts and minds" through crash-development programs – but the damage had already been done.

It is important to remember that the USA was not just involved in a counter-insurgency operation in Vietnam, but also a conventional war, particularly in the air. The North Vietnamese had access to a number of Soviet-built aircraft, including the Mach 2 capable [=MiG=]-21 "Fishbed". While the aircraft were not as capable as the US ones, a number of factors evened things somewhat. Firstly, the US rules of engagement limited them to firing only at targets identified first, removing the long-range advantage of the US aircraft. The -21 was very good in a dogfight and the other North Vietnamese aircraft weren't that bad. Secondly, US air combat training was poor until the creation of Red Flag and TOPGUN, direct results of this war. Pilots had no experience of combat against types different from their own and were making bad mistakes in their early sorties. Red Flag, on discovering that if you got through 10 missions you'd probably get through the rest alive, aimed to give pilots "the ten" in the form of as-close-to-reality-as-possible training missions. Thirdly, the USA had decided that missiles were the way of the future and decided to remove cannons from their aircraft. They were swiftly put back in, in the form of machine-gun pods until internal machine guns were re-introduced. Fourthly, there was the S-75/SA-2 "Guideline" (see above). This Soviet-built surface-to-air missile led to early missions being aborted by its very presence, tying up aircraft on jamming missions and reducing bomb loads to fit countermeasures. Even still, it claimed a fair number of aircraft, as did conventional AA guns. The US was fighting the air war in order to keep the skies clear for their bombers, which dropped 6 million tons of explosives, more than 5 times the amount used in World War II. Another factor was that the IFF of American airplanes were extremely unreliable, making beyond-visual-range missile launches risky for other American planes.

The USA's population was becoming increasingly unhappy with the conduct of the war, and even the war itself. The war was broadcast, uncensored, on US TV every night. It generally looked bad. The military would trumpet the "body count" (the number of insurgents they had killed), but these figures were subject to manipulation by both sides. The black community was particularly incensed on principle and due to losses. Part of this came from solidarity with non-white anti-imperialist liberation and working-class movements worldwide. But this was outweighed by the outrage the black community felt at bearing a disproportionate share of the costs of a war that it disagreed with on principle: [[http://www.americanwarlibrary.com/vietnam/vwc10.htm despite accounting for less than 11% of the population, 14% of the American soldiers killed or crippled in Vietnam were black]]. The black community was ''far'' less able to afford draft-dodging measures than the children of America's then-overwhelmingly white millionaires and billionaires (more on that later).

As the war's popularity declined, the draft became increasingly controversial, even in the white community. Selective Service (to give it its proper title), done on a lottery system, had been around in the past – Music/ElvisPresley was famously drafted for two years in the 1950s. The draft became increasingly wide-ranging and undiscriminating. As a case in point, Project 100,000 lowered the mental acumen standards for draftees – Film/ForrestGump was not entirely a fiction. As a matter of fact, the lieutenant responsible for the My Lai Massacre was only even ''allowed into the Army'' because of the reduced standards of Project 100,000. These desperate measures were deemed necessary because the US had also decided to maintain a reasonably large standing army in western Europe, rather than relying solely on nuclear weapons (as under Truman and Eisenhower) to deter Soviet aggression. Moreover, only low-quality draftees were assigned to General Infantry (GI) cannonfodder roles in particular and the non-European theatres in general. Not at all coincidentally, discarding UnfortunateImplications and moving to Explicitly Racist Statements, black men were disproportionately categorised as low-quality manpower due to their worse education and physical fitness. This resulted from lower state funding for so-called 'separate but equal' black-only schools under Segregation and general malnutrition as a result of poverty. Accordingly, they were disproportionately assigned to GI service in Vietnam. Critics noted that Project 100,000 increased this disproportionate effect, as intentionally poor schooling had reduced black men's ability to score well on IQ tests.

As we alluded to earlier, the draft had exemptions for rich or married men (with children). You couldn't be drafted if you were in college or medically unfit to serve, so if you had the money, then you could use one or both excuses (the eponymous song [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ec0XKhAHR5I 'Fortunate Son' references the elite's draft-dodging practices]]). For instance, UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump used both by [[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/02/how-donald-trump-avoided-the-draft-during-the-vietnam-war/ using his dad's money to buy his way into the University of Pennsylvania and then getting a medical exemption from service]] (as did other prominent elites, including UsefulNotes/BillClinton). California was an exception to the former excuse, since college tuition there was free. Being married meant you were not drafted, although that rule was quickly changed so that you needed to have a child to avoid going. Congress effectively ended conscription in 1972, though men are still required to register for it just in case it's ever reinstated.

There were also many who protested the war because they wanted the North Vietnamese to win and were communist sympathizers if not communists themselves – this was back when the United States ''had'' a left wing.[[note]](the Second RedScare, the chaos surrounding the latter years of the Civil Rights Movement, and Vietnam all worked to ensure the faction's total destruction by TheSeventies)[[/note]] This included groups such as the Students for a Democratic Society and the Weathermen Underground, the former also often chanting "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh. NLF is gonna win" during their anti-war protests, which are in reference to the leader of the North Vietnamese (the communists) and the Viet Cong/National Liberation Front, respectively.

In any case, this meant that poor Americans were being sent off to South-East Asia for a cause many of them didn't understand. Some within the country thought the US was just as bad as, if not worse than, the Soviet Union. The latter had in living memory helped Communist Hungary to suppress a revolution (in 1956) and invaded Czechoslovakia (in 1968) to topple its socialistically-unorthodox government, doing so in much the same way that the US had been intervening in Latin America as per the Monroe Doctrine for the better part of a century.[[note]](the USA-backed 1954 coup in Guatemala and the 1961 'Bay of Pigs' failed invasion of Cuba, to name just two)[[/note]] A large-scale anti-war movement came to the fore, one that engaged in civil disobedience, sit-ins, and peace rallies. There were also violent demonstrations, such as the activities of the Weather Underground (some of the more radical elements received covert support from the KGB). Many burned their draft cards in public. Many others fled to Canada. (UsefulNotes/GeraldFord offered conditional amnesty to draft dodgers in 1974. UsefulNotes/JimmyCarter would later issue a blanket pardon.) One of the most infamous events on the 'home-front' was the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings Kent State Shootings]] – On May 4th, 1970, following a few days of various student demonstrations and civil unrest, the US National Guard (an army reservist citizen-soldier branch) opened fire on a crowd of protesters at Kent State University in Ohio for reasons we're still not sure of. It is known that the Guardsmen had gone without sleep for over 48 hours, and the protesters, while unarmed, were not entirely peaceful. Four people were killed and nine wounded. It is worth noting that two of the four killed were ''not'' part of the protest but were merely innocent passersby (in a tragic case of irony, one was also in the Reserve Officer Training Corps trying to avoid being tardy for his next class).

