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Vietcong

Vietcong

The National Front for the Liberation of Southern Vietnam (Vietnamese Mặt Trận Dân Tộc Giải Phóng Miền Nam), also known as the Viet Cong (VC), the National Liberation Front (NLF), and as the Front National de Liberté (FNL), was the primary rebel (partisans) organization fighting the US-backed Republic of Vietnam during the Vietnam War. The NLF claimed that it was a national front of all elements opposed to the existing government, whether communist or not. Its military organization was known as the People's Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF). The PLAF where, according to the official history of the (North) Vietnamese Army, strictly subordinated to the general staff in Hanoi. U.S. soldiers came to refer to the NLF as "Viet Cong", (VC) from the Vietnamese term for Vietnamese Communist (Việt Nam Cộng Sản). American forces typically refered to members of the NLF as "Charlie," which comes from the US Armed Forces' phonetic alphabet's pronunciation of VC ("Victor Charlie").

Organization

The NLF was formally independent of the North Vietnamese armed forces and, being a "front" organization, not all NLF members were Communists. However, as the war with the Americans escalated North Vietnamese personnel increasingly formed the military staff and officer corps of the NLF as well as directly deploying their own forces. PAVN official history refers to the NLF as "part of the PLA". Communist cadre also, from the start, formed the decision-making strata of the organization. American soldiers and the South Vietnam government typically referred to their guerrilla opponents as the "Viet Cong". In classic tactics of partisan warfare NLF aimed to create "liberated zones" within South Vietnam, and the US/ARVN response - big-unit, conventional warfare, was never able to cope with the guerilla infrastructure in the villages. In 1969, the NLF formed a provisional Republic of South Vietnam which took power briefly after the fall of Saigon in 1975 and before the reunification of the country under the leadership of the Communist Party of Vietnam as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in 1976. No non-communists were allowed to take part in the transitory PRG governement. NLF "minister of justice" Truong Nhuu Tang describes how cadres from the north took over the work of his ministry within days of the take-over.

"Viet Cong"

1976 Viet Cong (Việt Cộng) was the general name used by South Vietnamese and allied soldiers in Vietnam, as well as by much of the English language media to refer to the armed insurgents fighting against the Republic of Vietnam during the Vietnam War. The name was derived from a contraction for the Vietnamese phrase Việt Nam Cộng Sản, or "Vietnamese Communist." The primary group covered by the term is the guerrilla army formally named the People's Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF), the military of the National Front for the Liberation of Southern Vietnam (Vietnamese Mặt Trận Giải Phóng Miền Nam Việt Nam) or National Liberation Front (NLF). In areas under its control the NLF also included many non-military cadres, including village chiefs, village clerks, and school teachers. Many consider the term Viet Cong fairly derogatory, although its widespread use in the United States and Europe since the Vietnam War has made the term better known than the proper name of the NLF. This expression originated with and was used by the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) government of South Vietnam under President Ngo Dinh Diem. It was originally a general term used to describe his political opponents, many (but not all) of whom were Communists. Its use became widespread in Vietnam after the 1954 partition of the country between the RVN in the south and the Communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRVN) in the north. The NLF and its guerrilla army, the People's Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF), never used the name "Viet Cong" to refer to themselves, and always asserted that they were a national front of all anti-RVN forces, Communist or not. They received support from the North Vietnamese government and military. Due to the very close ties between the National Liberation Front and the North Vietnamese government, some have alleged that the NLF was a puppet of the North Vietnamese. Indeed, by the end of the war only 25% of Communist forces were part of the Viet Cong, and 75% were North Vietnamese. The NLF, for its part, never denied its ties to Hanoi, but always affirmed that it was an independent organization. In U.S. military usage Viet Cong was the successor term to Viet Minh, which described the forces led by Ho Chi Minh against the French for the independence of Viet Nam in the First Indochina War, from 1945 to 1954; however, unlike the term Viet Minh, which described all of the forces fighting France, Viet Cong specifically referred only to the insurgent forces in South Vietnam. North Vietnam's regular army forces were described as PAVN (People's Army of Vietnam) or simply North Vietnamese Army (Quân đội Bắc Việt). The U.S. military complained that the Viet Cong often appeared to be part of the civilian population, and thus U.S. troops could not tell the difference between the Viet Cong insurgents and peaceful civilians. During the Vietnam War, U.S. stated policy was to treat captured Viet Cong and North Vietnamese regulars as Enemy Prisoners of War under the Geneva Convention of 1949. It was also policy to hand over any and all prisoners to the Southern authorities, which doesn't absolve foreign forces of any responsiblity or war crime.

After The Tet Offensive

During the celebration of Tet in 1968, the Viet Cong broke the US' holiday ceasefire and attacked points all across the country. The US embassy in Saigon fell, and it appeared at first glance that the Viet Cong could attack anywhere with impunity. The Tet Offensive was quickly defeated, however, and the Viet Cong failed to achieve any of their strategic goals or hold any of their brief gains. The military forces of the Viet Cong were more or less routed, and it would never again have a major role to play in combat operations. The public image in the West of the Tet Offensive, however, was that of crushing failure for the US, a military giant humiliated by the Viet Cong. Even though the Viet Cong were militarily finished by the offensive, it was a public relations coup. The Western media saw it as a turning point, and from this point public support for the war in the US quickly turned for the worse. Though in the traditional sense the Viet Cong failed to defeat the US military in a single major vertical confrontation and was itself defeated repeatedly by the US in such conflicts. In 1969, the National Front formed a provisional Republic of South Vietnam which took power briefly after the fall of Saigon in 1975 and before the reunification of the country under the leadership of the Communist Party of Vietnam as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in 1976.

Vietnamese language

Vietnamese (tiếng Việt, or less commonly Việt ngữ), formerly known as Annamite (see Annam), is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of the Vietnamese people (người Việt or người Kinh), who constitute between 88% and 90% of Vietnam's population and of about three million overseas Vietnamese, including more than a million individuals of Vietnamese heritage in the United States. It is also spoken as a second language by some ethnic minorities of Vietnam. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family, of which it has the most speakers by a significant margin (three to four times the number of speakers of Khmer, the second most spoken Austroasiatic language). However, it contains much vocabulary borrowed from Chinese and was originally written using the Chinese writing system. The predominant Vietnamese writing system in use today is an adapted version of the Latin alphabet, though the Chu Nom system, based on Chinese characters, was also formerly employed.

Classification

Vietnamese is generally said to be part of the Viet-Muong (or Vietic) grouping of the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family, a family that also includes Khmer, spoken in Cambodia, as well as various tribal and regional languages, such as the Munda languages, spoken in northeastern India, and others in southern China. Other linguists believe that Viet-Muong is a language isolate.

History

It seems likely that in the distant past Vietnamese shared more characteristics common to other languages in the Austroasiatic family, such as an inflectional morphology and a richer set of consonant clusters, which have subsequently disappeared from the language. However, Vietnamese appears to have been heavily influenced by its location in the Southeast Asian sprachbund—with the result that it has acquired or converged toward characteristics such as isolating morphology and tonogenesis. These characteristics, which may or may not have been part of proto-Austroasiatic, nonetheless have become part of many of the philologically unrelated languages of Southeast Asia—for example, Thai (one of the Tai-Kadai languages), Tsat (a member of the Malayo-Polynesian group within Austronesian), and Vietnamese each developed tones as a phonemic feature, although their respective ancestral languages were not originally tonal. The Vietnamese language has similarities with Cantonese in regard to the specific intonations and unreleased plosive consonant endings, a legacy of archaic Chinese that can also be found in Korean. The ancestor of the Vietnamese language was originally based in the area of the Red River in what is now northern Vietnam, and during the subsequent expansion of the Vietnamese language and people into what is now central and southern Vietnam (through conquest of the ancient nation of Champa and the Khmer people of the Mekong delta in the vicinity of present-day Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City), Vietnamese was linguistically influenced primarily by Indic and Malayo-Polynesian languages at first, until Chinese came to predominate politically toward the middle of the first millennium C.E. With the rise of Chinese political dominance came radical importation of Chinese vocabulary and grammatical influence. As Chinese was, for a prolonged period, the only medium of literature and government, as well as the primary language of the ruling class in Vietnam, much of the Vietnamese lexicon in all realms consists of Hán Việt (Sino-Vietnamese) words. In fact, as the vernacular language of Vietnam gradually grew in prestige toward the beginning of the second millennium, the Vietnamese language was written using Chinese characters (see Chu Nom) adapted to write Vietnamese, in a similar pattern as used in Japan (see kanji), Korea and other countries in the Chinese cultural sphere. The Nôm writing reached its zenith in the 18th century when many Vietnamese writers and poets composed their works in Chữ Nôm, most notably Nguyễn Du and Hồ Xuân Hương (dubbed "the Queen of Nôm poetry"). As contact with the West grew, the Quốc Ngữ system of Romanized writing was developed in the 17th century by Portuguese and other Europeans involved in proselytizing and trade in Vietnam. When France invaded Vietnam in the late 19th century, French gradually replaced Chinese as the official language in education and government. Vietnamese adopted many French terms, such as đầm (dame, from madame), ga (train station, from gare), and va-li (valise). In addition, many Sino-Vietnamese terms were devised for Western ideas imported through the French. However, the Romanized script did not come to predominate until the beginning of the 20th century, when education became widespread and a simpler writing system was found more expedient for teaching and communication with the general population.

