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I agree with one part of Wolf's assessment of the Vietnam War. His statement, "U.S. forces soundly beat the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong in virtually every large-scale encounter" was probably correct.

Unfortunately, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong weren't polite enough to make the war a series of large-scale tests of military might. In a guerrilla war, our tanks and bombs were no match for booby-trapped bicycles and snipers in trees.

Wolf's claim that Vietnam only won at the Paris peace talks and in a propaganda war on college campuses is simply an attempt to rewrite history, Rambo-style.

If we succumb to the dangerous temptation to look back upon our involvement in that war as anything but a grueling defeat, we are all the more likely to repeat the mistakes of our recent past.

PAUL KORETZ

West Hollywood

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I agree with one part of Wolf's assessment of the Vietnam War. His statement, "U.S. forces soundly beat the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong in virtually every large-scale encounter" was probably correct. Unfortunately, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong weren't polite enough to make the war a series of large-scale tests of military might.

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Re "Curtis LeMay Was Right About Vietnam," Commentary, May 30: Gen. LeMay had a theory that more bombing would have ended the Vietnam War sooner. (But what about their civil war?) I have a theory...

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in this speech the president discussed the many questions that Americans had at the time. He  explained why/ how the United states got involved in the war. He answered all questions people had and explained the reasoning for everything that happened during that time

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It has been 30 years since the end of the Vietnam War, and the country once known for strife and crushing poverty has emerged as one of the fastest-growing economies in the world.

Foreign investors flooded into Vietnam in the early 1990's, betting that the communist nation's "doi moi" economic reforms could make it the next Asian tiger economy. But by the late 1990's, the investors were pulling out almost as fast as they had come in. Doi moi, which means "renewal", was seen as too slow moving, and investors turned their attention to neighboring China.

Yet, in the past five years, Vietnam's cautious policy on reforms has quietly yielded results. Annual GDP growth has averaged nearly 7 percent a year. Poverty, which once plagued two-thirds of the population, has been cut in half. Average income for Vietnamese has doubled in the last 10 years.

Klaus Rohland, country representative for the World Bank, says those numbers are impressive by any standard.

"Vietnam is a major success story. As of 1992 until now, they have grown on average, by more than 6 percent," he said. "Last year they grew by like 7.5, 7.8 percent. And that is way above average growth. And it's probably, with the exception of China, the best performing economy in the world.

For all its success, Vietnam remains a poor country. Average income may have doubled, but it is still only about $600 a year - far behind wealthier neighbors like Thailand and Malaysia. Still, the mood is optimistic.

In Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, the sound of construction has become almost constant. Property prices have jumped by more than half in the past three years, as just about everyone seems to be renovating houses and building new office buildings. Real estate experts say office space in Ho Chi Minh City now costs the same as in suburban Tokyo or Paris.

Much of Vietnam's newfound prosperity comes from commodities exports like oil and agricultural products. The International Monetary Fund says Vietnam is the world's largest pepper exporter, and the second-largest exporter of rice, coffee and cocoa. Tourist arrivals reached three million visitors last year. That is only about a quarter of the tourists that Thailand welcomes, but is still up 50 percent from just three years previously. Nguyen Thanh Huong runs a souvenir shop in Hanoi's busy Hang Gai Street.

"Around late winter and early spring, there are many tourists Vietnam. Business is very good and I have a lot of customers," he said.

Economists say Vietnam still has a long way to go before its economy can match its more developed neighbors. Its expected entry into the World Trade Organization later this year could help. But first the government must further reform its banking and investment sectors - which now lend most of their funds to money-losing state-owned companies instead of private entrepreneurs.

Still, even foreign investors are beginning to regain confidence in Vietnam. This year's foreign direct investment is up by 30 percent. As the Communist Party touts its 30-year-old victory in the Vietnam War this week, Vietnam's economy gives the country something else to celebrate.

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голос америки

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Vietnam Enjoying Economic Recovery 30 Years After War

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It has been 30 years since the end of the Vietnam War, and the country once known for strife and crushing poverty has emerged as one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. Foreign investors flooded into Vietnam in the early 1990's, betting that the communist nation's "doi moi" economic reforms could make it the next Asian tiger economy.

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an article on the impact the war had on the soldiers

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an article on the impact the war had on the soldiers

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American veterans - The Vietnam War and Its Impact

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Economic Policy and Theory, Elitism, Embargoes and Sanctions, Environmental Diplomacy, Exceptionalism, Extraterritoriality, Foreign Aid, Freedom of the Seas, Gender, Globalization, etc...

