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¶ … rules of engagement established in the war against the Vietnamese by the United States of America. It highlights the way those who engaged in the war on the U.S. side perceived those restrictions starting from the top political leadership to the soldiers in the battlefield.
The United States of America's war against Vietnam came at the height of divisive world politics. This was the reason that led to the institution of the rules of engagement. The war was a political war fought by the military personnel. The Secretary of Defense usurped the powers of the General as well as the Commanders putting himself at the helm of the command chain only listening to the president. What followed was a broken chain of command that resulted in widespread suffering of the soldiers on the battlefield.
Rules of Engagements
In accordance to the rules of engagements during Vietnam War, the soldiers at the battlefield were not favored at all. They were not at liberty to shoot unless shot at, a situation that made them vulnerable to the enemy. There were instances where soldiers had to call for approval to shoot at the Viet Cong; many times this led to...
Apparently, the rules of engagement were restrictive and had a negative effect on the military activity lead to frustrations and lowered morale of the soldiers.
Battalion commanders during the Vietnamese War were against the rules of engagement they saw the unfavorable conditions of the war front. The commanders were ready to weaken the Vietnamese Air Force and they knew how to, but the political leadership restricted them forcing the U.S. Air force to engage the enemy in the air. According to Boyne (1997), various commanders repeatedly asked permission to attack the enemy's Surface to Air Missile sites (SAMs), but did not succeed.
During the Vietnam War, division commanders were responsible for everything that happened within their command, they were to adhere to the rules of engagement. However, that was not necessarily the case. According to Sullivan (2009), under Ewell's command, the 9th Infantry Division within the military conducted a widespread attack against the Viet Cong in an operation name "Operation Speedy Express" that was aimed at eliminating quickly and with brute force, the…
References
Boyne, W.J. (1997). Beyond the Wild Blue. New York: St. Martin's Griffin.
Dorschel, M.J. (1995). The Effects of Restrictive Rules of Engagement on the Rolling Thunder
Air Campaign. Diss. United States Air Force Command Staff College .
Sullivan, P. (2009, August Wednesday). Julian J. Ewell, 93, Dies; Decorated General Led
Forces in Vietnam. Retrieved March Wednesday, 2012, from www.washingtonpost.com: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/04/AR2009080403187.html
Vietnam War and the Media The Vietnam War and the United States media engaged in a complex relationship in the 1960s and 1970s, and for the first time, Americans witnessed the influence of the media on the outcomes of an unpopular war. The core of their association was based upon the necessity to keep the general public informed on the events of the war and the devastation experienced by American soldiers,
America's wars have historically been a reflection of America's very own cultural tendencies; they're usually enormous in scale, they traditionally consist of a colorful variety of fronts and they are most often regarded as a man's game. So it doesn't strike one as peculiar, perhaps, that the perpetually striking images of Vietnam are of camouflaged nineteen-year-old men enduring the graces and horrors hosted by Southeast Asia during the skirmish that
Vietnam -- Rules of Engagement There are many reasons given for the fact that the United States lost the war in Vietnam, and that America was basically pushed out of the country by the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army even though the U.S. had far more firepower. Among the more credible reasons America lost the war was the failure on the part of the political leaders back in Washington
South Vietnam, it believed, could be a base for the desired ability to mount military and economic operations throughout the globe and regardless of the insidious presence of communist influence, a premise which stood in direct contrast to Ho Chi Minh's dream. Indeed, as an official policy, leaders in Washington considered that the fall of South Vietnam to communism would be a pathway to the prevalence of communism in other
Vietnam War Japan had taken control of Vietnam during the Second World War. They had come in, in 1940, as a strategy to prevent China from ferrying weapons through the country. However, there was resistance to this through the efforts of Ho Chi Minh, who would later lead the independent country. He was a communist, and this would help him in accessing aid from the communist China when fighting against the
Rules of Engagement During the Vietnam conflict, the Rules of Engagement provided distinct limitations on what military forces could and could not do. It is worth considering how the Rules of Engagement for Vietnam -- and the rationale behind them -- affected the progress of the military action there, and reflected the ideology behind it. An examination of six different points on the military's chain of command -- from the level