The Vietnam Years

French > Vietnam  France ruled most of Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia)  Vietnam peasants get angry at French peasants for farming their land  Also tried to restrict rights of Vietnamese (speech and assembly)  Begin to flee to China and organized under Ho Chi Minh  Created the Indochinese Communist Party and began organizing an independence movement  Japan gains control in 1940  Vietminh -> goal to win independence from foreign rule  After defeat of Japan in WWII, Ho Chi Minh declares Vietnam an independent nation

France vs. Vietminh  France does not want to let go of Vietnam  Able to gain most of Southern Vietnam  Ho Chi Minh vows to fight from the North to liberate South  U.S. involvement begins in 1950  France is reattempting control over Vietnam post WWII  Want to strengthen relationship and stop spread of communism  Provided economic support to France (nearly $15 mil)  Once allies with Vietnam during WWII  Fund nearly $1 bil over 4 years

 > Eisenhower becomes President  Continues to fund France  Explains domino theory -> countries on the brink of communism  French unable to retake Vietnam  Surrendered in May of 1954 when they lost city at Dien Bien Phu  France, Great Britain, Soviet Union, China, U.S., Laos, and Cambodia meet with Vietminh in Geneva, Switzerland  Create the Geneva Accords -> temporarily divided Vietnam along the 17 th parallel  Ho Chi Minh gets North and capital city of Hanoi  South gets city of Saigon

U.S. Becomes More Involved  Begin providing aid to South Vietnam  Election to unify country in 1956  Ngo Dinh Diem (S. Vietnam’s Pres.) refused to take place in election  U.S. promises to provide military aid and training to Diem in return for a stable reform gov’t in the South  Diem limits opposition of any kind, offered little land distribution to the peasants, and restricted Buddhist practices  Vietcong (Communist opposition group) begins attacking Diem gov’t, assassinating thousands of people  Ho Chi Minh Trail -> path used to supply weapons and aid to Vietcong from North Vietnam

Kennedy’s Involvement  Kennedy administration 1961  Increased financial aid to Diem and sent military advisors to help train S. Vietnamese military  Rise of Vietcong attacks forces Diem to enact the hamlet program  Moved all villagers to protected areas  Many people do not want to move from their homeland and buried ancestors  Increased attack on Buddhism -> imprisoned and killed them  Buddhist monks protest by lighting themselves on fire  JFK urges Diem to chill out but he refuses

LBJ’s Involvement  Diem and JFK both assassinated  Before his death JFK announced intent of removing troops from Vietnam  LBJ begins to escalate the war  S. Vietnam becomes more unstable  > Vietnamese patrol boat fires and misses on USS Maddox in Gulf of Tonkin  Maddox returns fire and inflicts heavy damage on the patrol boat  Days later, reported torpedoes, American destroyers open fire

 Alleged attacks prompts LBJ to launch series of bombing raids on N. Vietnam  U.S. adopts the Tonkin Gulf Resolution  Granted LBJ broad military powers in Vietnam (did not declare war)  Maddox was in Tonkin to get secret information for secret raids being carried out  Tonkin Gulf Resolution prepared months in advance and LBJ waited for right time to get it pushed through  Vietcong attack kills 8 Americans  LBJ starts “Operation Rolling Thunder”  First sustained bombing of N. Vietnam  March of > first American combat troops begin arriving in S. Vietnam  June of > 50k + U.S. soldiers fighting the Vietcong

U.S. Involvement Escalates

LBJ Increases Involvement  Most of nation supports LBJ in attempting to stop spread of Communism  Begins dispatching 10s of thousands of soldiers  End of 1965 the U.S. gov’t had sent 180k + to Vietnam  General William Westmoreland keeps requesting troops (Army of the Republic of Vietnam aka ARVN) could not stop the fighting themselves