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in this picture you can see the statue of liberty lighting a Vietnamese house on fire. from this you can see that the war was basically the United States ruining innocent peoples houses during the war.

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in this picture you can see a soldier walking up the stairs holding a sign that says "escalate there is no substitute for victory." and at the bottom of the stairs there is a person holding a sign that says "repent Asia is none of our business." so from this picture you can see that the people were protesting against the war while the armies kept going forward.

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Vietnam '67

Lubbock, Tex. - By the beginning of 1967, there were 490,000 American troops in South Vietnam - along with some 850,000 from South Vietnam, South Korea and other allies - and America's civilian and military leaders were starting to think big. This, they believed, would be the year to crush both the southerners fighting as the Viet Cong and their North Vietnamese allies, who had infiltrated the south.

Doing so, though, would require enormous multidivisional operations involving all branches of the military. Already by the end of 1966, they had begun planning for the "era of big battles," and specifically for operations designed to eradicate the enemy from around the South Vietnamese capital, Saigon. In the months to follow, those plans would involve hundreds of thousands of soldiers, lead to the deaths of thousands on both sides, and bring simmering doubts about the war effort to a boil.

In December 1966, intelligence reports indicated that large units of both Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops were garrisoned in an area about 12 miles northwest of Saigon known as the "Iron Triangle," bordered by the Saigon River on the southwest leg, the Thi Tinh River to the east and a line between the villages of Ben Suc and Ben Cat to the north. Gen. Jonathan O. Seaman, who commanded the 100,000-man II Field Force, described the Iron Triangle as a "dagger" aimed at the South Vietnamese capital. The very existence of the Republic of South Vietnam was at risk. But if the Iron Triangle could be destroyed by a major operation, the Americans and their allies could gain the offensive initiative and begin to drive the Communists out of the country.

That operation, Junction City, was set to begin in early January 1967. But there was significant concern among the military leadership that such a large effort required considerably more planning than could be done in a few weeks, and that a better option would be to first unleash a more regional operation - still large in scope, but aimed at specific, vulnerable Viet Cong regiments, as well as the headquarters of the Viet Cong's Military Region IV, which intelligence reports indicated were located within the Iron Triangle.

This relatively smaller, more focused operation, called Cedar Falls, began on Jan. 8. It followed a so-called hammer and anvil plan: American and South Vietnamese units would be inserted to the north as "hammers" that would drive the enemy into an "anvil" created by elements of the First and 25th Infantry Divisions.

Image

Bamboo huts in flames in Ben Suc, a Viet Cong-controlled village, in January 1967. Credit Bettmann, via Getty Images

At 8 a.m. on Jan. 8, 60 UH-1 "Huey" helicopters, flying in a V formation, approached Ben Suc, a Viet Cong-controlled village. It was to be the first target for the "hammer." Small-arms fire erupted against the invading infantry soldiers, but within a few hours, Ben Suc was under American control, and South Vietnamese troops were brought in to interrogate all men between the ages of 15 and 45. At the end of the first day, 106 had been screened; 28 were determined to be Viet Cong. Soldiers also discovered, beneath the village, a network of Viet Cong tunnels.

The bigger challenge, though, was what to do about the remaining villagers - because the American commanders had decided to raze Ben Suc, rather than let it return to enemy hands (an effort the journalist Jonathan Schell later described in his book " The Village of Ben Suc "). In the end, 582 men, 1,651 women and 3,754 children were relocated, along with 247 water buffalo, 225 cows and 60 tons of rice. When they were gone, the commanders ordered a large hole dug in the center of the village, and 10,000 pounds of explosives were detonated to destroy both the village and the tunnels beneath it.

In an instant, Ben Suc no longer existed. This sort of search-and-destroy mission, and the subsequent relocation of noncombatants, would become routine in 1967, as America and its South Vietnamese allies sought to control the hamlets and villages of South Vietnam.

Subsequent operations over the next 20 days resulted in a "body count" of 750 Viet Cong and 280 prisoners (out of 30,000 American and South Vietnamese soldiers in the operation, 72 Americans and 11 South Vietnamese were killed). But the most significant achievement, according to military sources, was the confirmation of the existence of a huge labyrinth of tunnels northwest of Saigon that would become the elusive target of allied forces for the next six years. In future operations, legs of this tunnel complex would even be discovered directly under the 25th Infantry Division's huge base camp at Cu Chi. These tunnels would also become the headquarters for the planning of the Tet offensive, which would be launched in January 1968, just 12 months later.