Geographic distribution

As the national language of the majority ethnic group, Vietnamese is spoken throughout Vietnam by the Vietnamese people as well as by ethnic minorities. It is also spoken in overseas Vietnamese communities, most notably in the United States, where it has more than one million speakers and is the seventh most-spoken language. According to the Ethnologue, Vietnamese is also spoken in Australia, Cambodia, Canada, China, Côte d'Ivoire, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Laos, Martinique, Netherlands, New Caledonia, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Russia, Senegal, Thailand, United Kingdom, and Vanuatu.

Official status

While spoken for millennia, Vietnamese did not officially become the literatural official language of Vietnam until the 20th century. For most of its history, the entity now known as Vietnam used Chinese for administration. Vietnamese in the form of chữ nôm was used for administrative purposes during the brief Tay Son Dynasty. During French colonialism, French superseded Chinese in administration. It wasn't until independence from France that Vietnamese was used officially. It is the language of instruction in schools and universities and is the language for official businesses.

Dialects

There are various mutually intelligible dialects, the main three being: These dialects differ slightly in tone and pronunciation, although the Huế dialect is more markedly different from the others due to its local vocabulary. The hỏi and ngã tones are distinct in the north but have merged in the south.

Sounds

: For a more detailed description of the Vietnamese sound system (including IPA phonetic notation), see Vietnamese phonology.

Vowels

Like other southeast Asian languages, Vietnamese has a comparatively large number of vowels (nguyên âm) (English also has a large vowel inventory). Below is a vowel chart of the Hanoi variety (i.e., other regions of Viet Nam may have different vowel inventories). All vowels are unrounded except for u, ô, and o. Vowels â and ă are pronounced very short, much shorter than the other vowels. Therefore, ơ and â are basically pronounced the same except that ơ is long while â is short — the same applies to the low vowels a (long) and ă (short). Outside Hanoi, u, ô, o may be back rounded , while ư, ơ, â, a are back unrounded , and i, ê, e, ă are front unrounded . The correspondence between the orthography and pronunciation is rather complicated. For example, the vowel i is also often written as y; both may represent [j], in which case the difference is in the quality of the preceding vowel. For instance, tai "ear" is , while tay "hand/arm" is . In addition to single vowels (or monophthongs), Vietnamese has diphthongs (âm đôi). Three diphthongs consist of a vowel plus â. These are iâ (spelled ia or iê), uâ (spelled ua or uô), and ưâ (spelled ưa or ươ). The other diphthongs consist of a vowel plus semivowel. There are two of these semivowels: y and w. Vietnamese has many diphthongs of this type. Furthermore, these semivowels may also follow the first three diphthongs (iâ, uâ, ưâ ) resulting in triphthongs.

Tones

Vietnamese vowels are all pronounced with an inherent tone (thanh or thanh điệu). Tones differ in:
- pitch
- length
- contour melody
- intensity
- glottality (with or without accompanying constricted vocal cords) Tone is indicated by diacritics written above or below the vowel (most of the tone diacritics appear above the vowel, however, the nặng tone dot diacritic goes below the vowel). The six tones in the northern varieties (including Hanoi) are:

Consonants

The consonants (phụ âm) of the Hanoi variety are listed below in the Vietnamese orthography, except for the bilabial approximant which is written here as "w" (in the writing system it is written the same as the vowels "o" and "u"). Some consonant sounds are written with only one letter (like "p"), other consonant sounds are written with a two-letter digraph (like "ph"), and others are written with more than one letter or digraph (the velar stop is written variously as "c", "k", or "q"). The consonants of the Ho Chi Minh City variety are slightly different from Hanoi (and other northern regions). For instance, "tr" and "ch" represent the same sound in the Hanoi variety, but in Ho Chi Minh City (and other central and southern regions) "tr" and "ch" represent different consonant sounds. Simplified pronunciation guide for Vietnamese consonants at the beginning of syllables Sounds are pronounced as in English except for the following:
- "ph" is like English "f".
- Saigon "v" is like English "y". (Hanoi "v" is the same as English "v".)
- "đ" is like French or Spanish "d".
- "t" is like French or Spanish "t" or like Mandarin "d". (Somewhat like English "d" at the beginning of words.)
- "th" is like Hindi "th" (थ) or like English "t" at the beginning of words.
- "x" is like English "s".
- Hanoi "d" is English "z". Saigon "d" is like English "y".
- "ch" is like English "ch" (never like German "ch").
- "nh" is like Portuguese "nh", Spanish "ñ", or French "gn".
- "c" is like English "k" (and never like English "s" as in "cede").
- "kh" is like German or Scottish "ch" or Persian "kh".
- "g" is like Dutch "g" or Greek or Arabic "gh".
- However, Vietnamese "gi" is like English "z" in Hanoi and like English "y" in Saigon.
- "ng" is like Korean "ng" (ㅇ) or English "ng" (without a "g" at the end)
- Saigon "tr" is like Hindi "ṭ+ṣ" (ट+ष) or like English "ch" with the tongue tip curled backwards. (Hanoi "tr" is the same as English "ch").
- Saigon "s" is like English "sh". (Hanoi "s" is the same as English "s").
- Saigon "q" is like English "w". (Hanoi "q" is the same as English "q").
- Saigon "r" is variously like
- a) French "j" or
- b) Spanish "r" or
- c) Spanish "rr". (Hanoi "r" is the same as English "z"). The guide above does not apply to Vietnamese consonants at the end of syllables.

Grammar

Vietnamese, like many languages in Southeast Asia and Chinese, is an analytic (or isolating) language. As such its grammar highly relies on word order and sentence structure rather than morphology (word changes through inflection). While most European languages would use morphology to express tense Vietnamese uses grammatical particles or syntactic constructions. Vietnamese is often erroneously considered to be a "monosyllabic" language. It is true that Vietnamese has many words that consist of only one syllable; however, most words are indeed bi-syllabic. This is largely because of the many reduplication words that appear in household vocabulary, or adjectives. Vietnamese syntax conforms to the Subject Verb Object word order.

Tense

Past tense is indicated by adding the particle đã, present progressive tense by the particle đang, and future tense is indicated by the particle sẽ.

Topic comment structure

The topic-comment structure is an important sentence type in Vietnamese. Therefore Vietnamese has often been claimed to be a topic-prominent language (Thompson 1991). As an example the sentence "tôi đọc sách này rồi" can be transformed into the following topic prominent equivalent. :Sách này thì tôi đọc rồi.
:book this (TOPICMARKER) I read already
:I already read this book.

Plural

Although it is not usually required, the plural may be indicated by particles like những, các, chúng.

Classifiers

Vietnamese extensively uses a system of classifiers to indicate word classes of nouns. English classifiers, for example, may be (highlighted in bold) one head of cattle or three pieces of cheese. Vietnamese's system and usage of classifiers are similar to Chinese and are more variable than English. Among the most common classifiers are:
- cái : used for most inanimate objects;
- con: usually for animals, but can be used to describe some inanimate objects (con dao = knife, con đường = street, con vít = screw)
- bài: used for compositions like songs, drawings, poems, essays, etc.
- cây: used for stick-like objects (plants, guns, canes, etc.)
- chiếc: objects that are worn or moved by people (chairs, cars, ear rings, ships, shirts, shoes)
- tòa: buildings of authority: courts, halls, "ivory towers".
- quả/trái: used for globular objects (the Earth, fruits)
- quyển/cuốn: used for book-like objects (books, journals, etc.)
- tờ: sheets and other thin objects made of paper (newspaper, paper, calendar etc.)
- việc: an event or an ongoing process The classifier cái has a special role in that it can extend all other classifiers, e.g. cái con, cái chiếc.