Fighting in the Jungle  Jungle terrain + guerilla tactics proves to be difficult to U.S. military  Vietcong used hit and run strategy with knowing the terrain better than the U.S. troops  Attacked in both cities and countryside (difficult to tell who was a citizen and who was military)  Used network of tunnels  Punji sticks  Peppered land with booby traps and land mines

 Plan to defeat Vietcong through attrition -> wearing them down  More rebels to dies the quicker the surrender  Not the case -> Vietcong receive aid from China and Soviet Union  U.S. want to avoid N. Vietnamese gaining support from the S. Vietnam rural population  Want to win over citizens = no place for Vietcong to hide?  U.S. begins using napalm (gasoline based bombs) and Agent Orange (leaf killing toxic chemical)  Search and destroy missions -> finding citizens helping Vietcong and killing their livestock/burning villages

Sinking Morale  U.S. morale begins to weaken  U.S. soldiers begin to turn to drugs  Corruption in the S. Vietnam gov’t  Leads to a civil war  Many soldiers, however, feel the duty to continue to fight

War at Home  Support for the war begins to decrease due to the length  Inflation leads to increase in taxes and gov’t spending -> end to the “Great Society”?  Vietnam became America’s first “living room war”  Credibility gap -> What the LBJ administration reported and the reality

A Nation Divided

Working Class Goes to War  Fighting a war in a faraway place + questionable cause = resistance going to Vietnam  Begin to look for ways around the draft  Medical exemptions, talked in front of lenient draft board, joined National Guard/Coast Guard for exemption from Vietnam service  College deferment -> enrollment in a university would suspend draft status  Most fighters in Vietnam end up being lower class whites/minorities (working class)  20% of American combat deaths were African Americans (10% of military)  Mixed platoons led to racial violence at times  10K + females serve in Vietnam (mostly as nurses)  Red Cross and United Services Organization (hospitality and entertainment)

Roots of Opposition  Students begin to become more active in social and political activities  Become powerful and vocal group of protestors during Vietnam  New Left -> growing youth movement that demanded changes in American society  Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) begin to preach that corporations and large gov’t institutions had taken over America  Free Speech Movement focused on the American “machine”

Protest Movement  SDS organizes march on D.C.  LBJ begins requiring college students to be in good academic standing in order to be granted deferment  SDS begins encouraging people to skip the draft to Canada or Switzerland  Reasons for youth opposition:  Belief that U.S. should not be involved in Vietnam’s civil war  Argument that U.S. could not police the entire world  Morally unjust  Returning veterans begin to protest the war  Popular music groups -> Peter, Paul, and Mary and Joan Baez  #1 song = “Eve of Destruction” by Barry McGuire

Protest vs Resistance  “We were having no effect on U.S. policy…. so we thought we had to up the ante.”  Half a million people meet in Central Park to protest  Burning draft cards and chanting “Hell, no, we won’t go”  Draft resistance began to become common  Imprisoned draft dodgers  Many people leave the country  Group of 30k+ demonstrators lock arms and march onto the Pentagon steps  Met with tear gas and clubs

Divided Nation and LBJ’s Reaction  Divided into the doves (opposed war) and hawks (continue war)  People begin to think that protests are an act of “disloyalty”  “Support our troops” and “America- love it or leave it”  LBJ continues his policy of slow escalation  His cabinet begins to question his motives  Defense Secretary Robert McNamara  “It didn’t ad up… What I was trying to find out was how… the war went on year after year when we stopped the infiltration or shrunk it and when we had a very high body count and so on. It just didn’t make sense.”