Creator/JaneFonda, a major anti-war activist, went to North Vietnam in 1972 and was photographed sitting on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun, an act she later apologized for. It forever demolished her pin-up girl image, although according to her: "[T]he truth is that my career, far from being destroyed after the war, [[NoSuchThingAsBadPublicity flourished with a vigor]] it had not previously enjoyed." Fonda received two Oscars during the 1970s, along with the undying hatred of millions of Americans. This venom led to a ([[http://www.snopes.com/military/fonda.asp false]]) rumour that Jane Fonda also delivered a letter that an American prisoner entrusted to her to give to his American superiors into the waiting hands of the prison camp commander, which inevitably made conditions far worse for the soldier and his fellow prisoners. [[NeverLie To this day]], at the U.S. Naval Academy, when a plebe shouts out "Goodnight, Jane Fonda!", the entire company will reply "Goodnight, bitch!"

[[RealityIsUnrealistic The majority of those who were sent to Indochina were volunteers of one shade or another, not draftees]], and the war was not ''entirely'' responsible for the draft – it had actually never been rescinded following UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, and the Pentagon used it as a way to make manpower ends meet when faced with the "long night" of Soviet supremacy following 1954 and especially 1956. Most draftees were sent abroad to places ''other'' than Vietnam both because it got to a point that the military viewed them as unreliable liabilities and the fact that the manpower crunch was that severe. However, the draft remained a dark symbol and a rallying cry against the war, partly due to the still-recent memory of World War II and Korea.

Despite winning a few battles, the US-led coalition never seemed to make much progress in the war. As the war dragged on and graphic new reports appeared on TV, the war grew increasingly unpopular among Americans at home. The last straw for the American populace was also, ironically, a decisive battle that led to American victory – the North's Tet Offensive, which, thanks to reporting from Walter Cronkite giving American viewers a look at the guerrilla fighting close-up, allegedly made it seem as though the Americans lost the battle in a bloodbath (in reality, it resulted in the Viet Cong being wiped out as an independent force; from that point on, nearly all forces the US faced were North Vietnamese). In later (1990s) US military thought, the Tet Offensive came to be seen as the ultimate proof that the idea that wars were always decided purely on the battlefield was wrong: although the US won every major engagement of the Tet Offensive,[[note]]The Communist Vietnamese forces were spread far too thinly in attempts to start an uprising in ''every single town'', and consequently they were substantially outnumbered ''everywhere''[[/note]] they lost the war. This is because the US forces were subject to public opinion, and the public opinion was that the Tet Offensive demonstrated the fundamentally unwinnable nature of the war. This was not the North Vietnamese intention with the offensive, but they were pleasantly surprised by the results.

As an aside, at this point in the war, massive political changes were happening on both sides – UsefulNotes/LyndonJohnson was replaced as president by UsefulNotes/RichardNixon as the old Democratic Party (which had held effective power almost continuously since 1933) tore itself apart; meanwhile in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh had left his leadership role due to declining health and died in 1969.

Seeing the need for a peace treaty but wanting to have the upper hand during the negotiations, Nixon ordered an ''intensification'' of the bombing campaign (the height of which being 1972's Operation Linebacker II against the major cities; he also authorized bombings in Cambodia and Laos – both of which were moderate monarchies that would fall to communist revolutions a few years later [see below for details on the former]). However, ultra-modern Soviet anti-air weaponry "somehow" found its way into the hands of North Vietnamese forces, who used it to whittle away at the USA's supposedly untouchable Air Force. More importantly, however, the bombing had little effect, as the USA had totally misread the effect of strategic bombing from UsefulNotes/WorldWarII – they mistakenly believed that strategic bombing would be a way to reduce enemy morale, when in fact the bombing of Germany and Japan proved that it ''bolsters'' enemy morale by increasing civilian/popular hatred for the bombers. What it ''was'' good for was destroying the industry and infrastructure of the enemy – neither of which were really used by the Vietnamese Communist Party and its forces, as they imported all their weapons from overseas and their guerrillas had no use for a functional railway network. Today the Vietnamese Communist Party calls the failed bombing campaign "Dien Bien Phu in the air", claiming that Vietnam managed to 'crush the opposing army's best and proud war-machine and lead the war to an end with the peace treaty'… but in reality, it was simply (like the ground-war) a stalemate as the USA continued trying to use the methods of a regular/conventional/total war to win an unconventional/partisan/guerrilla war. This has been likened to trying to use a sledgehammer to fix a watch.

In the end, the US resigned their ambition to achieve anything from the war ("peace in honor") and American forces unconditionally withdrew ("retreating in shame") as the South Vietnamese government would be left alone to bolster its forces. The drawdown of the U.S. military did not immediately lead to the collapse of the South Vietnamese government, as the U.S. was committed to continued support of its allies in Saigon. Substantial quantities of military and economic aid still flowed in, and the USAF stood ready to provide air support if necessary. The continued weight of the U.S. in Vietnam was demonstrated when the North Vietnamese launched a massive offensive with conventional arms in March 1972, termed the Easter Offensive. While the North Vietnamese were able to capture and retain a substantial chunk of South Vietnamese territory, they suffered very heavy losses, including most of their armor and artillery, under weight of U.S. air attacks and relatively competent defense conducted by ARVN forces. The Paris Peace Accords were signed on January 27, 1973, theoretically bringing the conflict to closure, but with no real practical impact. While no major military activities took place for nearly two years afterwards, that was due more to lack of the means to wage them, as PAVN was busy replenishing its lost equipment and the South lacked the will and, after summer of 1973, the resources, to do much. However, continued U.S. involvement in Vietnam remained unpopular among the American public, and the June 1973 passage of the Case-Church amendment cut off all funding for U.S. activities in Southeast Asia, including the aid to South Vietnam. This not only precluded U.S. airstrikes against potential North Vietnamese offensives in the future, but rendered much of the US-supplied equipment of the South Vietnamese military inoperable. Small-scale conflict continued throughout 1973 and 1974, until the final act of the Vietnamese phase of the war began at the end of 1974.