Still, these results, especially the body counts, weren't enough for Allied commanders, who expected that search-and-destroy missions like the one at Ben Suc would kill or capture enough enemy troops to blunt the Iron Triangle. Thus another huge operation had to follow almost immediately, this one carrying the original name of Operation Junction City.

If Operation Cedar Falls was a hammer and anvil, Operation Junction City was more of a "horseshoe." More than 25,000 friendly troops would engage the enemy forces by creating a huge inverted U-shape position in the area north of the Iron Triangle known as War Zone C, with the open end of the horseshoe facing south. The plan was to drive the enemy against the opposite legs of the horseshoe in such a way as to destroy the opposing forces through attrition - to destroy units, rather than just drive them from villages. Allied commanders believed that Cedar Falls had deteriorated into too many small-unit skirmishes with minimal enemy casualties, and they believed the use of larger American units would result in more.

On the first day of the operation, 845 men from the 173rd Airborne Brigade jumped from C-130 Hercules aircraft, which also dropped artillery and other military equipment. This was the first, and would remain the only, major parachute assault of the Vietnam War. It was designed to rapidly place soldiers in the center of the legs of the horseshoe and, from there, to search for the elusive Communist Central Office of South Vietnam, or Cosvn, the enemy's main headquarters, supposedly located near the Cambodian border.

The airborne assault was necessary, but it also made for great optics back home: Images of American paratroopers jumping into combat reminded people of World War II operations in Europe. President Lyndon B. Johnson hoped that seeing such pictures in major news stories would give Americans confidence that victory could soon be declared.

But Operation Junction City failed to find and destroy Cosvn - because such headquarters didn't exist, at least as a permanent garrison. The Viet Cong were operating from mobile facilities because of the constant threat of aerial bombardment, infantry maneuvers and logistical considerations. Such mobility enabled them to better coordinate their actions with North Vietnamese planners and to retreat across the border into Cambodia when necessary. After 82 days of combat, Junction City ended with 282 Americans killed and a reported 2,728 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese casualties.

Cedar Falls/Junction City had collectively resulted in approximately 3,500 of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese killed at an American cost of 350 lives. This 10 to 1 ratio would continue through most of the war, but the "era of big battles," for all its size and power, failed to change the war's dynamics.

By never allowing their large units to engage American large units, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese units could remain organizationally intact and live to fight another day. The "era of big battles" was supposed to put the Americans on an offensive footing, but 70 percent of all contacts were initiated by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese. The Communists were fighting the war on their own terms and chose when, where and how long to fight, which ultimately would result in victory.
"Vietnam '67" explores the meaning and consequences of the Vietnam War by examining its most pivotal period, from early 1967 to early 1968. To contact the editors, please send an email to vietnam67@nytimes.com.

Ron Milam is an associate professor of history at Texas Tech. The author of "Not a Gentleman's War: An Inside View of Junior Officers in the Vietnam War," he is a combat veteran of the Vietnam War.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTOpinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.

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Opinion | 1967: The Era of Big Battles in Vietnam

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Vietnam '67 Lubbock, Tex. - By the beginning of 1967, there were 490,000 American troops in South Vietnam - along with some 850,000 from South Vietnam, South Korea and other allies - and America's civilian and military leaders were starting to think big.

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An article in the New York Times asserts that the U.S. bombing campaign has neither destabilized North Vietnam's economy nor appreciably reduced the flow of its forces into South Vietnam.

These observations were strikingly similar to an earlier Defense Intelligence Agency analysis, which concluded that "the idea that destroying, or threatening to destroy, North Vietnam's industry would pressure Hanoi into calling it quits seems, in retrospect, a colossal misjudgement."

The first air strikes against North Vietnam were flown in the fall of 1964, in retaliation for two attacks on American warships in the Gulf of Tonkin (although the second reported attack has never been verified). Additional strikes, carried out under the name Operation Flaming Dart, were ordered in February 1965 in response to Viet Cong attacks on a U.S. Army barracks at Pleiku and a nearby helicopter base, which resulted in the deaths of nine Americans. When the Viet Cong attacked other U.S. facilities in South Vietnam, President Johnson initiated Operation Rolling Thunder in March 1965, an intensified air campaign against North Vietnam. He hoped that this campaign would relieve some of the pressure on South Vietnam, where the situation was rapidly deteriorating. Unfortunately, the bombing campaign did not have the desired results and Johnson had to commit U.S. ground troops to stabilize the situation.

