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Why did the USA continue fighting in Vietnam for so long? - Coggle Diagram
Why did the USA continue fighting in Vietnam for so long?
Support (and opposition for the war)
Support
Presidents Nixon, Kennedy, Johnson and Eisenhower had all won lots of popular support in elections by taking a strong anti-Communist stance and promising to fight against the Communist threat around the world.
Oppose
However, reports like the My Lai Massacre led to many ordinary Americans questioning whether the role of the USA in the Vietnam War was right.
US tactics
Operation rolling thunder
The USA dropped 3 million tonnes of bombs in Vietnam - more than all the bombs dropped in Europe during World War Two.
Problems:
The USA hadn’t taken into account how hard it would be to bomb a jungle landscape - it made it hard to spot targets and meant the bombs often fell onto empty jungle.
Search and destroy
When they found the enemy they burned down the entire village, which destroyed the Vietcong base and served as a warning to other villages not to harbour the Vietcong.
Problems:
Search and destroy missions led to the death of civilians and the destruction of their homes. It lost the support of the Vietnamese people who instead supported the Vietcong.
Problems:
American soldiers walking searching for Vietcong. The landscape stopped their tactics working. The average of the US soldiers was 19. They were young and inexperienced.
Vietcong tactics
Tunnels
The Vietcong knew the jungle well, and dug a series of elaborate tunnels to help them to avoid the bombs.
Traps
They were able to use the cover of the jungle to do ‘invisible attacks’ and use hidden traps like punji sticks - sharpened sticks of bamboo which were laid in traps.
Punji trap
The one with the sharpened sticks that stick into your leg when you step in it.
Daisy chain trap
Another trap called the daisy chain would set off a series of grenades.