The final North Vietnamese offensive, popularly termed the Ho Chi Minh Offensive, began in December 1974 after the PAVN replenished its stocks of tanks and artillery. The North Vietnamese leadership had planned only to capture additional territory from which to launch the real final offensive on Saigon in 1976, but the South Vietnamese army collapsed far more rapidly than they had expected, allowing for a march on Saigon itself a full year ahead of schedule. The war ended on April 30, 1975, with the PAVN rolling into Saigon, forming the new South Vietnamese government, which unified with North Vietnam the following year.

Thanks to North Vietnam invading Cambodia, smashing the Cambodian army, and providing extremely heavy support to the communist insurgents, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge overthrew Lon Nol's government in neighboring Cambodia on April 17, 1975. Despite both Vietnam and Cambodia[[note]](called "Democratic Kampuchea" by 1976)[[/note]] being communist countries and former military allies, they soon had a falling-out due to unresolved disputes over maritime borders and refugees fleeing into Vietnam from Pol Pot's genocide. The year 1977 saw some border clashes between the two countries; the Khmer Rouge massacred thousands of Vietnamese civilians in a cross-border attack on September 24th, and Vietnam responded with an offensive into Cambodia's eastern regions in December.

The Third Indochina War began on December 1978 when Vietnam launched a full-scale invasion of Cambodia, which deposed the Khmer Rouge and set up a puppet government called the People's Republic of Kampuchea. The war lasted throughout the 1980s as anti-Vietnamese factions (including the communist Khmer Rouge, the right-wing anti-communist Khmer People's National Liberation Front, and the monarchist FUNCINPEC) in Cambodia carried on fighting a bitter guerrilla war, with the Vietnamese Army launching large offensives to destroy guerrilla camps in western Cambodia and across the border into Thailand; the latter would bring Vietnamese forces into battle against the Thai Army.

The Cold War continued to have a significant influence in the region; Vietnam signed a security treaty with the Soviet Union in 1978 while China secretly supported the Khmer Rouge with military aid. After the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, both China and the USA would support Thailand and the anti-Vietnamese Cambodian factions. China would carry out a punitive attack of its own "to teach a lesson to Vietnam" on February 1979, starting the short but bloody Sino-Vietnamese War.

During the three weeks of intense fighting, China deployed over 250,000 men and managed to occupy three provincial capitals before withdrawing in March. Both sides suffered heavy casualties. In any case, the war was something of a draw – both sides claimed victory, but the Chinese had taken heavy numbers of casualties in the process as the military had been severely weakened due to Mao's Cultural Revolution years earlier. The ancient grudge between China and Vietnam was also revived; the Vietnamese reportedly tortured Chinese prisoners, while the Chinese destroyed countless villages and openly slaughtered civilians in such a manner that many Vietnamese considered them worse than the Americans. Both nations' governments are still deeply embittered over this particular stage of the conflict to this day.

The Sino-Vietnamese War was fought for reasons which are still somewhat unclear – both countries haven't exactly been very forthright about the matter, as both countries want to avoid harming current relations. What ''is'' known is that China was unhappy with Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia. Why the Chinese leadership thought that a limited war wherein they would sustain heavy casualties – in what would only be the first and most difficult phase of a proper war in which they would almost certainly go on to break the back of Vietnamese resistance – would gain them anything is anyone's guess. To most outsiders, it seemed that China had ended up as the worst-off after the war, as they failed to force Vietnam to withdraw from Cambodia. More recently, historians pointed out that the purpose of the war was for Deng Xiaoping to demonstrate that the Soviet Union was incapable of militarily supporting Vietnam in case of an attack; to show that China was capable as an ally of the United States; and to use the Sino-Vietnamese War experience as a "lessons learned" platform for the Chinese military leadership to reform the armed forces. In addition, after reunification, many members of the large ethnic Chinese community in Vietnam were subject to harsh treatment and many were effectively expelled (they made up a disproportionate fraction of the "Boat People" leaving communist Vietnam in late 1970s) and the Chinese government may have also been displeased at the treatment of "their" people in addition to the geostrategic reasons above.

After the 1979 war, a constant conflict occurred along the Sino-Vietnamese border through the 1980s; the biggest clashes since 1979 occurred in 1981 in Lang Son and the Yunnan-Ha Tuyen border; in 1984 at Friendship Pass in Lang Son and at Laoshan/Vi Xuyen; and in 1987 in Laoshan/Vi Xuyen again. The fighting consisted of sporadic artillery duels, squad-level raids, and division-sized assaults to seize hills on both sides of the border; both sides' outposts and trenches were often only a few yards away from each other. In 1988, several islands in the South China Sea were secured for China after a naval battle there. As China and Vietnam began to normalize relations by the end of the 1980s, Chinese forces withdrew from their border positions beginning in 1989 and the last combat troops left the border zone in 1992.

It was a very popular area for war films from the late '70s to the early '90s. American films may show the war from an exclusively American perspective (or at least an exclusively Hollywood perspective). Many American films are opposed to the war, with Creator/JohnWayne's ''The Green Berets'' being the only real exception.

Expect a bunch of drugged-up draftees (which wasn't actually the case for everyone, since two thirds of the American soldiers were volunteers, including three future major party US presidential nominees[[labelnote:†]]those would be John [=McCain=], John Kerry, and Al Gore ([[NotMakingThisUpDisclaimer yes, he served]]); UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush also did a stint in the military, but he remained stateside in the Texas Air National Guard[[/labelnote]]) who will shoot anyone who looks Southeast Asian, whether they are the enemy, their own side, or civilians. Also expect an emphasis on U.S. dead and wounded, even though a minimum of some 260k–460k civilians were killed versus only 58,000 U.S. soldiers. Expect [[TheNeidermeyer incompetent officers]], stuffed-up academy cadets being "fragged" (killed with grenades) [[UnfriendlyFire by their own soldiers]], various [[WarCrimeSubvertsHeroism wanton atrocities]], and even Literature/CatchTwentyTwo explanations about "having to destroy the village in order to save it".

