Ch. 22 & 23 Notes

The Vietnam War and The Counter-Culture Generation Notes Getting Involved in Vietnam 1. The Vietnam Nightmare 1. Southeast Asia, for years, had been under French colonial rule. The Asians wanted France out. 1. Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh had tried to appeal to Woodrow Wilson for self-determination, way back in 1919. He felt FDR may be sympathetic to Vietnam's cause. However, Ho Chi Minh started going more and more communist, and the U.S. started backing away. 2. America simply wanted to let France handle the growing communism (though the U.S. paid for 80% of France's fighting). 1. At Dienbienphu (1954), France was surrounded, lost, and France simply decided to leave. This created a void where communism could grow. This battle marks the real beginning of America's interest in Vietnam. 3. A multinational conference at Geneva split Vietnam in half at the 17th parallel. North Vietnam wound up communist, a non-communist government in South Vietnam was led by Ngo Dinh Diem. 2. Stepping into the Vietnam Quagmire 1. The shaky government wasn't a democracy in the American sense, but it wasn't communist. The North was led by Ho Chi Minh and was communist. They threatened to overrun the South. 2. To defend South Vietnam, Kennedy sent "military advisers" (U.S. troops) to South Vietnam. They were supposedly there to instruct on how to fight, but not fight themselves. Kennedy, "in the final analysis", said it was "their war." 1. By the time of his death, JFK had sent about 15,000 "advisers." It was now becoming difficult to just leave without looking bad. Escalating the Conflict in Vietnam 3. Johnson Battles Goldwater in 1964 1. Barry Goldwater, a staunch conservative, criticized income taxes, Social Security, the TVA, civil rights laws, nuclear test bans, the Great Society, and thus he made a strong run against LBJ in the election of 1964. 1. Barry Goldwater talked a tough game versus the communists. He hinted that he might even use nuclear weapons if needed. LBJ seized this in an attack ad on TV. It showed a little girl picking daisies, then exploding in a nuclear mushroom cloud. The message: elect Goldwater and die. 2. LBJ countered as being a more poised statesman. 1. At the same time, in August 1964, there was the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. There, two U.S. warships had been attacked by the North Vietnamese. In response, the Tonkin Gulf Resolution was passed by Congress essentially giving the president a blank check for return action. 2. Johnson ordered "Operation Rolling Thunder"—full-out bombing on North Vietnam. 3. LBJ used the Tonkin Gulf Resolution to follow a policy of "escalation." In 1965, he sent some 400,000 soldiers to Vietnam. This is usually marked as the starting-point for the Vietnam War. 4. America's was "all in" in Vietnam at this point, win or lose. It was costing up to $30 billion per year too. 4. Vietnam Topples Johnson 1. January 1968 was the break point of the war. At that time, North Vietnam launched a massive "Tet Offensive" against southern cities. The U.S. stopped the attack, but it showed the enemy was not all-but-done and that there were years of fighting left. 1. The war was taking a toll on Johnson too, emotionally and physically. 2. American military leaders asked for more troops, but Johnson would not send them. The Impact of Technology and Media 5. The Battle for “Hearts and Minds” 1. Another key part of the American strategy was to keep the Vietcong from winning the support of South Vietnam’s rural population. The campaign to win the “hearts and minds” of the South Vietnamese villagers proved more difficult than imagined. 2. For instance, in their attempt to expose Vietcong tunnels and hideouts, U.S. planes dropped napalm, a gasoline- based bomb that set fire to the jungle. They also sprayed Agent Orange, a leaf-killing toxic chemical. 3. The saturation use of these weapons often wounded civilians and left villages and their surroundings in ruins. 4. Years later, many would blame Agent Orange for cancers in Vietnamese civilians and American veterans. The Vietnam War and The Counter-Culture Generation Notes 6. Search and Destroy Mission 1. U.S. soldiers uprooted civilians with suspected ties to the Vietcong, killing their livestock, and burning villages. 2. The irony of the strategy was summed by a U.S. major whose forces had just leveled Vietnamese town, “We had to destroy the town in order to save it.” 7. The Living Room War 1. Through the media, specifically television, Vietnam became America’s first “living-room war.” 2. The combat footage that appeared nightly on the news in millions of homes showed stark pictures that seemed to contradict the administration’s optimistic war scenario. 