Pronouns

Vietnamese pronouns are more accurately forms of address. Its concept is different from that in European languages, so its forms of address do not neatly fall into the grammatical person classifications created by European grammarians. For example, the same word can be used as a first-, second-, or third-person pronoun, depending on the speaker and the audience. The sentence: : Ông đi về nhà. : Grandfather go return home. can be translated as:
- I (your grandfather) go home.
- You (old man/my grandfather) go home.
- He (the old man) goes home. The most common forms of address are kinship terms, which might differ slightly in different regions. Most of them derived from Chinese loanwords, but have acquired the additional grammatical function of being pronouns over the years. When addressing an audience, the speaker must carefully assess the social relationship between him/her and the audience, difference in age, and sex of the audience to choose an appropriate form of address. The following are some kinship terms of address that can be used in the second-person sense (you). They all can also be used in the first-person sense (I), but if they're not marked by (S) the usage is limited to the literal meaning:
- Ông: grandfather, used as a term of respect for a man senior to the speaker and who is late middle age or older
- Bà: grandmother, used as a term of respect for a (usually married) woman senior to the speaker and who is late middle age or older
- Cô: father's sister, used to address a younger woman or a woman as old as one's father.
- Chú: father's younger brother, used to address a younger man or a man slightly younger than one's father.
- Bác: father's older brother, used to address a man slightly older than one's father.
- Anh: older brother, for a slightly older man, or for the man in a romantic relationship. (S)
- Chị: older sister, for a slightly older woman. (S)
- Em: younger sibling, for a slightly younger person, or for the woman in a romantic relationship. (S) Other pronouns in use for the most part conform to the European idea of grammatical person. Some are even gender-neutral and relationship-neutral:
- Tôi: I, (literally servant)
- Hắn: pejorative he
- Ông ta/Ông ấy: he (see above)
- Bà ta/Bà ấy: she (see above)
- Cô ta/Cô ấy: she (see above)
- Anh ta/Anh ấy: he (see above)
- Họ: they
- Nó: it (also he or she, when referring to a subordinate; perhaps also pejorative)
- Chúng ta: we (including audience)
- Chúng tôi: formal I, we (excluding audience)
- Chúng nó: they (pejorative)
- Bả: colloquial, she
- Mày: you singular (to subordinates, or extremely informal)
- Quý vị: you (formal)
- Bạn: friend, you

Reduplication

Reduplication (từ láy) is found abundantly in Vietnamese. They are formed by repeating a part of a word to form new words, altering the meaning of the original word. Its effect is to sometimes either increase or decrease the intensity of the adjective, and is often used as a literary device (like alliteration) in poetry and other compositions, as well as in everyday speech. Examples of reduplication increasing intensity:
- đau → đau điếng: hurt → hurt like hell
- mạnh → mạnh mẽ: strong → very strong
- rực → rực rỡ: flaring → blazing Examples of reduplication decreasing intensity:
- nhẹ → nhè nhẹ: soft → soft (less)
- xinh → xinh xinh: pretty → cute
- đỏ → đo đỏ: red → somewhat red
- xanh → xanh xanh: blue/green → somewhat blue/green Reduplication of this type, indicating diminished intensity, is also present in Mandarin Chinese. A type of assimilation known as tonal harmony is involved in Vietnamese reduplication.

Vocabulary

As a result of a thousand years of Chinese domination, much of Vietnamese vocabulary relating to science and politics are derived from Chinese. As much as 70% of the vocabulary have Chinese roots, although many compound words are Sino-Vietnamese, composed of native Vietnamese words combined with the Chinese borrowings. Reduplication is a regular part of the language that usually denotes intensity. One can usually distinguish between a native Vietnamese word and a Chinese borrowing if it can be reduplicated or its meaning doesn't change when the tone is shifted. As a result of French colonization, Vietnamese also has many loanwords borrowed from the French language. In many cases, these loanwords are limited to the more urbanized areas, such as Ho Chi Minh City. Recently many words are borrowed from English, for example TV (pronounced tivi), phông for font. Sometimes these borrowings are literally translated into Vietnamese (phần mềm for software, lit. soft part).

Writing system

Presently, the written language uses the Vietnamese alphabet (quốc ngữ or "national script," literally "national language," from Chinese 國語 / guoyu), based on the Latin alphabet. Originally a Romanization of Vietnamese, it was codified in the 17th century by a French Jesuit missionary named Alexandre de Rhodes (1591-1660), based on works of earlier Portuguese missionaries (Gaspar de Amaral and Antoine de Barbosa). The use of the script was gradually extended from its initial domain in Christian writing to become more popular among the general public. Under French colonial rule, the script became official and required for all public documents in 1910 by issue of a decree by the French Résident Supérieur of the protectorate of Tonkin. By the late 20th century virtually all writings were done in quốc ngữ. Changes in the script were made by French scholars and administrators, and by conferences held after independence during 1954-1974. The script now reflects a so-called Middle Vietnamese dialect which has vowels and final consonants most similar to northern dialects and initial consonants most similar to southern dialects. (Nguyễn 1996). This Middle Vietnamese is presumably close to the Hanoi variety as spoken sometime after 1600 but before the present. Prior to French rule, the first two Vietnamese writing systems were based on Chinese script:
- the standard ideographic Chinese character set called chữ nho (scholar's characters, 字儒): used to write Literary Chinese
- a complicated variant form known as chữ nôm (southern/vernacular characters, 字喃) with characters not found in the Chinese character set; this system was better adapted to the unique phonetic aspects of Vietnamese which differed from Chinese The authentic Chinese writing, chữ nho, was in more common usage, whereas chữ nôm was used by members of the educated elite (one needs to be able to read chữ nho in order to read chữ nôm). Both scripts have fallen out of common usage in modern Vietnam, and chữ nôm is near-extinct.

Computer support

The Unicode character set contains all Vietnamese characters and Vietnamese currency symbol. On systems that do not support Unicode, many 8-bit Vietnamese codepages are available such as VISCII or CP1258. Where ASCII must be used, Vietnamese letters are often typed using the VIQR convention. There are many software tools that help type true Vietnamese text on US keyboards such as [http://winvnkey.sf.net WinVNKey] on Windows, [http://macvnkey.sf.net MacVNKey] on Macintosh, etc.

Examples

This text is from the first six lines of Truyện Kiều, a poem by the celebrated poet Nguyễn Du, 阮攸 (1765-1820), often considered the most significant work of Vietnamese literature. It was originally written in Nôm (titled 金雲翹), and is widely taught in Vietnam today. :Trăm năm trong cõi người ta, :Chữ tài chữ mệnh khéo là ghét nhau. :Trải qua một cuộc bể dâu, :Những điều trông thấy mà đau đớn lòng. :Lạ gì bỉ sắc tư phong, :Trời xanh quen thói má hồng đánh ghen.

Original Chu Nom version

Image:Kim van kieu chu nom.JPG See also: [http://www.vietthings.com/tho/thovanco/kieu1.htm The first 224 lines (in Vietnamese)] (to see the next lines: click on câu 225 - 416 etc.)

(Literal) English translation

:A hundred years – in this life span on earth :talent and destiny are apt to feud. :You must go through an event in which the sea becomes mulberry fields [bể-dâu] :and watch such things as make you sick at heart. :Is it strange that who is rich in this is poor in that? :Blue Heaven’s wont to strike rosy cheeks from spite.