According to [[HollywoodHistory Hollywood]], [[TheVietnamVet Vietnam Veterans]] tend to be old,[[note]](obviously TruthInTelevision now; the youngest men subject to the Vietnam draft were born in 1952, and most veterans are up to a decade older)[[/note]] grizzled, and broken from their experience. [[RealLife But in reality]], things are more complicated. Many people believed they were doing their patriotic duty to stop the Communist Menace[[superscript:[[TradeSnark TM]]]], especially in the early years of the war. It wasn't until 1968 that public opinion, or at least media opinion, started turning against the war in large numbers, although the majority of civilians nonetheless felt that regardless of whether they liked it, they should vote for the war to continue. It is worth noting that Baby Boomers (who were getting drafted) were actually among the groups ''most'' likely to support the war, especially if they were white. The ''least'' likely American to support the war would have been an old poor black women from an inner-city area, whose sons were most likely to have been drafted into the war.

National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam insurgents (known as Vietcong – a derogatory term meaning "Vietnamese Communist", VC, Victor Charlie, or just Charlie[[note]]"Victor Charlie" is "VC" in the [=NATO=] phonetic alphabet, which [[Main/MilitaryAlphabet assigns a word to each letter in the English language to avoid confusion during radio communications]]. For example, someone might have to have to ask that a message be repeated if they're unsure if it said "I" or "Y", but no one is going to get "India" and "Yankee" mixed up.[[/note]]) and NVA soldiers don't feature very much, except as sources of weapons fire, evil torturers, punji trap layers, or occasionally corpses. But of course, all of these are reversed in ''their'' war movies… [[WrittenByTheWinners when produced in Vietnam itself, given rather iron-fisted censorship that would not cop well to voicing the complaints the South and other non-Communist Vietnamese had]].

Even less represented are the ARVN, who most often would be background allies (in Hollywood movies) or oppressing villains (in Vietnamese movies). Don't expect to see the viewpoint of the Montagnards (except as "loyal countrymen" in North Vietnamese movies), or the sects of Cao Dai and Hoa Hao (each had [[ChurchMilitant considerable military and political power]] in the South before 1975) anytime soon.

Expect much use of napalm, because it smells like the victory the Americans allegedly never got. It's worth noting, however, the North Vietnamese forces never won a major battle themselves – in the Tet Offensive, a military campaign by the Viet Cong, the VC actually took so many losses they played no further major part in the war. Their secret is in part that no matter what the Americans threw at them, the North Vietnamese took the blows willingly as part of the price to pay for the cause and ''[[{{Determinator}} just kept coming]]''; they wanted to win more than the Americans wanted them to lose. Barring few exceptions[[note]]For instance, if the insurgents are in the minority themselves and the majority has some rapport with the occupying forces, and/or if the occupying forces can effectively separate insurgent from civilian without too much turmoil and give certain concessions to ease tensions; alternatively (or even in addition to this), occupiers can resort to scorched earch tactics and mass relocation/depopulation, though this obviously wouldn't fly with the voting public in a modern western democracy[[/note]], this is the only way insurgencies are ever resolved.

This is also the first American war (the French first used them to great effect in Algeria) to feature helicopters as a weapon and primary transport – in [[UsefulNotes/KoreanWar Korea]] they were very small, and limited to recon and [[Series/{{Mash}} light medical evacuation]]. The [[EveryHelicopterIsAHuey UH-1 Huey]], with both side doors open, flying low over the canopy of a jungle with a grizzled soldier manning the door gun is one of the war's most enduring images.[[note]]Anyone who has ever seen a Huey in flight knows that they don't have the tenor whirring sound of more modern helicopters: they really do make a deep "whup-whup-whup" that can be heard ''miles'' off, thanks to its two thick rotor blades as compared to later helicopters' three or four thinner blades. It was often given the nickname "Thumper", a name it shared with the 40mm grenade launcher wielded by American soldiers.[[/note]]

Someone '''will''' use the word "klick" at some point, meaning a kilometer.[[note]]This was the first war in which the U.S. military regularly used metric units. Unlike most of the rest of America, the military is pretty much entirely metric because it's vital for international coordination (this is the same reason why NASA went metric in 1983).[[/note]]

Finally, most importantly, and probably most accurately, there is the music. The Hollywood-Approved Soundtrack[[superscript:TM]] to the Vietnam War (and probably anything relating to the social culture of TheSixties) is Music/CreedenceClearwaterRevival. "Fortunate Son" from ''Music/WillyAndThePoorBoys'' is the most popular, but "Who'll Stop the Rain", "Run Through the Jungle", "Have You Ever Seen The Rain", and "Suzie Q" will also show up. One has to wonder what CCR's legacy would be without Vietnam-era films. Music/{{The Rolling Stones|Band}} and Music/TheDoors will also occasionally play if a studio can afford it. In terms of other songs, expect Music/BuffaloSpringfield's "For What It's Worth"[[note]] [[RefrainFromAssuming "Stop, children, what's that sound? / Everybody look what's going down..."]][[/note]] and Music/JimiHendrix's version of "All Along the Watchtower" from ''Music/ElectricLadyland'' to play somewhere. If it's a protest movie, also expect "Ohio" by Music/CrosbyStillsNashAndYoung, [[RunningGag Garfunkel, Oates, and Cher]]. The song is about four students that were killed by the National Guard during an anti–Vietnam War protest on the campus of Kent State in Ohio (mentioned several paragraphs above), and is the go-to song to highlight how divisive the war was back in America. On the other hand, if you see choppers, expect "Music/RideOfTheValkyries", because you're probably watching ''Film/ApocalypseNow'' or something making a {{homage}} to it.

To the popular mind, TheSixties or anything about it was the war, the Hippies, the UsefulNotes/CivilRightsMovement, and Music/TheBeatles or protest song-based PsychedelicRock. Remember that.