1968: An Unforgettable Year

The Tet Offensive  Surprise attack by the Vietcong and N. Vietnamese military on many cities  Caused many more Americans to turn against the war  Jan. 30 th was Vietnamese lunar new year known as “Tet”  Truce was agreed on during this week long festival  Funerals being held for war victims  Coffins carried weapons, many of the villagers were Vietcong  Launched an attack on over 100 towns and cities in S. Vietnam and U.S. airbases  Carry attack on to the U.S. embassy in Saigon killing 5 Americans  Continued for about 1 month before U.S. and S. Vietnamese regain control  Tet offensive changes the mindset of many Americans  Walter Cronkite (one of most respected journalists) -> “more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stale mate”  New Defense Secretary Clark Clifford claims the war to be “unwinnable”

Loss and Rage  Eugene McCarthy pledges to run against LBJ to stop the war in Vietnam  LBJ begins to declare the U.S. had changed its Vietnam policy and was seeking a peaceful negotiation to end the war  Also announces his withdrawal from the upcoming Presidential election  Assassinations of MLK and RFK spark protest and riots  Students continue to protest (becoming more aggressive)  Violent demonstrations in Chicago during Democratic National Convention paved the way for a Republican Presidential win  Nixon vs Hubert Humphrey vs George Wallace  Nixon campaigns on a promise to restore law and order and to end the war in Vietnam

End of War and Its Legacy

Nixon and Vietnamization  Summer of 1969, Nixon announces first U.S. troops withdrawal  Although withdrawing troops, the fighting still continued with N. Vietnam  Negotiations to end war were going nowhere  U.S and S. Vietnam insist that all N. Vietnam troops from the South and S. Vietnam’s ruler stayed in his position  N. Vietnam and Vietcong demand that U.S troops withdraw from S. Vietnam and the S. Vietnam gov’t step aside for a coalition gov’t including Vietcong  Nixon confers with National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger  Vietnamization -> called for the gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops in order for S. Vietnam to take on a more active combat role in the war  Over 3 years U.S. numbers drop from 500K + to less than 25K  “Peace with honor”  Preserve U.S. dignity and negotiation identity  Nixon orders secretive bombing raids on countries of Laos and Cambodia (held Vietcong sanctuaries)

Continuing Trouble in the Home Front  Nixon appeals to the silent majority -> Americas who quietly supported U.S. efforts in Vietnam  My Lai Massacre  U.S. troops murdered innocent citizens in My Lai, S. Vietnam  Invasion of Cambodia  Nixon announces U.S. troops invaded Cambodia to remove N. Vietnamese and Vietcong supply centers  1.5 mil + students close down 1,200 + campuses in protests and strikes  Kent State University disaster  ROTC building burned in protest  National Guard brought in and opened fire killing 4 (2 which didn’t participate)  Pentagon Papers  Document that revealed the U.S. planned to enter the war even though LBJ promised he would not send troops  Also revealed no plan of ending the war as long as N. Vietnamese kept fighting

End to the Longest War  March of > N. Vietnamese launch largest attack on S. Vietnam since Tet offensive  Nixon responds by ordering massive bombing campaign and mines be set in N. Vietnam’s largest port  N. Vietnam still ok with a stalemate but would not end the war  Nixon finally begins taking steps to end America’s involvement in Vietnam  Nixon wins reelection  Peace talks break down -> Launches “Christmas bombings”  Dropped 100K + bombs over 11 straight days pausing only on X-Mas day  March 29, > last of U.S. combat troops leave Vietnam  Cease fire agreement between North and South Vietnam lasted only months  N. Vietnam launches full scale invasion (U.S. sends aid but refuses to send troops)  Saigon is captured and S. Vietnam surrenders to N. Vietnam

Vietnam’s Legacy  58K Americans killed, 303K wounded  North and South Vietnam deaths = 2 mil +  Divided U.S. attempted to come to grips with unsuccessful war  Troops were not greeted as heroes but received a “cold hand”  PTSD, drug use, and suicide become a problem  Unveiling of Vietnam Veterans Memorial in D.C.  N. Vietnam initially extends welcome to S. Vietnam  Then imprison 400K+ in labor camps  U.S. policy changes:  Gov’t abolishes the draft  Decrease the President’s war-making powers  War Powers Act -> must notify Congress within 48 hrs / cannot stay longer than 90 days