External links

- [http://vietnamese-language.com.vn/ Learning Vietnamese in Vietnam]
- [http://ngonngu.com/ Linguistics, Vietnamese language and more...]
- [http://www.public.asu.edu/%7Eickpl/reading/collection.htm Online Vietnamese Reading Program] (ASU)
- [http://vdict.com VDict]: Vietnamese online dictionaries
- [http://www.ethnologue.org/show_language.asp?code=VIE Ethnologue report for Vietnamese]
- [http://www.bl.uk/whatson/exhibitions/topicalvietnam.html British Museum Exhibit]: Exhibit of classical Vietnamese, including [http://www.bl.uk/whatson/exhibitions/images/or14844f3.jpg Kim Van Kieu].
- [http://www.de-han.org/vietnam/chuliau/lunsoat/sound/ Introduction to Vietnamese]: Introduction to Vietnamese for Mandarin speakers.
- [http://www.nomfoundation.org/ Nom Foundation]: An organization dedicated to the preservation of the Nom writing.
- [http://www.nomfoundation.org/nomdb/lookup.php Nom look-up]
- [http://www.cjvlang.com/Writing/writviet.html Vietnamese Writing System]: An overview of the Vietnamese writing system.
- [http://www.seasite.niu.edu/vietnamese/VNLanguage/SupportNS/tableofcontent.htm 20 lessons]
- [http://www.anu.edu.au/~u9907217/languages/AAlecture6.html Vietnamese & other related languages]
- Wiktionary in Vietnamese
- Wikibooks in Vietnamese
- Wikisource in Vietnamese

Reference & suggested reading

Pedagogical

- Emeneau, M. B. (1951). Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) grammar. University of California publications in linguistics, (Vol. 8). Berkeley: University of California Press.
- Healy, Dana. (2004). Teach yourself Vietnamese. Teach yourself. Chicago: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-0714-3432-1
- Hoang, Thinh; Nguyen, Xuan Thu; Trinh, Quynh-Tram; (2000). Vietnamese phrasebook, (3rd ed.). Hawthorn, Vic.: Lonely Planet. ISBN 0-8644-2661-5
- Lâm, Lý-duc; Emeneau, M. B.; & Steinen, Diether von den. (1944). An Annamese reader. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley.
- Moore, John. (1994). Colloquial Vietnamese: A complete language course. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-4150-9205-1; ISBN 0-4151-5537-1 (w/ CD); ISBN 0-4150-9207-8 (w/ cassettes);
- Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1967). Read Vietnamese: A graded course in written Vietnamese. Rutland, VT: C.E. Tuttle.

Reference & linguistics

- Dương, Quảng-Hàm. (1941). Việt-nam văn-học sử-yếu [Outline history of Vietnamese literature]. Saigon: Bộ Quốc gia Giáo dục.
- Emeneau, M. B. (1947). Homonyms and puns in Annamese. Language, 23 (3), 239-244.
- Emeneau, M. B. (1951). Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) grammar. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 8). Berkeley: University of California Press.
- Gregerson, Kenneth J. (1969). A study of Middle Vietnamese phonology. Bulletin de la Société des Etudes Indochinoises, 44, 135-193.
- Han, Mieko S. (1966). Vietnamese vowels. Studies in the phonology of Asian languages IV. Los Angeles: Acoustic Phonetics Research Laboratory, University of Southern California.
- Hashimoto, Mantaro. (1978). The current state of Sino-Vietnamese studies. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 6, 1-26.
- Haudricourt, André-Georges. (1949). Origine des particularités de l'alphabet vietnamien. Dân Việt-Nam, 3, 61-68.
- Nguyễn, Đang Liêm. (1970). Vietnamese pronunciation. PALI language texts: Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-8702-2462-X
- Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1955). Quốc-ngữ: The modern writing system in Vietnam. Washington, D. C.: Author.
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- zh-min-nan:Oa̍t-lâm-gí ko:베트남어 ms:Bahasa Vietnam ja:ベトナム語 th:ภาษาเวียดนาม

Republic of Vietnam

South Vietnam, officially the Republic of Vietnam (RVN), Việt Nam Cộng Hòa from 1955, was a country that existed from 1954 to 1975 in the territory of Vietnam that lay south of the Demilitarized Zone while North Vietnam was situated to the north of the DMZ. The partition was made during the Geneva Conference (1954), after the Viet Minh fought successfully to end almost 100 years of French colonialism. After the country was divided, many North Vietnamese, mainly Vietnamese Roman Catholics, fled by U.S propaganda of 'communist persecution' in the north, and came to the south, many of them was taken by the U.S. Navy. The Republic of South Vietnam was proclaimed in Saigon by Ngo Dinh Diem on October 22, 1955, after the Emperor Bao Dai was deposed. The founding of South Vietnam was based on the support of the United States, and the history of the relationship is controversial. Despite its popular reputation for supporting democracy and elections, the U.S. and the Diem government agreed that elections mandated by the Geneva Conference (1954) should never be occur, as Ho Chi Minh was highly popular and any other Vietnamese figure of the time would likely have lost. The dominant political rationale for supporting the South was claimed at the time to have been based in its extreme anti-communist ideology, and a desire to limit the expansion of the North government, which had allied itself with the communist Soviet Union. Under circumstances that remain controversial to this day, conflict steadily escalated to become the Vietnam War. Following American troop withdrawal from the war in 1973, the South Vietnam government continued fighting the Vietnam National Liberation Front (NLF) and North Vietnam, until, overwhelmed by the opposition, it finally surrendered on April 30, 1975, the day of the Fall of Saigon. The NLF took power and established the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam until the unified Socialist Republic of Vietnam was inaugurated on July 2, 1976. __TOC__

Historical debate

There is debate about how closely the South Vietnamese government was linked to the United States — many historians allege the South government to have been nothing more than an American-backed 'puppet government'. But some others claim that it was a genuine democracy or, at the least, a legitimate patriotic movement, born from genuine concern for the Vietnamese people. Any point of view on the matter generally corresponds closely to one's personal views on the Vietnam War in general — supporters of US involvement often believe that South Vietnam was 'worth defending to preclude Communist expansion' and for humanitarian reasons and to 'support freedom and democracy', and thus worthy of defence, while opponents often believe that the South Vietnamese government was not worth defending, based on its alleged corruption or because of the prohibitively high expense of Vietnamese and American lives, and against the presumed 'inevitable' communist victory.

Paris Peace Accords and subsequent U.S. military withdrawal from Vietnam

All of U.S. military forces withdrew from South Vietnam in 1973, in accordance with the Paris Peace Accords signed with North Vietnam in 1973. However, following major victories by the NLF 'Viet Cong' guerrillas in the South, and taking advantage of the Southern government's lack of popular support and subsequent lack of American military aid, North Vietnam broke the treaty in 1973-75 and attacked and invaded South Vietnam, quickly capturing the cities of Hue, Da Nang and Da Lat in central Vietnam in an all-out military offensive supplied from the North and initially made against the central highland city of Ban Me Thuot in March of 1975, and after the subsequent rout of the northern provinces of South Vietnam, advancing southwards very fast. The Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) did mount a significant defense and even a counterattack, but they kept losing ground. South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu requested aid from U.S. President Gerald Ford, but the U.S. Senate would not ratify another involvement in Vietnam, and passed laws to tie the American president's hands against it. Nguyen Van Thieu resigned on April 21, 1975, and fled to Taiwan. He nominated his Vice President Tran Van Huong as his successor. In one week, Tran Van Huong handed over the presidency to General Duong Van Minh, a North Vietnamese 'sympathizer'. The Army of the Republic of Vietnam was unable to sustain the defense of South Vietnam and quickly collapsed, due to limited supplies of everything from food, ammunition and gasoline and due also to poor leadership. Acting President Duong Van Minh unconditionally surrendered the capital city of Saigon and the rest of South Vietnam to North Vietnam on April 30, 1975, the Fall of Saigon.

Politics

South Vietnam went through many political changes during its short life. Initially, the nation was a constitutional monarchy, with Emperor Bao Dai as Head of State. The Vietnamese monarchy was unpopular however, largely because monarchical leaders were considered collaborators during French rule. In 1955 a republican referendum, which was alleged to be rigged due to the active presence of pro-republican military forces at voting booths and the 98% vote in favour of the movement, abolished the monarchy and made Prime Minister Ngo Đinh Diem the country's first president. Despite successes in politics, economics, and social change in the first 5 years, Diem quickly became a dictatorial leader. The South Vietnamese military staged a coup and killed him in 1963. The military held a brief interim government until a civilian administration was installed in 1964. In 1965 the feuding civilian government voluntarily resigned and handed power back to the nation's military, in the hope this would bring stability and unity to the nation. A joint assembly with represenatives of all the branches of the military decided to switch the nation's system of government to a parliamentary system with a strong Prime Minister and a figurehead President. There was a bicameral National Assembly consisting of a Senate and a House of Representatives. Military rule initially failed to provide much stability however, as internal conflicts and political inexperience caused various factions of the army to launch coups and counter-coups against one another, making leadership very tumultuous. The situation stabilized when the reformist Nguyen Cao Ky became Prime Minister and helped fight corruption and political division through often heavy-handed means. In 1967 the nation held its first elections. Following the elections the nation switched back to a presidential system. The military nominated Nguyen Van Thieu as their candidate, and he was elected with a plurality of the popular vote. Thieu quickly consolidated power much to the dismay of those who hoped for an era of more political openess. His 1971 re-election was boycotted by most opposition parties and widely regarded as corrupt, although he received an increase in popular support. Thieu ruled until the final days of the war, resigning in 1975. Duong Van Minh was the nation's last president and surrendered to the Communist forces a few days after assuming office. South Vietnam was a member of the ACCT, Asian Development Bank (ADB), World Bank (IBRD), International Development Association (IDA), International Finance Corporation (IFC), IMF, International Telecommunications Satellite Organization (Intelsat), Interpol, IOC, ITU, League of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (LORCS), UNESCO and Universal Postal Union (UPU).