Because this was both an insurgency and a conventional war, you can also set air combat stories here. Dogfights between the F-4 Phantom II, the [=MiG-17=] and the [=MiG-21=] feature heavily here, along with other planes like the [[MoreDakka AC-47 Spooky]], [[BreakOutTheMuseumPiece A-1 Skyraider]], [[FragileSpeedster F-105 Thunderchief]], [[DeathFromAbove B-52 Stratofortress]], and lots and lots of helicopters, with the war also seeing major use of the S-25/SA-2 "Guideline" SAM (although the bulk of shoot-downs were due to conventional AAA fire).

If the work involves secret operations, expect to become familiar with MACV-SOG (Military Assistance Command Vietnam-Special Operations Group, later Studies and Observations Group) and Project Phoenix (an assassination campaign aimed at killing civilians that supported the NVA). Both were black ops run by the CIA, and kept very secret since the Phoenix Program was illegal in international law, and the Studies and Observations Group really didn't just study and observe. MACV-SOG carried out regular raids deep into enemy territory without air support half of the time, and for the other half trained and mobilized anti-Vietnamese indigenous tribes into a highly effective irregular army.

The Vietnam War has also provided the backstory for a number of other works of fiction, including ''Series/TheATeam'', ''Series/{{Airwolf}}'', ''Series/MagnumPI'', ''Franchise/{{Rambo}}'', ''Film/TaxiDriver'', ''Literature/TheBourneSeries'' and ''ComicBook/JonSableFreelance''. Leo [=McGarry=] in ''Series/TheWestWing'' was a Vietnam vet.

'''Important Note''': As if you couldn't tell by this article, this war and its outcome is still a ''very'' strong point of contention in the USA more than 40 years later, even among people who weren't even alive at the time! Along with the Civil Rights Movement, [[NewAgeRetroHippie hippies]], [[UsefulNotes/RichardNixon the Watergate Scandal]], and all the lingering cultural debates of TheSixties and TheSeventies, it was/is one of the key controversies in [[BrokenBase modern American politics]]. Communists, socialists, anarchists and most modern liberals – as well as most libertarians, paleoconservatives, the far-right [[TheExtremistWasRight John Birch Society]] and most moderate conservatives – still consider the war a [[WhatASenselessWasteOfHumanLife senseless waste of human life]] and point to the 'My Lai Massacre', President-for-life Diem's dictatorial rule, and 'Operation Phoenix' as evidence that there wasn't much difference between the "good guys" and the Communists. By '''''stark''''' contrast, neoconservatives, nationalists, and "old-style" liberals continue to believe that the USA – and France before them – would have won if not for the (left-wing) public's "betrayal" of the country's military forces, that the BananaRepublic of South Vietnam was still ALighterShadeOfGrey than its Communist counterpart, and contend that more people died because the USA left than were killed by the USA's troops or by its enemies during the war[[note]]In what had once been South Vietnam, ''far'' more people were 're-educated' than executed, though said process wasn't all daisies, sunshine, and rainbows, and it still resulted in many excess deaths. Furthermore, 2 million South Vietnamese (c. 10% of the population) fled as "boat people", of which 1.64 million successfully settled elsewhere, 125,000 were forcibly repatriated, and an estimated 250,000 (per the U.N. High Commissioner For Refugees) had died in their attempts to flee by 1986. Possibly hundreds of thousands of other civilians, mostly ethnic minorities like those represented by the FULRO coalition, were killed in the communist government's repression campaigns during the post-war insurgency. But even this paled in comparison to what was going on just across the border in Cambodia, where the anti-Soviet/Chinese-backed communist regime ''[[Film/TheKillingFields exterminated one-quarter of its own population]]'' (1.4–2.2 million), something that was at least delayed by US air power hammering the Khmer Rouge and preventing them from overthrowing the ramshackle BananaRepublic there (and massively ''aided'' by the North Vietnamese training them, arming them, sheltering them, and fighting alongside them). The common argument is that if the USA had stayed on, they would have prevented Pol Pot – and the other Communist leaders – coming to power, or at least have intervened had the signs become obvious. As it was, the genocide dragged on until Soviet-backed ''Communist Vietnam'' toppled their regime and installed a puppet government of their own there in response to [[LeeroyJenkins Cambodian cross-border invasions]] and massacres of Vietnamese villages.[[/note]] and would have been killed if the war had continued. Most historians tend to agree with the former viewpoint, and [[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/22/opinion/vietnam-was-unwinnable.html argue that]] a US military victory in Vietnam is infeasible.

To cut a long story short, there's not enough evidence to decisively rule whether things would have gotten better if the USA had continued trying to kill all the rebels and suspected socialists in Indochina for another year, or five years, or decade(s). What ''is'' known is that it was initiated by the communists, fought between a corrupt kleptocratic dictatorship and a ruthless Marxist-Leninist dictatorship, and their conflict [[WasItReallyWorthIt killed over 3.5 million people and maimed another 2 million]].[[note]]Per contemporary U.S. military documents, the Americans suffered 58,313 military deaths, the South Koreans had 5,099, the Anzacs 558, and the ARVN took 254,256, excluding 1975 when their record keeping system broke down. Per the modern Vietnamese government in an April 1995 press release, the PAVN lost 1,100,000 troops killed, and both Vietnams together had c. 2 million excess civilian deaths. Precise figures for Laotian and Cambodian deaths have never been established, though historians generally estimated them at c. 50,000–100,000 and c. 250,000–300,000, respectively, including both combatants and civilians.[[/note]]

After all this was, with good reasons,[[note]]more than 3.5 million of them, to be exact[[/note]] the Anglosphere's most unpopular war.

