“I was drafted into the U. S. Army, I went to Vietnam,” Don Wright told me (pictured). “I was there for 14-months and went to Laos, Cambodia and Saigon,” he said. I asked if any of his close friends died and he said, “Lots of people died all around me, but I hardly knew most of them.”
Vietnam was a war that was unlike what we had seen in past conflicts with other countries. America was indeed present and fighting, but Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge communists had formed an alliance to fight U.S.-backed regimes in their respective countries. At the same time, some of the fighting of Vietnamese troops was only to overcome their communist leadership in their corrupt country and not necessarily an attempt to kill Americans, although that was the end result.
One source reported, “Despite their open display of cooperation with the Vietnamese, the Khmer Rouge leadership feared that the Vietnamese communists were scheming to form an Indochinese federation with Vietnam as the dominant force in the region.”
In 1978, Vietnamese leaders decided to remove the Khmer Rouge-dominated regime of Democratic Kampuchea. They were afraid the Khmer Rouge was too pro-Chinese and too hostile towards Vietnam.
Communist countries such as China and the Soviet Union played a huge role in Vietnam. Because of the multitude of communist countries, America had to be dominant to stop the further spread of communism in the world. It was an extremely complicated war that was misunderstood by millions and is still very misunderstood today.
America withdrew their involvement on August 15, 1973.
Over 58,000 U.S. Service members died in the conflict. Up to 3.1 million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians were killed. Around 200,000 Cambodians died and up to 200,000 Laotians were killed. Exact numbers were never fully agreed upon.
President Richard Nixon stated, “No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now.”
×