Army

Main article: Army of the Republic of Vietnam Total Armed Forces were over 1,000,000 in 1971, and U.S. Forces were 525,000 in 1968.

ARVN

On October 26, 1956, the military was reorganized by the administration of President Ngo Dinh Diem who then established the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). Early on, the focus of the army was the guerrilla fighters of the Vietnam National Liberation Front (NLF), a shadow government formed to oppose the Diem administration. The United States, under President John F. Kennedy sent advisors and a great deal of financial support to aid ARVN (pronounced "arvin") in combating the Nationalist insurgents. A major campaign, developed by Ngo Dinh Nhu and later resurrected under another name was the "Strategic Hamlet Program" which was unsuccessful. ARVN and President Diem began to be criticized by the foreign press when the troops were used to crush southern religious groups like the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao as well as to raid Buddhist temples, which Diem claimed were harboring Communist guerrillas. In 1963 Ngo Dinh Diem was killed in a coup d'etat organized by the CIA and carried out by ARVN officers. In the confusion that followed Duong Van Minh took control, but was only the first in a succession of ARVN generals to assume the presidency of South Vietnam. During these years, the United States began taking full control of the war against the NLF and the role of the ARVN became less and less significant. They were also plagued by continuing problems of severe corruption among the officer corps. Although the U.S. was highly critical of them, the ARVN continued to be entirely U.S. armed and funded. The value of the ARVN was highly questionable in this period. In 1963 at the Battle of Ap Bac some 1,400 ARVN troops were defeated by only 350 NLF guerrillas. The battle of Dong Xoai in 1965 was another humiliating ARVN defeat. Although they always outnumbered their nationalist enemies, most were inexperienced, poorly trained and not motivated to fight hard for the generals and politicians behind them. Generals tended to be political appointees and corruption was rampant. Their relations with the civilian population was never good and relations with the U.S. military were often very cold. Starting in 1969 President Richard M. Nixon started the process of "Vietnamization", pulling out American forces and leaving the ARVN to fight the war against the North Vietnamese People's Army (PAVN). Slowly, ARVN began to expand from its counter-insurgency role to become the primary ground defense against the NLF and North Vietnamese. From 1969-1971 there were about 22,000 ARVN combat deaths per year. Starting in 1968, South Vietnam began calling up every available man for service in the ARVN, reaching a strength of a million soldiers by 1972. In 1970 they performed well in Cambodia and were executing 3x as many operations as they had during the American war period. However, the officer corps was still the biggest problem. Leaders were often poorly trained, inept and the equipment continued to sub-standard as the U.S. tried to upgrade ARVN technology. Relations with the public also remained poor as their only counter to NLF organizing was to resurrect the "Strategic Hamlet" program, which the peasants resented. Disapproving Americans called this "barbed wire diplomacy". However, forced to carry the burden left by the Americans, the South Vietnamese army actually started to perform rather well and in 1970 was clearly winning the war against the Communists, though with continued American air support. The exhaustion of the North was becoming evident and the Paris talks gave some hope of a negotiated peace if not a victory. The most crucial moment of truth for the ARVN came with General Vo Nguyen Giap's 1972 "Easter Offensive", the first all-out invasion of South Vietnam by the Communist North. It was code-named "Nguyen Hue" after the historic Vietnamese hero who defeated the Chinese in 1778. The assault combined infantry wave assaults, artillery and the first massive use of tanks by the North Vietnamese. ARVN took heavy losses, but to the surprise of many, managed to hold on and stand their ground. The Communists took Quang Tri province and areas along the Lao and Khmer borders. President Richard Nixon dispatched more bombers to provide air support for ARVN when it seemed that South Vietnam was about to be overrun. In desperation, President Nguyen Van Thieu fired the incompetent General Giai and replaced him with ARVN's best commander, General Ngo Quang Truong. He gave the order that all deserters would be executed and pulled enough forces together so that the North Vietnamese army (PAVN) failed to take Hue. Finally, with considerable U.S. air and naval support, as well as some surprising determination by the ARVN soldiers, the Easter Offensive was halted. ARVN counter-attacked and ultimately succeeded in driving the PAVN out of South Vietnam, though they did retain control of northern Quang Tri province near the DMZ. By 1973 and 1974 the United States had almost completely retreated from Vietnam and ARVN was left to fight alone, though with massive technological support, having roughly 4x as many heavy weapons as their enemies. Nevertheless, American aid was gradually cut off. In 1975, after the end of American involvement, the PAVN again invaded the south. This time, the ARVN collapsed in a total panic. City after city fell to the Communists with ARVN soldiers joining the civilians trying to flee south. The North called this the "Ho Chi Minh Campaign". All resistance crumbled. General Cao Van Vien, ARVN chief of staff, ordered his men to fight to the death, then quickly fled the country. The ARVN tried to defend Xuan Loc, their last chance before Saigon. Even according to the Communists, these men fought very well, but it was not enough. Xuan Loc was taken and on April 30, 1975, initiated the Fall of Saigon the Communists captured the city, placing the NLF flag over the Independence Palace. General Duong Van Minh, recently appointed president by Tran Van Huong, surrendered the city and government bringing the Republic of Vietnam and also the Army of the Republic of Vietnam to a final end.

Presidents of South Vietnam

Ngo Dinh Diem (1955–1963) Duong Van Minh (1963–1964, 1975) Nguyen Khanh (1964) Phan Khac Suu (1964–1965) Nguyen Van Thieu (1965–1975) Tran Van Huong (1975) Huynh Tan Phat (1975–1976)

Provinces

Huynh Tan Phat South Vietnam's capital was Saigon which was renamed Ho Chi Minh City on May 1, 1975. Besides, the country was divided into forty-four provinces (tỉnh, singular and plural):

Geography

The south was divided into coastal lowlands, Dai Truong Son (central mountains) with high plateaus, and the Mekong River Delta.

Economy

Vietnam’s economy evolved under the burden of military actions and political issues. In 1954, the nations of North Vietnam and South Vietnam had developed their own economic structure, reflecting different economic systems with different resources and trading partners. South Vietnam maintained a free-market economy as well established the first Airlines under Chief of State Emperor Bao Dai, named Air Vietnam. The reunification of Vietnam in 1976, led to the imposition of North Vietnam’s centrally planned economy into the South. Vietnam has built its market economy since 1995.

Demographics

About 80% of population was Kinh, and 20% was Chinese, Montagnard, Khmer, Cham, Malay and others. (1970)

Culture

Principal religions were Buddhism, Roman Catholic, Cao Dai, Hoa Hao, animists and others.

Vietnamese culture

Cultural life was strongly flavored by that of China until French domination in the 19th century. At that time, the traditional culture began to acquire an overlay of western characteristics. Many families have three generations living under one roof. It is traditional for a married couple to care for the man’s parents. Also, it is very important to have a son. If there is only one son, he and his wife must live with his parents. If there are no sons, one of the daughters may remain unmarried and care for her parents. To make decisions, children must ask their parents. Vietnamese males and females are not allowed to date. They grow up in their families until age 18 to 20 and marry according to their parents' arrangements. Dating is believed to undermine traditions, encouraging sons and daughters to defy their parents' wishes and bringing shame to their families. Youths who have affections for one another may carry their relationship in secrecy, but eventually yield to their parents' wills. This may mean marrying a complete stranger or someone they do not like. Pleasing their parents is a social priority and doing otherwise would be a major dishonor. However, today Vietnamese males and females are free to date and get married to the one that they love.