As for the Vietnamese? While the conflict's outcome is a point of pride, it really was just one of the many Indochina Wars that had been fought over the 20th century.[[labelnote:*]]The general consensus seems to be less "we defeated the Americans" and more "we successfully retained our independence"[[/labelnote]] After America left Indochina, Vietnam went on to fight Pol Pot's regime in Cambodia in response to its atrocities and border raids and then fought China ([[WeUsedToBeFriends both former allies]]) in another series of border wars. Ironically, many Vietnamese these days [[DefeatMeansFriendship are strongly pro-American]] if only because the Vietnamese [[EnemyMine see China as their greatest threat]], a sentiment that has lasted thousands of years longer than any hostile feelings they've had towards America. This unfortunately resulted in several ugly incidents in the 2010's, such as China's building of artificial islands and oil rigs in waters the Vietnamese dedeemed as theirs, which in turn led to [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Vietnam_anti-China_protests nationalist riots in 2014]] that led to several factories, mostly owned by the Taiwanese, getting looted and destroyed.

For the overseas Vietnamese community, mostly in North America and Australia, the loss of the South is still a sore point, especially to the older generations who still remember the war and the migration. As such, many find the current Vietnamese flag and other insignia distasteful and prefer to represent themselves with the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_South_Vietnam old South Vietnamese flag]]. The increased polarization of American politics in the late 2010's deepen the generation gap within the community between the old, who tend to be conservative and see the Communist government as illegitimate, and the young, who tend to be liberal or even left wing, and see the Communist government as legitimate.

[[folder: Decolonization]]

[[folder: Partition]]

[[folder: Losing?(!)]]

[[folder:Live Action TV]]

* Glenn Corbett played Vietnam vet Linc Case on ''Series/{{Route 66}}'' in 1963. He also played a Vietnam vet as guest star on a 1965 episode of ''Series/TheManFromUNCLE''.
* "In Praise of Pip," a fifth season episode of ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959''. Notable for possibly being the first television program to mention a Vietnam casualty. Originally it was supposed to be Laos, but the show's fact-checkers pointed out that hostilities in Laos had recently ceased, suggesting South Vietnam instead. Which led to the following speech (from a bookie who has received word his son was severely wounded in action):
-->"He's dying. Pip is dying. In a place called South Vietnam. There isn't even supposed to be a war there, but he's dying. My boy is dying... It is to laugh. I swear to God it is to laugh."
** ''Series/TheTwilightZone1985'' episode "The Road Less Traveled" is about a draft-dodger who meets an AlternateHistory version of himself, who went to Vietnam and lost his legs.

Creator/JaneFonda, a major anti-war activist, went to North Vietnam in 1972 and was photographed sitting on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun, an act she later apologized for. It forever demolished her pin-up girl image, although according to her: "[T]he truth is that my career, far from being destroyed after the war, [[NoSuchThingAsBadPublicity flourished with a vigor]] it had not previously enjoyed." Fonda received two Oscars during the 1970s, along with the undying hatred of millions of Americans. This venom led to a ([[http://www.snopes.com/military/fonda.asp false]]) rumour that Jane Fonda also delivered a letter that an American prisoner entrusted to her to give to his American superiors into the waiting hands of the prison camp commander, which inevitably made conditions far worse for the soldier and his fellow prisoners. To this day, at the U.S. Naval Academy, when a plebe shouts out "Goodnight, Jane Fonda!", the entire company will reply "Goodnight, bitch!"

'''Important Note''': As if you couldn't tell by this article, this war and its outcome is still a ''very'' strong point of contention in the USA more than 40 years later, even among people who weren't even alive at the time! Along with the Civil Rights Movement, [[NewAgeRetroHippie hippies]], [[UsefulNotes/RichardNixon the Watergate Scandal]], and all the lingering cultural debates of TheSixties and TheSeventies, it was/is one of the key controversies in [[BrokenBase modern American politics]]. Communists, socialists, anarchists and modern liberals – as well as most libertarians, paleoconservatives, the far-right [[TheExtremistWasRight John Birch Society]] and many moderate right-wingers – still consider the war a [[WhatASenselessWasteOfHumanLife senseless waste of human life]] and point to the 'My Lai Massacre', President-for-life Diem's dictatorial rule, and 'Operation Phoenix' as evidence that there wasn't much difference between the "good guys" and the Communists. By '''''stark''''' contrast, the USA's conservatives, nationalists, and old-style liberals continue to believe that the USA – and France before them – would have won if not for the (left-wing) public's "betrayal" of the country's military forces, that the BananaRepublic of South Vietnam was still ALighterShadeOfGrey than its Communist counterpart, and contend that more people died because the USA left than were killed by the USA's troops or by its enemies during the war[[note]]In what had once been South Vietnam, ''far'' more people were 're-educated' than executed, though said process wasn't all daisies, sunshine, and rainbows, and it still resulted in many excess deaths. Furthermore, 2 million South Vietnamese (c. 10% of the population) fled as "boat people", of which 1.64 million successfully settled elsewhere, 125,000 were forcibly repatriated, and an estimated 250,000 (per the U.N. High Commissioner For Refugees) had died in their attempts to flee by 1986. Possibly hundreds of thousands of other civilians, mostly ethnic minorities like those represented by the FULRO coalition, were killed in the communist government's repression campaigns during the post-war insurgency. But even this paled in comparison to what was going on just across the border in Cambodia, where the anti-Soviet/Chinese-backed communist regime ''[[Film/TheKillingFields exterminated one-quarter of its own population]]'' (1.4–2.2 million), something that was at least delayed by US air power hammering the Khmer Rouge and preventing them from overthrowing the ramshackle BananaRepublic there (and massively ''aided'' by the North Vietnamese training them, arming them, sheltering them, and fighting alongside them). The common argument is that if the USA had stayed on, they would have prevented Pol Pot – and the other Communist leaders – coming to power, or at least have intervened had the signs become obvious. As it was, the genocide dragged on until Soviet-backed ''Communist Vietnam'' toppled their regime and installed a puppet government of their own there in response to [[LeeroyJenkins Cambodian cross-border invasions]] and massacres of Vietnamese villages.[[/note]] and would have been killed if the war had continued. Most historians tend to agree with the former viewpoint, and [[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/22/opinion/vietnam-was-unwinnable.html argue that]] a US military victory in Vietnam is infeasible.

