Category: History
Question: Policies during this war included the "strategic hamlet" program and the use of Agent Orange as a defoliant. The Battle of Khe Sanh (“KAY SAWN”) was fought during this war, which ended with the fall of Saigon, a city that was renamed after the victorious side's leader, Ho Chi Minh (“HO CHEE MIN”). For 10 points, a memorial wall in Washington, DC lists the American casualties of what conflict in Southeast Asia?
Answer: {Vietnam} War

The Vietnam War was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and a major conflict of the Cold War. While the war was officially fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam, the north was supported by the Soviet Union, China, and other communist states, while the south was supported by the US and anti-communist allies. This made it a proxy war between the US and Soviet Union. It lasted almost 20 years, with direct US military involvement ending in 1973. The conflict spilled into the Laotian and Cambodian civil wars, which ended with all three countries becoming communist in 1975.
After the fall of French Indochina with the 1954 Geneva Conference, the country gained independence from France but was divided into two parts: the Viet Minh took control of North Vietnam, while the US assumed financial and military support for South Vietnam. The Viet Cong (VC), a South Vietnamese common front under the direction of the north, initiated guerrilla war in the south. The People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) engaged in more conventional warfare with US and Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) forces. North Vietnam invaded Laos in 1958, establishing the Ho Chi Minh trail to supply and reinforce the VC.: 16  By 1963, the north had sent 40,000 soldiers to fight in the south.: 16  US involvement increased under President John F. Kennedy, from 1,000 military advisors in 1959 to 23,000 by 1964.: 131 
Following the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964, the US Congress passed a resolution that gave President Johnson authority to increase military presence, without a declaration of war. Johnson ordered deployment of combat units and dramatically increased American troops to 184,000. US and South Vietnamese forces relied on air supremacy and overwhelming firepower to conduct search and destroy operations. The US conducted a strategic bombing campaign against North Vietnam: 371–374  and built up its forces, despite little progress. In 1968, North Vietnam launched the Tet Offensive; a tactical defeat, but a strategic victory, as it caused US domestic support to fade.: 481  In 1969, North Vietnam declared the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam. The 1970 deposing of Cambodia's monarch, resulted in a PAVN invasion of the country, and then a US-ARVN counter-invasion, escalating Cambodia's Civil War. After Richard Nixon's election in 1969, a policy of "Vietnamization" began, which saw the conflict fought by an expanded ARVN, while US forces withdrew due to domestic opposition. US ground forces had mostly withdrawn by 1972, the 1973 Paris Peace Accords saw all US forces withdrawn: 457  and were broken almost immediately: fighting continued for two years. Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge in April 1975, while the 1975 spring offensive saw the Fall of Saigon to the PAVN, marking the end of the war. North and South Vietnam were reunified on 2 July the following year.
The war exacted enormous human cost: estimates of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed range from 970,000 to 3 million. Some 275,000–310,000 Cambodians, 20,000–62,000 Laotians, and 58,220 US service members died. Its end would precipitate the Vietnamese boat people and the larger Indochina refugee crisis, which saw millions leave Indochina, an estimated 250,000 perished at sea. The Khmer Rouge carried out the Cambodian genocide, while conflict between them and the unified Vietnam escalated into the Cambodian–Vietnamese War. In response, China invaded Vietnam, with border conflicts lasting until 1991. Within the US, the war gave rise to Vietnam syndrome, a public aversion to American overseas military involvement, which, with the Watergate scandal, contributed to the crisis of confidence that affected America throughout the 1970s. The US destroyed 20% of South Vietnam's jungle and 20–50% of the mangrove forests, by spraying over 20 million U.S. gallons (75 million liters) of toxic herbicides;: 144–145  a notable example of ecocide.