External links

- [http://www.chaocovnch.8m.com/anthem1.htm National Anthem of the Republic of Vietnam]
- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/30/newsid_2498000/2498441.stm 1975: Saigon surrenders]
- [http://www.geocities.com/airvietnamairlines/Menu.html Air Vietnam] Vietnam, South Category:Vietnam War ja:ベトナム共和国

Vietnam War

The Vietnam War or Second Indochina War was a conflict between the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRVN, or North Vietnam), allied with the National Liberation Front (NLF, or "Viet Cong") against the Republic of Vietnam (RVN, or South Vietnam), and its allies—notably the United States military in support of the South, with US combat troops involved from shortly after The Korean War until the official withdrawal in 1975. After France's attempted recolonization of Indochina was defeated in 1954 by the Viet Minh at the battle of Dien Bien Phu, an agreement to temporarily partition the country in two with a de-militarized zone (DMZ) was reached at the Geneva Conference (1954). The "Vietnam War" ostensibly began as a civil war between feuding governments. Being Western-oriented and far less popular than Ho, the South Vietnam government fought largely to maintain its governing status within the partitioned entity, rather than to "unify the country" as was the goal of the North. Fighting began in 1957 and with U.S. and Soviet-Chinese involvement would steadily escalate and spill over into the neighboring Indochinese countries of Cambodia and Laos. The Geneva partition was not a natural division of Vietnam and was not intended to create two separate countries. But the South government, with the support of the United States, blocked the Geneva scheduled elections for reunification. In the context of the Cold War, and with the recent Korean War as a precedent, the U.S. had feared that a reunified Vietnam would elect a Communist government under the popular Ho Chi Minh. South Vietnam and its Western allies portrayed the conflict as based in a principled opposure to communism —to deter the expansion of Soviet-based control throughout Southeast Asia, and to set the tone for any likely future superpower conflicts. The North Vietnamese government and its Southern dissident allies (NLF) viewed the war as a struggle to reunite the country and to repel a foreign aggressor —a virtual continuation of the earlier war for independence against the French. After fifteen years of protracted fighting and massive civilian and military casualties, major, direct U.S. involvement ended with the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in 1973. Fighting between Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) forces against the dominant combined People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and NLF forces would soon bring an end to the RVN and the war. With the Northern victory, the country was unified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) with a communist-controlled government based in Hanoi.

Overview

A precise timeline of the Vietnam War is difficult to determine. Some consider the Vietnam War to have been a continuous conflict beginning with the French attempt to reestablish colonial control in 1946 and continuing until the fall of Saigon in 1975. Others divide the conflict into two separate wars, the First Indochina War between the French and the Viet Minh and the Second Indochina War between North Vietnam and South Vietnam and its US allies. Many experts consider the Vietnam War to have just been one front in the larger Cold War. The First Indochina War may be said to have begun in 1946 with the writing of the Vietnamese constitution and to have ended in 1954 with the Geneva Peace Accord. The US involvement in the conflict is less distinct. The United States had supported Vietnamese guerillas against the Japanese during World War II, and provided aid to the French in the early 1950s. A US military presence was established in South Vietnam following the 1954 Peace Accord. As US advisors were drawn into battles between North and South Vietnamese forces the US involvement escalated. Many US citizens view the Vietnam War as beginning with the Gulf of Tonkin Incident in 1964. The Vietnam War Memorial reports American casualties as early as 1957. The ground war was fought in South Vietnam and the border areas of Cambodia and Laos (see Secret War). The air war was fought there and in the strategic bombing (see Operation Rolling Thunder) of North Vietnam. Commando raids or secret operations were conducted by US or South Vietnamese forces in the north but there was never any full-scale ground fighting north of the 17th parallel (For more details of the events during the war, see: Timeline of the Vietnam War.) A coalition of forces fought for South Vietnam, including its army the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (or ARVN), the United States, South Korea, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines. Participation by the South Korean military was financed by the United States, but Australia and New Zealand fully funded their participations. The United Kingdom and Canada did not participate in the war militarily, although a few of their citizens volunteered to join the US forces and Canada led peace talks between the two countries for years. The Spanish government sent a small group of military medical personnel from 1966 to 1971. The North Vietnamese government directed the fighting against that of South Vietnam, using forces including their People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN, better known to the US as the NVA) and the guerrilla forces of the National Liberation Front, better known as the Viet Cong. The USSR provided military and financial aid, along with diplomatic support to the North Vietnamese as did the People's Republic of China. Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and North Korea provided minor assistance through provision of supplies and armor. North Vietnamese pilots and other specialized members of the PAVN often received training in the USSR or in North Korea, as did many of their Southern counterparts in Arizona or Hawaii.

Background

France had gained control of Indochina in a series of colonial wars beginning in the 1840s and lasting until the 1880s. During World War II, Vichy France had collaborated with the occupying Imperial Japanese forces. Vietnam was under effective Imperial Japanese control, as well as de facto Japanese administrative control, although the Vichy French continued to serve as the official administrators until 1944. After the Japanese surrender Vietnamese nationalists hoped to achieve formal independence from France. On September 5, 1945, Ho Chi Minh spoke at a ceremony heralding an independent Vietnam. In his speech he cited the US Declaration of Independence and a band played "The Star Spangled Banner." Minh had hoped that the United States would be an ally of a Vietnamese independence movement based on speeches by U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt against the continuation of European imperialism after World War II. However, the death of Roosevelt; the development of the Cold War; and Ho's Communist sympathies led to U.S. support being given to the French. Communist Indochina had been in the British theater of operations during the war. The French prevailed upon the British to turn control of the region back over to them, setting the stage for the First Indochina War in which France attempted to reestablish Vietnam as part of a French overseas colony. In a gradual process—accelerated by the establishment of the People's Republic of China—the Vietnamese nationalist army, the Viet Minh, gradually wrested control of the country from France. After the Viet Minh's historic victory over the French at the battle of Dien Bien Phu all of Indochina was granted independence, including Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. However, Vietnam was partitioned at the 17th parallel, above which the former Viet Minh established a Communist state and below which an anti-communist state was established under the Emperor Bao Dai. As dictated in the Geneva Accords of 1954 the division was meant to be temporary pending free elections for national leadership. The agreement stipulated that these two military zones, which were separated by the temporary demarcation line, "should not in any way be interpreted as constituting a political or territorial boundary," and specifically stated "general elections shall be held in July 1956." But such elections were not held as Diem, who had not signed the Geneva Accords, refused to hold them. The U.S. supported this move to maintain its Southern ally, also later claiming that Ho had no intention of holding free elections. The majority of Vietnamese were angered that the scheduled elections for the unification of the country never took place. Neither of the two Vietnamese countries signed the election clause in the agreement. The United States, fearing a Communist takeover of the region, supported Ngo Dinh Diem, who had ousted Bao Dai, as leader of South Vietnam while Ho Chi Minh became leader of the North.

The war begins

Ho Chi Minh

NLF (National Liberation Front) in the South

Communist forces initiated guerilla activities in South Vietnam in 1957. Two years later these forces named themselves the National Liberation Front (NLF). Although considered by many to have been composed of northern agents under the control of Hanoi, ostensibly the NLF was an organization of South Vietnamese communists committed to establishing a communist state in South Vietnam. By 1959 the Hanoi government were supplying the NLF via the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a supply route running from North Vietnam through Laos and Cambodia (a violation of neutrality) into South Vietnam. Further supplies were sent by sea to Sihanoukville in Cambodia until that outlet was closed by Lon Nol in 1970. The Ho Chi Minh Trail was steadily expanded to become the vital lifeline for communist forces in South Vietnam, which included the North Vietnamese Army in the 1960s when it became a major target of US air operations. The Diem government was initially able to cope with the insurgency with the aid of US advisors, and by 1962 seemed to be winning. Senior U.S. military leaders were receiving positive reports from the US commander, Gen. Paul D. Harkins of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam. However outside Saigon large areas of the country were not under government control. In 1963 a Communist offensive beginning with the Battle of Ap Bac inflicted major defeats on the South Vietnamese army, while disorganization reigned in the Saigon government.