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Newspaper reports on bombing over North Vietnam - Dec 09, 1965 - HISTORY.com

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An article in the New York Times asserts that the U.S. bombing campaign has neither destabilized North Vietnam's economy nor appreciably reduced the flow of its forces into South Vietnam. These observations were strikingly similar to an earlier Defense Intelligence Agency analysis, which concluded that "the idea that destroying, or threatening to destroy, North Vietnam's industry would pressure Hanoi into calling it quits seems, in retrospect, a colossal misjudgement."

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Vietnam War Songs 1960s Country Joe Vietnam Song Lyrics Best Vietnam War Songs Hit Songs during Vietnam War War Songs by Women Vietnam War Songs Listen Vietnam War Songs Lyrics 1234 Vietnam War Charlie Lyrics USA War Songs Hyway to Hell Vietnam War Songs The Vietnam War Songs Lyrics of the Sun House Risen By Charles Jenkins War Song Lyrics

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AC
- aircraft commander
BCD
- bad conduct discharge
Charlie
- Viet Cong; the enemy
ballgame
- an operation or a contact
band-aid
- medic
AWOL
absent without leave; leaving a post or position without official permission

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Fifty years ago last August, CBS News aired a report from Vietnam that "ignited a powder keg of suspicion, even hatred," in the words of Morley Safer.

That report, broadcast on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, was an uncensored look at the war in Vietnam. It made Safer's career, yet put his life in danger, and it ultimately changed how war is covered in America.

In 1965, Safer was a young foreign correspondent for CBS News, bringing stories of the Vietnam War into America's living rooms. On August 5 of that year, Safer filed a controversial story from the hamlet of Cam Ne. The footage showed U.S. Marines torching thatched huts -- using flamethrowers, Zippo lighters, and matches -- as villagers stumbled from their homes in shock.

"The Marines went on a search-and-destroy mission, but it really was a destroy mission," Safer told Ann Silvio of 60 Minutes Overtime in the video player above. "What was in the village were a lot of old women and men, young women and babies, and the Marines went in shooting and burning."

"The Marines went on a search-and-destroy mission, but it really was a destroy mission."

The original report, which aired on August 5, 1965, is posted in full below.

"That evening, I shipped the film report and narration of the Cam Ne story to New York," Safer wrote in his 1990 book "Flashbacks: On Returning to Vietnam." "The reaction to it was incendiary. The Defense Department laid siege to Fred Friendly, then-president of CBS News, demanding that I be recalled from Vietnam. The Marines felt they'd been stabbed in the back."

After the story aired, Safer received death threats. In "Flashbacks," Safer wrote that he lay awake in bed all night with a loaded 9mm pistol -- the only time in Vietnam he carried a weapon. A few nights later, he awoke to the sound of a drunken male voice, screaming "Communist Broadcasting System," as he emptied his gun into the air.

"The most outraged reaction to Cam Ne came from the White House," wrote Safer. The morning after the broadcast, President Lyndon Johnson called Frank Stanton, then-president of CBS, and gave him what Safer calls "a dreadful tongue lashing" and accused CBS News of desecrating the American flag. A few days later, Safer said, Stanton was summoned to the White House where President Johnson threatened to go public with embarrassing information about Safer.

"The worst of it was the spreading of totally false allegations, saying that they had evidence I was a Communist," Safer told Silvio in the 2011 Overtime interview above. "And the president was reminded that I was not a Communist, I was a Canadian. And he said, 'Must be the same thing.'"
Overtime video produced by Ann Silvio and Peter Berman

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Fifty years ago last August, CBS News aired a report from Vietnam that "ignited a powder keg of suspicion, even hatred," in the words of Morley Safer. That report, broadcast on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, was an uncensored look at the war in Vietnam.

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A soldiers point of view of the Vietnam war

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A soldiers point of view of the Vietnam war

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Vietnam War Battles Graphic War Footage Vietnam Women Vietnam War Movies Vietnam War 1968 Vietnam War Documentary Vietnam War Songs Gruesome Vietnam War Vietnam War Summary Vietnam War Footage History Channel Vietnam War Vietnam War Part 1 Ken Burns Vietnam War Vietnam War Crash Course Vietnam Bombing We Were Soldiers Movie PBS Vietnam War

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1)https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/17/opinion/as-the-earth-shook-they-stood-firm.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FVietnam%20War&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection&_r=0

2)
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/14/opinion/sunday/haunted-by-vietnam.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FVietnam%20War&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=collection