Expect a bunch of drugged-up draftees (which wasn't actually the case for everyone, since two thirds of the American soldiers were volunteers, including three future major party US presidential nominees[[labelnote:†]]those would be John [=McCain=], John Kerry, and Al Gore ([[NotMakingThisUpDisclaimer yes, he served]]); UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush also did a stint in the military, but he remained stateside in the Texas Air National Guard[[/labelnote]]) who will shoot anyone who looks Southeast Asian, whether they are the enemy, their own side, or civilians. Also expect an emphasis on U.S. dead and wounded, even though a minimum of some 260k–460k civilians were killed versus only 58,000 U.S. soldiers. Expect [[TheNeidermeyer incompetent officers]], stuffed-up academy cadets being "fragged" (killed with grenades) by their own soldiers, various wanton atrocities, and even Literature/CatchTwentyTwo explanations about "having to destroy the village in order to save it".

According to [[HollywoodHistory Hollywood]], Vietnam Veterans tend to be old,[[note]](obviously TruthInTelevision now; the youngest men subject to the Vietnam draft were born in 1952, and most veterans are up to a decade older)[[/note]] grizzled, and broken from their experience. [[RealLife But in reality]], things are more complicated. Many people believed they were doing their patriotic duty to stop the Communist Menace[[superscript:[[TradeSnark TM]]]], especially in the early years of the war. It wasn't until 1968 that public opinion, or at least media opinion, started turning against the war in large numbers, although the majority of civilians nonetheless felt that regardless of whether they liked it, they should vote for the war to continue. It is worth noting that Baby Boomers (who were getting drafted) were actually among the groups ''most'' likely to support the war, especially if they were white. The ''least'' likely American to support the war would have been an old poor black women from an inner-city area, whose sons were most likely to have been drafted into the war.

In fact, any grizzled action hero during TheEighties has a fair chance of being a Vietnam veteran – it became such a common source of angst that some movie reviewers took to abbreviating it to "Vietvet". Also, [[TakeOurWordForIt it should be assumed]] that when it's mentioned that a character served in the military on active duty between August 2, 1964 ([[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_Incident the Gulf of Tonkin incident]]) and May 15, 1975 ([[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayaguez_incident the Mayaguez incident]]) that he is a Vietnam vet.

UsefulNotes/WorldWarI aside, the Indochinese[[note]]"Indochina" here refers to the area of Southeast Asia that is today Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos[[/note]] Wars of the 20th century were the most controversial and divisive conflicts that the Anglosphere had ever been a part of (with the so-called "[[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror War on Terror]]" in the 21st century being the only possible contender) and are a close third behind UsefulNotes/{{Algeria}} and UsefulNotes/WorldWarI in the Francosphere. The first war was fought between the armed forces of the newly minted Fourth French Republic and a communist-led coalition of Indochinese insurgents known as the Viet Minh. Post-independence, the second war was fought by the USA, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, several Southeast-Asian countries and the forces of South Vietnam to prop up the latter's Catholic-led dictatorship and later stratocratic government as a bulwark against communism (and the Buddhist majority in the region). Against them were arrayed the Soviet and Chinese-backed (with some assistance from Cuba and North Korea – it's complicated) forces of the communist dictatorship of North Vietnam, and the National Liberation Front for South Vietnam (better known as the Viet Cong) – a communist guerrilla force operating in South Vietnam. The ''third'' Indochinese war was a series of conflicts from the late 1970s to the end of the UsefulNotes/ColdWar, including a war between Vietnam and anti-Vietnamese factions in Cambodia, and a short "punitive war" started by China against Vietnam followed by a decade-long border skirmish. But first, some simplified background details.

* A few months after the one-two punch of the Springsteen/Lewis hits came the least subtle of them all, "19," Paul Hardcastle's biggest hit, a [[StupidStatementDanceMix remix of narration and interviews]] from a documentary about Vietnam. The title comes from one sample stating that the average age of a soldier was 19, compared to 26 in UsefulNotes/WW2.[[note]]It was actually 22, which is still pretty young, but most would agree that "t-t-t-t-t-twenty two" isn't as catchy[[/note]].

UsefulNotes/WorldWarI aside, the Indochinese[[note]]"Indochina" here refers to the area of Southeast Asia that is today Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos[[/note]] Wars of the 20th century were the most controversial and divisive conflicts that the Anglosphere had ever been a part of (with the so-called "[[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror War on Terror]]" in the 21st century being the only possible contender, and even that's contentious) and are a close third behind UsefulNotes/{{Algeria}} and UsefulNotes/WorldWarI in the Francosphere. The first war was fought between the armed forces of the newly minted Fourth French Republic and a communist-led coalition of Indochinese insurgents known as the Viet Minh. Post-independence, the second war was fought by the USA, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, several Southeast-Asian countries and the forces of South Vietnam to prop up the latter's Catholic-led dictatorship and later stratocratic government as a bulwark against communism (and the Buddhist majority in the region). Against them were arrayed the Soviet and Chinese-backed (with some assistance from Cuba and North Korea – it's complicated) forces of the communist dictatorship of North Vietnam, and the National Liberation Front for South Vietnam (better known as the Viet Cong) – a communist guerrilla force operating in South Vietnam. The ''third'' Indochinese war was a series of conflicts from the late 1970s to the end of the UsefulNotes/ColdWar, including a war between Vietnam and anti-Vietnamese factions in Cambodia, and a short "punitive war" started by China against Vietnam followed by a decade-long border skirmish. But first, some simplified background details.

Relations in the South were dominated by the South Vietnam President Ngô Đình Diệm's increasingly repressive dictatorship[[labelnote:†]](among many other atrocities great and small, Diệm was a Catholic, and he blatantly favoured his minority group over the Buddhist majority)[[/labelnote]] and the rise of the Viet Cong (officially the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam, which was largely a Southern auxiliary of the PVA). Which led to which (if either) is the subject of much controversy, but they would both go on to terrorize South Vietnam in the latter half of the Fifties. On November 2, 1963, the corrupt and increasingly unpopular President Ngô was overthrown and assassinated with the approval of the CIA. He was replaced by an initially promising military junta that fell to instability and numerous coup d'etats, with the end result being a stratocratic 'democracy' where only military officers as the primary power-brokers in South Vietnam could become president.

* The ridiculously lethal RPG ''Recon'' is set in the Vietnam War, and is a great way for a group to play a really, really short game, because nobody will be left alive by the third encounter.

