ENTER THE CAVALRY

The Americans saw France 's colonial war in Indochina as an important part of a worldwide struggle against communist expansion. Vietnam was the next domino and could not topple. In 1950, the US Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) rocked into Vietnam, ostensibly to instruct local troops in the efficiency of US firepower; there would be American soldiers on Vietnamese soil for the next 25 years, first as advisers, and then the main force. By 1954 US military aid to the French topped US$2 billion. A decisive turning point in US strategy came with the August 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Incident. Two US destroyers, the Maddox and the Turner Joy , claimed to have come under 'unprovoked* attack while sailing off the North Vietnamese coast. Subsequent research indicates that there was plenty of provocation; the first attack took place while the Maddox was in North Vietnamese waters assisting a secret South Vietnamese commando raid and the second one never happened.However , on US President Johnson's orders, 64 sorties rained bombs on the North - the first of thousands of such missions that would hit every single road and rail bridge in the country, as well as 4000 of North Vietnam's 5788 villages. Two US aircraft were lost and Lieutenant Everett Alvarez became the first American prisoner of war (POW) of the conflict; he would remain in captivity for eight years. A few days later, an indignant (and misled) US Congress overwhelmingly passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which gave the president the power to 'take all necessary measures' to 'repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression *. Until its repeal in 1970, the resolution was treated by US presidents as carte blanch to do whatever they chose in Vietnam without any congressional control. As the military situation of the Saigon government reached a new nadir, the first US combat troops splashed ashore at Danang in March 1965. By December 1965 there were 184,300 US military personnel in Vietnam and 636 Americans had died. By December 1967 the figures had risen to 485,600 US soldiers in country and 16.021 dead. There were 1.3 million men fighting for the Saigon government, including the South Vietnamese and other allies. By 1966 the buzz words in Washington were 'pacification ', 'search and de­stroy ' and 'free-fire zones '. Pacification involved developing a pro-government civilian infrastructure in each village, and providing the soldiers to guard it. To protect the villages from VC raids, mobile search-and-destroy units of soldiers moved around the country " hunting VC guerrillas. In some cas s, villagers were evacuated so the Americans could use heavy weaponry such as napalm and tanks in areas that were declared free-fire zones. These strategies were only partially successful: US forces could control the countryside by day, while the VC usually controlled it by night. Even without heavy weapons, VC guerrillas continued to inflict heavy casualties in ambushes and by using mines and booby traps. Although free-fire zones were supposed to prevent civilian casualties, plenty of villagers were nevertheless shelled, bomb ed, strafed or napalmed to death - their surviving relatives soon signed up to join

NIXON & HIS DOCTRINE

Richard Nixon was elected president in part because of a promise that he had a 'secret plan' to end the war. The Nixon Doctrine, as it was called, was unveiled in July 1969 and it called on Asian nations to be more 'self-reliant ' in defiance matters. Nixon 's strategy called for 'Vietnamisation', which meant making the South Vietnamese fight the war without US troops. More recently , it's been dusted off for Iraq, but no-one has yet referred to it as the Bush Doctrine. Even with the election of Tricky Dickeys ', the first half of 1969 saw yet greater escalation of the conflict. In April the number of US soldiers in Viet­nam reached an all-time high of 543,400. While the fighting raged, Nixon's chief negotiator . Henry Kissinger, pursued peace talks in Paris with his North Vietnamese counterpart Le Duc Tho. In 1969 the Americans began secretly bombing Cambodia in an attempt to flush out Vietnamese communist sanctuaries across the border. Given the choice between facing US troops and pushing deeper into Cambodia, they fled west. In 1970 US ground forces were sent into Cambodia to extricate ARVN units, whose combat ability was still unable to match the enemy's. The North Vietnamese moved deep er into Cambodian territory and together with their Khmer Rouge allies controlled half of the country by the summer of 1970, including the world-famous temples of Angkor. This new escalation provoked yet more bitter anti-war protests. A peace demonstration at Kent State University in Ohio resulted in four protesters being shot dead by National Guard troops. The rise of organizations such as Vietnam Veterans Against the War demonstrated that it wasn't just 'cowardly students fearing military conscription ' who wanted the USA out of Vietnam. It was clear that the war was tearing America apart. In the spring of 1972 the North Vietnamese launched an offensive across the 17th Parallel; the USA responded with increased bombing of the North and by laying mines in North Vietnam 's harbours. The 'Christmas bomb­ing ' of Haiphong and Hanoi at the end of 1972 was meant to wrest conces­sions from North Vietnam at the negotiating table. Eventually, the Paris Peace Accords were signed by the USA, North Vietnam, South Vietnam and the VC on 27 January 1973, which provided for a cease-fire, the total withdrawal of US combat forces and the release of 590 American POWs. The agreement failed to mention the 200,000 North Vietnamese troops still in South Vietnam. In total, 3.14 million Americans (including 7200 women) served in the US armed forces in Vietnam during the war. Officially, 58,183Americans were killed in action or are listed as missing in act ion (MIA). Pentagon figures indicate that by 1972.3689 fixed-wing aircraft and 4857 helicopters had been lost and 15 million tones of ammunition had been expended. The direct cost of the war was officially put at US$165 billion, though its real cost to the economy was double that or more. By the end of 1973, 223,748 South Vietnamese soldiers had been killed in action; North Vietnamese and VC fatalities have been estimated at one million. Approximately four million civilians (or 10% of the Vietnamese population) were injured or kited during the war. many of them as a direct result of US bombing in the North. At least 300,000 Vietnamese and 2200 Americans are still listed as MIA or 'Missing in Action '. US teams continue to search Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia for the remains of their fallen com­rades. In more recent years, the Vietnamese have been searching for their own MIAs in Cambodia and Laos. Individual family members often use mediums to try and locate the remains of their loved ones.