John F. Kennedy and Vietnam

Battle of Ap Bac In June 1961, John F. Kennedy met with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna, where Khrushchev sought to bully him over key U.S.-Soviet issues. Kennedy left the meeting convinced that the Russians were committed to conflict. This led to the conclusion that Southeast Asia would be an area where Soviet forces would test the USA's commitment to the containment policy. Although Kennedy's election campaign had stressed long-range missile parity with the Soviets, Kennedy was particularly interested in Special Forces. Originally intended for use behind front lines after a conventional invasion of Europe, it was quickly decided to try them out in the "brush fire" war in Vietnam. brush fire The Kennedy administration remained essentially committed to the Cold War foreign policy inherited from the Truman administration. Furthermore in 1961 Kennedy found himself faced with a three-part crisis that seemed very similar to that faced by Truman in 1949–50. 1961 had already seen the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion, the construction of the Berlin Wall, and a negotiated settlement between the pro-Western government of Laos and the Pathet Lao Communist movement. Fearing that another failure on the part of the United States to stop Communist expansion would fatally damage the West's position and his reputation, Kennedy was determined to prevent a Communist victory in Vietnam. The Kennedy administration grew increasingly frustrated with Diem. In 1963 a violent crackdown by Diem's forces against Buddhist monks protesting government policies prompted self-immolation by monks, leading to embarrassing press coverage. The most famous event is the self-burning of Thich Quang Duc to protest the government's violence against Buddhists. Vietnam was a largely Buddhist nation (two-thirds were Buddhist in the Southern half), while Diem and much of his administration were Roman Catholic, and Diem was criticized as being out of touch with his citizens. The U.S. attempted to pressure Diem by asking South Vietnamese generals to act against the excesses. The South Vietnamese military interpreted these messages as tacit U.S. support for a coup d'etat which overthrew and killed Diem on November 1, 1963. Initially the death of Diem made the South more unstable. The new military rulers were politically inexperienced and unable to provide the strong central authority of Diem's rule and a period of coups and countercoups followed. The communists, meanwhile, stepped up their efforts to exploit the vacuum. Kennedy himself was assassinated three weeks after Diem's death, and the newly sworn-in president, former Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, confirmed on November 24 1963, that the United States intended to continue supporting South Vietnam.

The propaganda campaign

The nature and identity of the opposing forces was as always a major political focus of the war. The U.S. depicted a war in which an independent country was fighting international Communist aggression, thus depicting the NLF and even the PAVN as puppet armies. The North Vietnamese portrayed the conflict as one between an imperialist United States and an indigenous South Vietnamese insurgency that was receiving the noncombat support of North Vietnam and its allies. This view presented the South Vietnamese as puppets of the U.S. These conflicting stances influenced early peace talks in which arguments were made over "the shape of the negotiating table," with each side seeking to depict itself as a group of distinct allies opposing a single entity, ignoring the other's "puppet".

Escalation

The U.S. involvement in the war has been described as an escalation. This is typically meant to refer to the incremental increase in forces in response to greater need, rather than an intentional strategy. However a key element was that there was no traditional declaration of war which would have involved a national commitment to using all available means to secure victory. Instead U.S. involvement increased over several years, beginning with the deployment of noncombatant military advisors to the South Vietnamese army, followed by the use of special forces for commando-style operations, followed by the introduction of regular troops for defensive purposes, until regular troops were used in offensive combat. Once U.S. troops were engaged in active combat, escalation meant increasing their numbers. The escalation of the war complicated its ambiguous legal status. The treaty agreements between the U.S. and South Vietnam allowed each escalation to be seen as simply another step in helping an ally resist Communist aggression. This allowed the U.S. Congress to vote appropriations for war operations without requiring the Johnson Administration to meet the Constitutionally mandated requirement that Congress declare war. Successive U.S. administrations also hoped that by limiting its involvement to defending the South only and not directly invading the North, it could support South Vietnam without provoking a major response from China and/or the Soviet Union, as had happened in the Korean War. President Johnson maintained the Kennedy administration's position that South Vietnam's independence was a crucial U.S. defense against Soviet aggression, while at the same time trying to avoid provoking direct participation in the conflict by the Warsaw Pact. The situation caused friction between the US armed services and the civilian authorities in Washington. Military officials such as General William Westmoreland resented the Johnson Administration's restraints on their operations but feared making outspoken policy criticisms lest they suffer the same fate as General Douglas MacArthur who had been dismissed by Truman on such grounds during the Korean War. The relatively slow process of escalation also tended to mute U.S. political debate, since no individual instance of escalation dramatically increased the level of U.S. involvement. However in 1968 the Joint Chiefs of Staff considered increasing the total number of active reserve troops by 200,000, concerned about having roughly a third of U.S. forces committed to one theater of conflict. The Joint Chiefs of Staff asked General Westmoreland, the only military official currently commanding U.S. troops in a conflict to testify to the need to increase. The press portrayed this increase as a need for more troops in Vietnam to reconcile the situation after the Tet Offensive. When this possibility was made public, popular criticism caused the Johnson Administration to abandon the idea. Presidential candidate Richard M. Nixon called for a decrease in U.S. troop levels and by the end of 1969, under his new administration, they were reduced by 60,000 from their wartime peak.

Intervention by the USA

Johnson and the Gulf of Tonkin

Johnson raised the level of U.S. involvement on July 27, 1964, when 5,000 additional U.S. military advisors were ordered to South Vietnam. This brought the total number of U.S. forces in Vietnam to 21,000. On July 31, 1964, the US destroyer USS Maddox was in international waters conducting a reconnaissance mission in the Gulf of Tonkin. Critics of President Johnson have suggested that the purpose of the mission was to provoke a reaction from North Vietnamese coastal defense forces as a pretext for a wider war. North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked the Maddox and in response, with the help of air support from the nearby carrier USS Ticonderoga, she destroyed one of the torpedo boats, damaging two others. The Maddox suffered only superficial damage and retired to South Vietnamese waters where she was joined by USS C. Turner Joy. USS C. Turner Joy On August 3, the Government of the Republic of Vietnam (GVN or South Vietnam) 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 the North Vietnam coast was launched, with Maddox and C. Turner Joy. The latter got radar signals later claimed 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 the ship's own propeller beat". In consequence the U.S. Senate approved the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on 7 August 1964, which gave broad support to President Johnson to escalate U.S. involvement in the war "as the President shall determine". In a televised address Johnson claimed that "the challenge that we face in South-East Asia today is the same challenge that we have faced with courage and that we have met with strength in Greece and Turkey, in Berlin and Korea, in Lebanon and in Cuba." National Security Council members, including Robert McNamara, Dean Rusk, and Maxwell Taylor agreed on November 28, 1964, to recommend that President Johnson adopt a plan for a two-stage escalation of bombing in North Vietnam. With the decision to escalate its involvement in the conflict, The USA's ANZUS Pact allies Australia and New Zealand were pressured to contribute troops and material to the war effort. As a result, in late 1964 the Australian government controversially re-introduced conscription for compulsory military service by eligible males aged 18-25, and many Australian conscripts served alongside US troops.

Operation Rolling Thunder

Operation Rolling Thunder was the code name for bombing raids in North Vietnam conducted by the United States armed forces during the Vietnam War. Its purpose was to destroy the will of the North Vietnamese to fight, to destroy industrial bases and air defenses (SAMs), and to stop the flow of men and supplies down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Starting in March 1965 Operation Rolling Thunder gradually escalated in intensity to force the Communists to negotiate. Although half North Vietnam's bridges were destroyed and many supply depots hit, its Communist allies were always able to resupply it. The two principal areas where supplies came from, Haiphong and the Chinese border, were off limits to aerial attack. Restrictions on the bombing of civilian areas also enabled the North Vietnamese to use them for military purposes, siting anti-aircraft guns on school grounds. In March 1968 Operation Rolling Thunder was suspended after the North agreed to negotiate in the aftermath of the Tet Offensive.