UsefulNotes/WorldWarI aside, the Indochinese[[note]]"Indochina" here refers to the area of Southeast Asia that is today Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos[[/note]] Wars of the 20th century were the most controversial and divisive conflicts that the Anglosphere had ever been a part of (with the so-called "[[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror War on Terror]]" in the 21st century being the only possible contender, and even that's contentious) and are a close third behind UsefulNotes/{{Algeria}} and UsefulNotes/WorldWarI in the Francosphere. The first war was fought between the armed forces of the newly minted Fourth French Republic and the guerrilla forces of several Indochinese nationalist and socialist groups. Post-independence, the second war was fought by the USA, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, several Southeast-Asian countries and the forces of South Vietnam to prop up the latter's Catholic-led dictatorship and later stratocratic government as a bulwark against communism (and the Buddhist majority in the region). Against them were arrayed the Soviet and Chinese-backed (with some assistance from Cuba and North Korea – it's complicated) forces of the communist dictatorship of North Vietnam, and the National Liberation Front for South Vietnam (better known as the Viet Cong) – a communist guerrilla force operating in South Vietnam. The ''third'' Indochinese war was a series of conflicts from the late 1970s to the end of the UsefulNotes/ColdWar, including a war between Vietnam and anti-Vietnamese factions in Cambodia, and a short "punitive war" started by China against Vietnam followed by a decade-long border skirmish. But first, some simplified background details.

To cut a long story short, there's not enough evidence to decisively rule whether things would have gotten better if the USA had continued trying to kill all the rebels and suspected socialists in Indochina for another year, or five years, or decade(s). What ''is'' known is that it was initiated by the communists, fought between a corrupt kleptocratic dictatorship and a brutal Stalinist dictatorship, and that [[WasItReallyWorthIt it killed over 3.5 million people and maimed another 2 million]].[[note]]Per contemporary U.S. military documents, the Americans suffered 58,313 military deaths, the South Koreans had 5,099, the Anzacs 558, and the ARVN took 254,256, excluding 1975 when their record keeping system broke down. Per the modern Vietnamese government in an April 1995 press release, the PAVN lost 1,100,000 troops killed, and both Vietnams together had c. 2 million excess civilian deaths. Precise figures for Laotian and Cambodian deaths have never been established, though historians generally estimated them at c. 50,000–100,000 and c. 250,000–300,000, respectively, including both combatants and civilians.[[/note]]

If the work involves secret operations, expect to become familiar with MAC-V SOG (Military Assistance Command-Vietnam, Special Operations Group, later Studies and Observations Group) and Project Phoenix (an assassination campaign aimed at killing civilians that supported the NVA). Both were black ops run by the CIA, and kept very secret since the Phoenix Program was illegal in international law, and the Studies and Observations Group really didn't just study and observe.

For the overseas Vietnamese community, mostly in North America and Australia, the loss of the South is still a sore point, especially to the older generations who still remember the war and the migration. As such, many find the current Vietnamese flag and other insignia distasteful and prefer to represent themselves with the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_South_Vietnam old South Vietnamese flag]]. The increased polarization of American politics in the late 2010's deepen the generation gap within the community between the old, who tend to be conservative, and the young, who tend to be liberal or even left wing.

As for the Vietnamese? While the conflict's outcome is a point of pride, it really was just one of the many Indochina Wars that had been fought over the 20th century.[[labelnote:*]]The general consensus seems to be less "we defeated the Americans" and more "we successfully retained our independence"[[/labelnote]] After America left Indochina, Vietnam went on to fight Pol Pot's regime in Cambodia in response to its atrocities and border raids and then fought China ([[WeUsedToBeFriends both former allies]]) in another series of border wars. Ironically, many Vietnamese these days [[DefeatMeansFriendship are PRO American]] if only because the Vietnamese [[EnemyMine see China as their greatest threat]], a sentiment that has lasted thousands of years longer than any feelings they've had towards America. This unfortunately resulted in several ugly incidents in the 2010's, such as China's building of artificial islands and oil rigs in waters the Vietnamese dedeemed as theirs, which in turn led to [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Vietnam_anti-China_protests nationalist riots in 2014]] that led to several factories, mostly owned by the Taiwanese, getting looted and destroyed.

Relations in the South were dominated by the South Vietnam President Ngô Đình Diệm's increasingly repressive dictatorship[[labelnote:†]](among many other atrocities great and small, Diệm was a Catholic, and he blatantly favoured his minority group over the Buddhist majority)[[/labelnote]] and the rise of the Viet Cong (officially the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam, which was largely a Southern auxiliary of the PVA). Which led to which (if either) is the subject of much controversy, but they would both go on to terrorize South Vietnam in the latter half of the Fifties. On November 2, 1963, the corrupt and increasingly unpopular President Ngô was overthrown and assassinated with the approval of the CIA.

UsefulNotes/WorldWarI aside, the Indochinese[[note]]"Indochina" here refers to the area of Southeast Asia that is today Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos[[/note]] Wars of the 20th century were the most controversial and divisive conflicts that the Anglosphere had ever been a part of (with the so-called "[[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror War on Terror]]" in the 21st century being the only possible contender, and even that's contentious) and are a close third behind UsefulNotes/{{Algeria}} and UsefulNotes/WorldWarI in the Francosphere. The first war was fought between the armed forces of the newly minted Fourth French Republic and the guerrilla forces of several Indochinese nationalist and socialist groups. Post-independence, the second war was fought by the USA, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, several Southeast-Asian countries and the forces of South Vietnam to prop up the latter's Catholic-led dictatorship as a bulwark against communism (and the Buddhist majority in the region). Against them were arrayed the Soviet- and somewhat Chinese-backed (with some assistance from Cuba and North Korea – it's complicated) forces of the communist dictatorship of North Vietnam, and the National Liberation Front for South Vietnam (better known as the Viet Cong) – a communist guerrilla force operating in South Vietnam. The ''third'' Indochinese war was a series of conflicts from the late 1970s to the end of the UsefulNotes/ColdWar, including a war between Vietnam and anti-Vietnamese factions in Cambodia, and a short "punitive war" started by China against Vietnam followed by a decade-long border skirmish. But first, some simplified background details.