The Vietnam War

Road to war  Vietnam had been a French Colony  Vietnam wanted independence from France after World War II

What should the U.S. do???  Help the Vietnamese become independent?  Help the French keep Vietnam so that they will remain non-communist?

French lost to Vietnamese in 1954  Geneva Accords =  1). Vietnam divided in half at the 17 th Parallel  2). Vietnam would have elections in 1956 to elect a new government

Ho Chi Minh  Ho Chi Minh = Leader of the Vietnamese Communist  He was very popular among the people  We knew he would win the election, so the U.S. did not allow the elections to take place

Uh oh!  We would not let Vietnam become communist because we believed in the Domino Theory

Who did the U.S. support?  Ngo Dinh Diem = Leader of South Vietnam  He was a corrupt leader who treated his people badly  Vietcong (South Vietnamese Communist) rose in numbers

Ngo Dinh Diem  He was a Catholic who restricted the rights of Buddhist in Vietnam  In protest, monks began to burn themselves in the streets

 Burning monks looked bad, so Diem was assassinated by his own people  JFK approved of the assassination, two weeks later he was assassination in Dallas  Vietnam conflict now fell to President Lyndon B. Johnson

War becomes bigger  U.S.S. Maddox was fired upon by the North Vietnamese = Gulf of Tonkin Incident  LJB – “America must protects its troops” August 1964

LBJ and Vietnam  LBJ went to congress and asked for help  Tonkin Gulf Resolution = Congress gave the President unlimited power to protect troops in Vietnam  Problem = Congress put no limits on the President

Military Leader  General William Westmoreland led American troops during Vietnam

LBJ and Vietnam  “Operation Rolling Thunder” = Our bombing campaign against North Vietnam  Did it work???

Vietnam War  U.S. beliefs = Vietcong would be easy to defeat  We had much better technology  We could win the “Hearts and Minds” of the Vietnamese

Vietnam War  Reality = Vietcong was well trained, hard fighters, and were hard to find  U.S. faced a “Guerrilla” war  Vietcong had dug a vast network of underground tunnels to attack our troops

Vietnam War  How do we measure success? = By the number of Communist killed  Robert McNamara = U.S. Secretary of Defense, always encouraged LBJ to send more troops to Vietnam (Escalate the war)

New tools of war  Napalm = Fire bombs  Agent Orange = Chemical we used to kill jungle plants  It causes cancer and birth deformities

Vietnam War  The war kept going and going  Americans kept being told the war was almost over and that the U.S. was winning

Tet Offensive  January 30, 1968 – Vietcong unleashed a massive attack throughout South Vietnam

Credibility Gap  What Americans were being told by the Government about Vietnam, was not what was really going on  We could no longer fully trust the government about Vietnam