Vietnam War Cultural Cohesion No Research Paper

To that end, the northern Vietnamese forces and the Viet Cong in the south were looking to actually unify with the southern portion of this country -- which is evinced by the fact that shortly after the end of the war Vietnam was indeed united once again. Although this conception of the significance of the war is primarily political in nature, U.S. military forces could have used a more savvy understanding of the culture of the Vietnamese and their viewpoint of this martial conflict to its advantage, which perhaps could have shortened this encounter that was both lengthy and costly to virtually all of its participants.

Even the involvement of the Marines, which was initially sent to Vietnam to protect the Air Force which was conducting aerial raids, could have been utilized more effectively. This occasion was one of the few in which this military branch (or virtually any in the U.S. For that matter) was charged with a defensive mission, and valuable time and lives were lost while the Marines guarded the Air Force and the communist forces defeated the Southern Vietnamese contingent.Had these interdepartmental forces had a better strategy and planning for this armed conflict, the U.S. may have had more success in the war. But the initial imprudence in the usage of the Marines, when coupled with the indiscriminate bombing of the Air Force and the autonomy of the CIA in the assassination of President Diem, all proved to be ineffective uses of its interagency capabilities. This ineffectiveness, when combined with a lack of cultural understanding about the Vietnamese regard for the war and failure of cultural programs such as the Strategic Hamlet Program, would prove highly difficult for the U.S. To overcome.

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