3. Quoting body-count statistics that showed large numbers of communists dying in battle. Defense Secretary McNamara backed up the general, saying that he could see “the light at the end of the tunnel.” 4. The repeated television images of Americans in body bags told a different story, though. While communists may have been dying, so too were Americans—over 16,000 between 1961 and 1967. 5. Critics charged that a credibility gap was growing between what the Johnson administration reported and what was really happening. 8. Sinking Morale 1. A bogged down war, with high casualties and no clear mission led to drugs, mutiny, sabotage, and "fragging" troop's own officers. Frustration was best seen in the infamous My Lai Massacre (1968). 1. At that village, U.S. troops snapped and killed the entire village, including women and children. 2. My Lai increased protest at home and helped lead to charges of "baby killers"—an unfair charge for nearly all of the troops. The Anti-War Movement 9. Vietnam Vexations 1. Back in the U.S., protests against the Vietnam War increased. Students held "teach-ins", burnt draft cards and fled to Canada to avoid being drafted. 2. In the earlier part of the war especially, the fighting was done disproportionately by the poorer classes. 1. Being in college got young men a deferment from the draft (a free pass). 2. African-Americans suffered casualties at higher rates than whites. 3. The result was that most Vietnam "grunts" (ground soldiers) were fresh out of high school (the average age was 19). 4. America was being split into "doves" against the war and "hawks" who supported the war. 5. The Twenty-sixth Amendment (1971) was passed. It lowered the voting age to 18. The reasoning was that 18 and 19 year olds should be allowed to vote for the politicians sending them off to war. 3. By 1968, the war had become the longest and most unpopular in U.S. history. LBJ said the war's end was near, but it was not. 4. The war also split the Democratic party (1968 was another election year). 1. Eugene McCarthy was the voice of the doves. He was supported by peace-loving college students. 2. Days later, Robert Kennedy entered the race, also as a dove. He brought the Kennedy name and charisma. 3. A bigger shock came when LBJ announced that (a) he was freezing troop levels in Vietnam and (b) he would not run for reelection. The Democratic party was wide open. 4. V.P. Hubert H. Humphrey seemed the next logical choice. It was now McCarthy, Kennedy, and Humphrey for the Democrats. 10. The Presidential Sweepstakes of 1968 1. Just as it seemed Robert Kennedy would become the Democratic nominee, he was shot and killed. Humphrey would be nominated, but not without massive riots at the Democratic National Convention. 2. Richard Nixon would run as the Republican. He was a "hawk" and spoke of getting law-and-order in the cities at home. 3. Nixon would win the election, 301 to Humphrey's 191. 11. Cambodianizing the Vietnam War 1. The North Vietnamese had been using their neighbor as a staging-ground for attacks. The land was out-of-bounds for U.S. troops, but the North channeled supplies through Cambodia down the "Ho Chi Minh Trail." 1. In 1970, Nixon ordered the U.S. to invade Cambodia to put a stop to the uneven playing field. The Vietnam War and The Counter-Culture Generation Notes 2. On U.S. universities, there was much protest to moving into Cambodia. The logic went, "The U.S. is not at war with Cambodia, why are we invading there?" 1. A protest at Kent State University got out of hand and the National Guard was called in to disperse the protestors. For some reason, the Guard opened fire and killed four protesters. 2. The rift between hawks and doves had widened. Nixon pulled out of Cambodia after only two months. U.S. troops resented Nixon's reversal and having to fight with "one hand tied behind their back." 3. The New York Times dropped a bombshell in June 1971. They broke the "Pentagon Papers"—a top secret study that showed lies and military mess ups by JFK and LBJ. Getting Out of VIetnam: Peace with Honor 12. Nixon “Vietnamizes” the War 1. Nixon entered the White House promising an honorable end to the war. He pursued "Vietnamization", or returning U.S. troops and turning the war over to the Vietnamese. 1. This became the "Nixon Doctrine" saying the U.S. would honor its commitments, but the Vietnamese would have to go it without massive American troop numbers. 2. The policy was middle-of-the-road, enough to get him elected.

Load more