U.S. forces committed

1968 In February 1965 the US base at Pleiku was attacked twice, killing over a dozen US military. This provoked the reprisal air strikes of Operation Flaming Dart in North Vietnam, the first time a US air strike was launched because its forces had been attacked in South Vietnam. That same month the US began independent air strikes in the South. A US HAWK team was sent to Da Nang, a vulnerable airbase if Hanoi intended to bomb it. One result of Operation Flaming Dart was the shipment of anti-aircraft missiles to North Vietnam which began in a few weeks from the Soviet Union. On March 8, 1965, 3,500 United States Marines became the first US combat troops to land in South Vietnam, adding to the 25,000 US military advisers already in place. 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 US 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. On August 18, 1965, Operation Starlite began as the first major US 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. The Viet Cong learned from their defeat and tried to avoid fighting a US-style war from then on. The North Vietnamese committed regular army troops to South Vietnam beginning in late 1964 to use guerilla and regular forces to wear down and destroy the South Vietnamese Army. However some North Vietnamese officials favored an immediate invasion, and a plan was drawn up to use PAVN forces to split South Vietnam in two at the Central Highlands, and then to defeat each half. However in the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley the PAVN was defeated, prompting a return to guerilla tactics. The Pentagon told President Johnson on November 27, 1965, that if planned major sweep operations needed to neutralize Viet Cong forces during the next year were to succeed, the number of US troops in Vietnam needed to be increased from 120,000 to 400,000. By the end of 1965, 184,000 US troops were in Vietnam. In February 1966 there was a meeting between the commander of the US effort, head of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam General William Westmoreland and Johnson in Honolulu. Westmoreland argued that the US presence had prevented a defeat but that more troops were needed to take the offensive, he claimed that an immediate increase could lead to the "crossover point" in Vietcong and NVA casualties being reached in early 1967. Johnson authorized an increase in troop numbers to 429,000 by August 1966. The large increase of troop numbers enabled Westmoreland to carry out numerous search and destroy operations in accordance with his attrition strategy. In January 1966 during Operation Masher/White Wing in Binh Dinh province the US 1st Cavalry Division killed 1,342 Viet Cong by repeatedly marching through the area. The Operation continued under Thayer/Irving until October where a further 1,000 Viet Cong were killed and numerous others wounded and captured. US forces conducted numerous forays into Viet Cong controlled "War Zone C", an area northwest of the densely populated Saigon area and near the Cambodian border, in Operations Birmingham, El Paso, and Attleboro. In 1st Corp Tactical Zone (CTZ) located in the Northern provinces of South Vietnam North Vietnamese conventional forces entered Quang Tri province. Fearing an assault on Quang Tri city might develop, US Marines initiated Operation Hastings which caused the North Vietnamese to retreat over the DMZ. Afterwards, a follow-up operation called Prairie began. "Pacification", or the securing of the South Vietnamese countryside and people, was mostly conducted by the ARVN. However, morale was poor in the South Vietnamese army due to corruption and incompetence of generals and hence little was accomplished in the form of pacification other than high desertion rates. On 12 October 1967, US Secretary of State Dean Rusk stated during a news conference that proposals by the U.S. Congress for peace initiatives were futile because of North Vietnam's opposition. Johnson then held a secret meeting with a group of the nation's most prestigious leaders ("the Wise Men") on November 2 and asked them to suggest ways to unite the US people behind the war effort. Johnson announced on November 17 that, while much remained to be done, "We are inflicting greater losses than we're taking....We are making progress." Following up on this, General William Westmoreland on November 21 told news reporters: "I am absolutely certain that whereas in 1965 the enemy was winning, today he is certainly losing." Nevertheless it was recognized that although the communists were taking a major beating, true victory could not come until the country was pacified. Most of the PNVA operational capability was possible due only to the movement of supplies along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos. In order to threaten this flow of supplies, a firebase was set up just on the Vietnam side of the Laosian border, near the town of Khe Sanh. The US planned to use the base as a launching point for raids against the trail. To the PNVA leaders this looked like a wonderful opportunity to repeat their famous victory at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, and hand the USA a massive defeat. Over the next few months both the PNVA and US Marines added forces to the area, with the Battle of Khe Sanh "officially" starting on January 21st, 1968. Every PNVA attempt to take the base was repulsed with heavy casualties, and even their rear areas were under constant attack by US airpower, including B-52 strikes. When the battle finally petered out in April, the PNVA had lost an estimated 8,000 KIA and many more wounded, while never seriously threatening resupply into the base (an important feature of Dien Bien Phu) due to the US's massive resupply ability and helicopter support. In retrospect it appears the PNVA was using the battle to draw US attention away from other operations being developed, but this position appears difficult to support considering the loss of about one-third of the attacking force KIA alone. B-52

The Tet Offensive

General Westmoreland had asserted that US forces were on the verge of victory, infamously claiming he "could see the light at the end of the tunnel." As a result it was a considerable shock to public opinion when on January 30, 1968 NLF and NVA forces broke the Tet truce and mounted the Tet Offensive (named after Tet Nguyen Dan, the lunar new year festival which is the most important Vietnamese holiday) in South Vietnam attacking nearly every major city in South Vietnam. The goal of the attacks was to ignite an uprising among the Vietnamese people which would result in the overthrow of the South Vietnamese government and withdrawal of US forces. To the contrary, no such uprising occurred and it drove some previously apathetic Vietnamese to fight with the RVN government. Attacks everywhere were shortly repulsed except in Saigon where the fighting lasted for three days and in Hue for a month. During the temporary communist occupation of Hue, 2,800 Vietnamese were killed by the Viet Cong in what was the worst single massacre during the war (see Massacre at Hue). Although the Communists' military objectives had not been achieved, the propaganda effect was considerable and had a profound impact on public opinion. Many US citizens felt that the government was misleading them about a war without a clear 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.

Tet aftermath

Soon after Tet, Westmoreland was replaced by his deputy, General Creighton W. Abrams. Abrams pursued a very different approach than Westmoreland's, favoring more openness with the media, less indiscriminate use of air strikes and heavy artillery, elimination of body count as the key indicator of battlefield success, and more meaningful cooperation with ARVN forces. His strategy, although yielding positive results, came too late to influence U.S. public opinion. 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, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announced what became known as the October surprise when he ordered a complete cessation of "all air, naval, and artillery bombardment of North Vietnam" effective November 1. Peace talks eventually broke down, however, and one year later, on November 3, 1969, then President Richard M. Nixon addressed the nation on television and radio asking the "silent majority" to join him in solidarity on the Vietnam War effort and to support his policies. The credibility of the government suffered when The New York Times, and later The Washington Post and other newspapers, published The Pentagon Papers. This top-secret historical study of Vietnam, contracted by Robert McNamara (the Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and Johnson,) presented a pessimistic view of victory in the Vietnam War and generated additional criticism of U.S. policy.

Opposition to the war

Robert McNamara, which became a symbol of the international movement against U.S. involvement in Vietnam. (© Nick Ut/The Associated Press)]] Small-scale opposition to the war began in 1964 on 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. Protests against the draft began on October 15 1965, when 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 first draft lottery since World War II in the United States was held on 1 December 1969, and was met with large protests and a great deal of controversy; statistical analysis indicated that the methodology of the lotteries unintentionally disadvantaged men with late year birthdays. [http://www.amstat.org/publications/jse/v5n2/datasets.starr.html] This issue was treated at length in a 4 January 1970, New York Times article titled "Statisticians Charge Draft Lottery Was Not Random". U.S. public opinion became polarized by 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 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. Some anti-war activists were themselves Vietnam Veterans, as evidenced by the organization Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Some of the US citizens opposed to the Vietnam War, as for instance Jane Fonda, stressed their support for ordinary Vietnamese civilians struck by a war beyond their influence. President Johnson's undersecretary of state, George Ball, was one of the lone voices in his administration advising against war in Vietnam. The growing anti-war movement alarmed many in the U.S. government. On August 16, 1966 the House Un-American Activities Committee began investigations of US citizens who were suspected of aiding the NLF. Anti-war demonstrators disrupted the meeting and 50 were arrested. House Un-American Activities Committee]] On 1 February 1968, a suspected NLF officer was captured near the site of a ditch holding the bodies of as many as 34 police and their relatives, bound and shot, some of whom were the families of General Nguyen Ngoc Loan's deputy and close friend. General Loan, a South Vietnamese National Police Chief, summarily shot the suspect in the head on a public street in front of journalists. The execution was filmed and photographed and provided another iconic image that helped sway public opinion in the United States against the war. In Australia, resistance to the war was at first very limited, although the Australian Labor Party (in opposition for most of the period) steadfastly opposed conscription. However anti-war sentiment escalated rapidly in the late 1960s as more and more Australian conscripts were killed in battle. Growing public unease about the death toll was fuelled by a series of highly-publicised arrests of conscientious objectors, and exacerbated by the shocking revelations of atrocities against Vietnamese civilians, leading to a rapid increase in domestic opposition to the war between 1967 and 1970. The Moratorium marches, held in major Australian cities to coincide with the marches in the USA, were among the largest public gatherings ever seen in Australia up to that time, with over 200,000 people taking to the streets in Melbourne alone. On 15 October 1969, hundreds of thousands of people took part in National Moratorium antiwar demonstrations across the United States. A second round of "Moratorium" demonstrations was held on November 15. On April 22, 1971, John Kerry became the first Vietnam veteran to testify before Congress about the war, when he appeared before a Senate committee hearing on proposals relating to ending the war. He spoke for nearly two hours with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in what has been named the Fulbright Hearing, after the Chairman of the proceedings, Senator J. William Fulbright. Kerry presented the conclusions of the Winter Soldier Investigation, where veterans had described personally committing or witnessing war crimes. In 1968, President Lyndon B.. Johnson began his reelection campaign. A member of his own party, Eugene McCarthy, ran against him for the nomination on an

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Intervention by the USA

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U.S. forces committed

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