What was hearts and minds in vietnam

Life became increasingly hard for people in the urban areas of South Vietnam. By , approximately , orphans were roaming the streets of Saigon and other cities, begging, shining shoes, washing cars, picking pockets, and pimping for their sisters or mothers. There were reportedly some , bar girls and prostitutes, many married to South Vietnamese soldiers whose salaries were inadequate to buy rice to feed even one person.

In addition, there were two to three million Vietnamese, many of them older people or disabled Saigon army veterans, who could not find work at all. Widespread hunger and unemployment resulted in increases in crime, suicides, and protests throughout the areas under South Vietnamese control. This group would later be officially recognized by the January Paris Agreement as one of three equal political segments of a coalition government called the National Council of National Reconciliation and Concord.

Despite brutal repression by the Saigon government, the Third Force managed to make itself heard. At this meeting, women from various parts of the country also testified about the wanton killing, rape, and other criminal acts committed by the Americans everywhere.

In , the Committee for the Reform of the Prison System in South Vietnam, headed by South Vietnamese Catholic priests and intellectuals, claimed that the government held , political prisoners. On November 10, , the Washington Post reported that 40, new political prisoners had been picked up just in the first two weeks after the final draft of the Paris Agreement was announced.

Hearts and Minds estimates that there were , to , of these political prisoners—and has several scenes and interviews with former political prisoners who were injured by the torture methods mentioned above. And all that is considered a crime by the [President Nguyen Van] Thieu regime. Just because you want to give us freedom? What kind of freedom could you give us? Skip to main content. Central Washington University.

Search form Search. Search page Search CWU. Home MyCwu Give. What he meant, and his subsequent actions played out, was that success in COIN rests on the popular perception and this perception has an emotive "hearts" component and a cognitive "minds" component. Kilculen continued - what is essential here is making the population choose.

The gratitude theory -- "be nice to the people, meet their needs and they will feel grateful and stop supporting the insurgents" -- does not work.

This requires persuading the population, then protecting them, where they live. While this cannot be done everywhere, it must be done where it politically counts.

The principle emotive content is respect, not affection. Support based on liking does not survive when the enemy applies fear, intimidation trumps affection.

By the end, they had lost what support greeted them upon their arrival. Crucial factors were the disorganized nature of the war, local support for the Viet-Cong, and the difficulty in telling apart friend and foe. The strategy involved providing security to villages, expanding access to services like electricity, and a propaganda campaign showing the Viet-Cong as merciless aggressors. However, the idea of providing security and denouncing the Viet-Cong was undermined by the behavior of American command, which often resorted to using extreme firepower to put down resistance.

American commanders declared entire areas free-fire zones. Troops would round up villagers, burn their hooches and relocate them from their ancestral lands into squalid refugee camps. The latest example of a largely failed hearts and minds campaign is the ongoing war in Iraq. During testimony before Congress in the lead up to the wars, several absurd claims were made. These included that Iraqis would readily accept US occupation, and that they would come forth with candies, kites, boom boxes, and smiles to greet the American liberators.

As the United States pursued plans to rebuild or expand infrastructure in a bid to win over civilians, distrust in the occupying forces increased due to the growing length of the occupation.