Canceled.LTroll.27
Banned
In Vietnam as the South Vietnamese government weakened the USA, under President Kennedy, increased its intervention. By 1961 US military "advisors" were murdering Vietnamese workers.
In 1963 so-called South Vietnamese "president" Diem was assassinated in a USA backed coup aimed at winning wider popular support for their puppet South Vietnamese regime. But this did not help prop up the rotten South Vietnamese state. Increasingly the USA was forced towards direct military involvement to prevent the Vietcong from liberating the nation.
But in order to do this the USA government needed to first trump up popular support. This it did in August 1964 by pretending that USA ships in the Gulf of Tonkin had been attacked by the North Vietnamese. On the basis of this lie the USA Congress passed a resolution allowing military action to be taken against North Vietnam.
By 1965 North Vietnam was being systematically bombed by the USA and in May 1965 the first USA combat division was in Vietnam. Very soon over 400.000 USA troops were in Vietnam, as USA President Johnson said in July 1965 "this is real war". During this period the new South Vietnamese puppet "president" Ky consolidated military rule.
Although the Vietnam war not on the same scale as a world war it was a very large colonial war which rapidly began to involve tens of thousands of USA youth in the fighting. At first the majority of USA people supported the imperiliast intervention. But the actual experience of war soon began to undermine that support.
The middle and late 1960s saw the USA army make determined effort, to smash the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) units that were involved in the fighting. However the January 1968 "Tet" offensive by the Vietcong and NVA showed that the USA had failed to crush their resistance.
This was not surprising. The USA army was fighting for the continued foreign domination of the country, support for a military regime (by then led by criminal Generals Thieu and Ky) and protection of the landowners and capitalists. Against this the Vietcong and NVA were struggling for independence, the distribution of land to the peasants, the removal of the capitalists, social reforms and an increase in living standards.
After the "Tet" offensive, it began to become clear to many Americans, especially the soldiers, that the USA could not hope to win this war. Later 1968 saw the first round of talks between the USA and North Vietnam, which however led to nothing.
As the numbers of USA dead and wounded increased opposition to the war grew inside the USA.
A great drop in support had already forced Johnson to announce his decision not to be a candidate in the 1968 USA Presidential election. The Republican Nixon with the promise to "end the war" won this election. Although Nixon supported the aims of the war, indeed he was USA Vice-President in the 1950s when USA intervention began, he saw how growing domestic opposition to the war had fatally undermined Johnson's presidency. This led Nixon in September 1969 to announce the new policy of "Vietnamization", i.e. for the USA to pay for South Vietnamese soldiers to do the actual fighting on the ground.
This policy was also the result of the growing demoralization of the USA army itself. More and more soldiers could not see the point in fighting in a war which meant nothing to them and which they could not win. On the one hand there was a large increase in the numbers of USA youth leaving the USA to avoid being drafted into the army or actually deserting.
But even worse from the USA generals' point of view were the increasing signs of demoralisation and rebellion within the army itself. These became stronger after the Tet offensive and the loss of many lives in useless battles like that of Hamburger Hill in May 1969. Drug taking and drunkenness became widespread through the USA army in Vietnam. Attempts by rank and file USA soldiers to kill officers ("fragging", throwing a fragmentation hand grenade into an officer's tent!) became widespread, in 1970 alone there were officially 271 of these attacks. Units would refuse to go into battle. One USA general called the USA army the "most demoralized army in history". If it were not for the fact that the conscript soldiers only spent a relatively short period of time in Vietnam then the mutinies would have been more widespread.
By the end of the 1960s the USA showed all the signs of a society moving towards revolution. The ruling class was openly split. The middle class, shown especially among the students, was being radicalized. The working class, especially the Black workers and youth, were beginning to become active. Finally the army was demoralized and the rank and file soldiers opposed to both their officers and the government. Tragically the absence of a Marxist tendency within this campaign meant that the possibility, at that time, of building a socialist movement out of the anti-war struggle and moving towards the overthrow of capitalism in the strongest imperialist power was lost.
In reality it was ultimately the crisis situation within both the USA and the USA army that defeated USA imperialism. Of course without the heroic resistance of the Vietnamese people over three decades this crisis would not have developed.
Unlike the early pre-Stalinist days of the Russian revolution the Vietnamese leadership made no serious attempt to mobilise international working class support both against imperialist intervention and for the worldwide struggle for socialism.
The demoralizing effect of Vietnam on the USA army was so severe that after they lost the war the USA generals were forced to in effect disband their conscript army.
But today the USA army is a force of economic conscripts, soldiers from working class families who join in search of a job or free training. This means that the enthusiasm of today's USA army for any long war is as limited as that of the soldiers who were defeated in Vietnam.
