Speech On Vietnam War

History Task 2 – Anti-war Speech
The Vietnam war has gone on for too long! How many more fellow citizens must die before this war ends? How much more money is the government going to pour down the drain in attempt to win this war? You and me. We both know the horrific events taking place in Vietnam as we speak! We watch these events unfold in our very own homes on the television screen. We must bring our troops home alive and well for the sake of both our nation and Vietnam.
The war originated from Ho Chi Minh’s simple recruitment of Viet Minh which was formed with the intention to rid Vietnam of the Japanese who had previously invaded Vietnam under the French rule. He was successful in fighting off the Japanese and declared Vietnam’s independence
in 1945. However, the following year French forces had returned to attack Viet Minh as they did not accept Vietnam’s independence. As the conflict escalated in 1949, France, our ally, asked for our help in the fight against Viet Minh and this was the beginning of our involvement in the war. While, Democratic Republic of Vietnam was supported by China and USSR in terms of military training and weaponry. Even with our aid and support France was defeated by the Viet Minh guerrillas and were forced to withdraw as they had been bombarded with shells in Dien Bien Phu. In hopes to end this conflict, the Geneva Accords divided Vietnam along the 17th parallel with Ho controlling North Vietnam and the South controlled by President Diem. With foreign powers no longer controlling Vietnam, Ho’s focus was to reunify Vietnam and our leaders saw fit to destroy Ho and Viet Minh with the solitary motive that Ho was a declared Communist.
From then on, our involvement has drastically increased where in 1955 President Eisenhower began sending in military advisors to South Vietnam to train their Army and in 1960, even more ground troops were sent to aid South Vietnam. In the following year, our former President Kennedy sent 100 Special Forces troops and over 12 000 of our military advisors to Vietnam. Additionally, millions of dollars were spent on our air forces to use Agent Orange in order to defoliate the jungles of Vietnam the Viet Cong hid in and the number of troops and special forces increased to 21 000 as a result of the Viet Cong defeating the South Vietnamese Army where President Diem was also killed.
Our forces continued to fight in the treacherous conditions of the Vietnam jungle and in 1964 the Gulf of Tonkin incident caused even greater commotion. This involved our military forces accusing North Vietnamese patrol boats of pursuing and attacking U.S. destroyers USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy. This event essentially brought our Congress to the decision that authorised our President at the time, Lyndon Johnson, to wage all-out war against North Vietnam. In response, 200,000 American combat troops arrive in South Vietnam, retaliatory air-strikes against North Vietnam began and 2 of our Marine battalions arrived in South Vietnam in 1965. Operation “Rolling Thunder” lasted three years and had achieved virtually nothing as it did not cause the Viet Cong to surrender in fact it didn’t fazed them in the slightest. Our troops in Vietnam continuously increased over the period of the war.
In late January of 1968, an assault by Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese army on our forces began. This was called the Tet Offensive and the Communist forces conducted major attacks in almost all South Vietnam’s 44 provinces. Johnson scales back bombing of the North. 2 months later more than 500 innocent civilians die in a massacre conducted by our very own forces at My Lai. Even slaughtering babies, children and women who were unarmed and did not pose any threat. And of this year Ho Chi Minh died and our President Nixon finally began to reduce of troops in Vietnam and eventually ending the draft calls because of us Americans having fought back against our involvement in the war.
With the Vietnam war sparking such controversy across our nation, the first American protests against U.S.
intervention in Vietnam took place in 1963. However, the antiwar movements were not of great scale until two years later, when President Lyndon B. Johnson had ordered massive U.S. military intervention and the bombing of North Vietnam. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) had been the first to organise a national antiwar demonstration in Washington where 20,000 people attended in 1965. As the war expanded with over 400,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam by 1967, antiwar movements also began to grow and attracted even more support from both on and off the campuses. The tactics of protest used were of a diverse range including legal demonstrations, grassroots organising, congressional lobbying, electoral challenges, civil disobedience, draft resistance, self-immolations, political violence. Some peace activists even travelled to North Vietnam to show their resistance against the Vietnam
war.
In 1967, a national organisation of draft resisters was formed and in the following months of the organisation’s forming more than 300,000 people who protested by burning their draft cards and resisting the draft calls. Six months later, 50,000 surrounded the Pentagon resulting in around 700 arrests and for the first time, majority of us Americans believed our intervention in Vietnam had been a mistake. Many influential figures such as Dr. Benjamin Spock, Robert Lowell, Harry Belafonte and Martin Luther King, Jr. also agreed and participated in the antiwar effort. As a result of brutal protesting and great oppositions with our involvement in the Vietnam War President Johnson ceased the bombings of North Vietnam and had stabilised the ground war. The antiwar movement has only intensified over the period of this war and in October this year more than 2 million people had participated in Vietnam Moratorium protests across the country. The following month, over 500,000 protested in Washington and 150,000 in San Francisco. In response to this President Nixon began to slowly withdraw most of our troops and ended draft calls.
The Vietnam War as we know it isn’t a conflict that we should be fighting in.
It is a war where The Leader of Democratic Republic of Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, was simply fighting for the freedom of Vietnam, so that they would no longer be governed by foreign powers and for Vietnam to be reunify as one whole nation. He believed that he could achieve these goals of freedom and reunification through the sole ideology of Communism. Our intervention may have even caused more commotion and even the loss of more lives. Not only did we suffer as America had losses of around 50 000 as of this year and many more injured civilians of Vietnam also faced the consequences of our involvement. This can be seen in the My Lai massacre which happen quite recently where our troops murdered innocent civilians and even sexually assaulted young women of the village. It is clear that our involvement was indeed a mistake as our fear of communism spreading and our desire to stop the expansion was an issue we had assumed. Ho had good intentions for Vietnam as a nation and America’s intervention had disturbed this. Lives were unnecessarily lost from both sides and its time we as citizens of America brought this to an end to save lives. And let Vietnam choose their own path as they go forth into the future whether they do become a Communist nation or not it is not our choice for in a world of freedom it is
theirs.
We must fight on! Continue our fight to bring our troops home and we shall not stop until they are through writing letters, riots and marches. We need to spread our words, rally for support and stand up to the government. While as individuals our cause may be over looked and belittled but as we stand together. Together our voices will be heard. The government will listen and we will bring our sons, brothers and husbands home.