Now the Muslim fighters of Iraq and Afghanistan are again defeating the USA Pentagon.
In 1963 so-called South Vietnamese "president" Diem was assassinated in a USA backed coup aimed at winning wider popular support for their puppet South Vietnamese regime. But this did not help prop up the rotten South Vietnamese state. Increasingly the USA was forced towards direct military involvement to prevent the Vietcong from liberating the nation.
But in order to do this the USA government needed to first trump up popular support. This it did in August 1964 by pretending that USA ships in the Gulf of Tonkin had been attacked by the North Vietnamese. On the basis of this lie the USA Congress passed a resolution allowing military action to be taken against North Vietnam.
By 1965 North Vietnam was being systematically bombed by the USA and in May 1965 the first USA combat division was in Vietnam. Very soon over 400.000 USA troops were in Vietnam, as USA President Johnson said in July 1965 "this is real war". During this period the new South Vietnamese puppet "president" Ky consolidated military rule.
Although the Vietnam war not on the same scale as a world war it was a very large colonial war which rapidly began to involve tens of thousands of USA youth in the fighting. At first the majority of USA people supported the imperiliast intervention. But the actual experience of war soon began to undermine that support.
The middle and late 1960s saw the USA army make determined effort, to smash the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) units that were involved in the fighting. However the January 1968 "Tet" offensive by the Vietcong and NVA showed that the USA had failed to crush their resistance.
This was not surprising. The USA army was fighting for the continued foreign domination of the country, support for a military regime (by then led by criminal Generals Thieu and Ky) and protection of the landowners and capitalists. Against this the Vietcong and NVA were struggling for independence, the distribution of land to the peasants, the removal of the capitalists, social reforms and an increase in living standards.
After the "Tet" offensive, it began to become clear to many Americans, especially the soldiers, that the USA could not hope to win this war. Later 1968 saw the first round of talks between the USA and North Vietnam, which however led to nothing.
As the numbers of USA dead and wounded increased opposition to the war grew inside the USA.
A great drop in support had already forced Johnson to announce his decision not to be a candidate in the 1968 USA Presidential election. The Republican Nixon with the promise to "end the war" won this election. Although Nixon supported the aims of the war, indeed he was USA Vice-President in the 1950s when USA intervention began, he saw how growing domestic opposition to the war had fatally undermined Johnson's presidency. This led Nixon in September 1969 to announce the new policy of "Vietnamization", i.e. for the USA to pay for South Vietnamese soldiers to do the actual fighting on the ground.
This policy was also the result of the growing demoralization of the USA army itself. More and more soldiers could not see the point in fighting in a war which meant nothing to them and which they could not win. On the one hand there was a large increase in the numbers of USA youth leaving the USA to avoid being drafted into the army or actually deserting.
But even worse from the USA generals' point of view were the increasing signs of demoralisation and rebellion within the army itself. These became stronger after the Tet offensive and the loss of many lives in useless battles like that of Hamburger Hill in May 1969. Drug taking and drunkenness became widespread through the USA army in Vietnam. Attempts by rank and file USA soldiers to kill officers ("fragging", throwing a fragmentation hand grenade into an officer's tent!) became widespread, in 1970 alone there were officially 271 of these attacks. Units would refuse to go into battle. One USA general called the USA army the "most demoralized army in history". If it were not for the fact that the conscript soldiers only spent a relatively short period of time in Vietnam then the mutinies would have been more widespread.
By the end of the 1960s the USA showed all the signs of a society moving towards revolution. The ruling class was openly split. The middle class, shown especially among the students, was being radicalized. The working class, especially the Black workers and youth, were beginning to become active. Finally the army was demoralized and the rank and file soldiers opposed to both their officers and the government. Tragically the absence of a Marxist tendency within this campaign meant that the possibility, at that time, of building a socialist movement out of the anti-war struggle and moving towards the overthrow of capitalism in the strongest imperialist power was lost.
In reality it was ultimately the crisis situation within both the USA and the USA army that defeated USA imperialism. Of course without the heroic resistance of the Vietnamese people over three decades this crisis would not have developed.
Unlike the early pre-Stalinist days of the Russian revolution the Vietnamese leadership made no serious attempt to mobilise international working class support both against imperialist intervention and for the worldwide struggle for socialism.
The demoralizing effect of Vietnam on the USA army was so severe that after they lost the war the USA generals were forced to in effect disband their conscript army.
But today the USA army is a force of economic conscripts, soldiers from working class families who join in search of a job or free training. This means that the enthusiasm of today's USA army for any long war is as limited as that of the soldiers who were defeated in Vietnam.
Now the Muslim fighters of Iraq and Afghanistan are again defeating the USA Pentagon.