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Times past 1964 VıetnamThe

FiftyWAR years ago, the stepped up its involvement in a that tore the nation apart By Veronica majerol

n the morning of Nov. 9, no one is now forced to serve. But during pro-Western South after lost its 1965, 22-year-old Roger Allen , when able-bodied men ages 18 century-old colonies in Southeast LaPorte sat cross-legged out- to 26 were called up, they had no choice, (see Timeline, p. 20). But , side the in mid- and many ended up fighting, and dying, the Communist and nationalist leader town Manhattan, poured gaso- in Vietnam. Exemptions for people like whose forces had defeated the French, Oline over his body, and set himself on . college students made the draft even more wanted all of Vietnam to be a single “I’m against , all wars,” the devout controversial since the system seemed to . Communist guerillas in Catholic said before dying in the hospital favor privileged Americans. , the “Vietcong,” had the the next day. “I did this as a religious act.” U.S. combat troops first landed in same goal. LaPorte’s was one of the more tragic South Vietnam in 1965 to help prevent That alarmed President Dwight D. acts of protest against the , a Communist takeover. By the time the Eisenhower, who feared that a Communist a decade-long conflict that tore the U.S. last U.S. soldiers withdrew in 1975, victory in Vietnam would lead to the fall apart, spawned a near-revolution by more than 2.7 million Americans— of other Asian countries. The “domi- young people, and left many Americans’ many of them teenagers—had served no theory” became the foundation for faith in their nation and its political lead- in the war and 58,000 had been killed. U.S. in Southeast Asia ers shaken. for the next two decades. “The Vietnam War was one of those The ‘The Vietnam To prevent a Communist events that touched practically everybody U.S. involvement in War . . . touched takeover, Eisenhower in America,” says David L. Anderson, a Vietnam was part of practically sent military advisers to historian and co-editor of The War That America’s bat- train and arm the South Never Ends: New Perspectives on the tle against the spread of everybody in Vietnamese . Vietnam War. “It led people to question , which had America.’ President John F. . . . is their country always right? Does already begun gaining a (1960-63) con- America always win?—concepts that foothold in Asia. In , tinued sending American advisers to Americans had never thought about.” had successfully led a Communist revolu- Vietnam. After Kennedy’s , One reason the Vietnam War was so tion in 1949, and a year later, the Korean his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, grew divisive is that many Americans came to War began when Communist North increasingly concerned about the sit- see it as a civil war in a faraway country , with Soviet and Chinese support, uation there. “I am not going to be the that didn’t concern the U.S. Another rea- invaded . A U.S.-led United president who saw Southeast Asia go son was because of the draft. Since 1973, Nations coalition intervened on South the way China went,” he told the U.S. the U.S. has had an all-volunteer army; Korea’s behalf. By the time the war ended ambassador to South Vietnam in 1963. in a stalemate in 1953, 34,000 Americans In , Johnson told the Vietnam & had been killed. nation that North Vietnamese torpedo B I S COR watch A video the U.S. The following year Vietnam was par- boats had attacked a U.S. with- www.upfrontmagazine.com

Tim Page/ titioned into a Communist North and a out provocation in the (see

18 Upfront • upfrontmagazine.com CHINA MYANMAR (BURMA) Gulf of Tonkin HAINAN ISLAND

N Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) 17TH PARALLEL W E M e k o S n g R

i v e Vıetnam r 648,500 Andaman Americans were drafted Sea VIETNAM during the Vietnam War. South China Source: Vietnam Veterans Sea of America

Saigon ASIA (now Ho Chi Minh ) WAR Area of Gulf of 0 100 MI detail Thailand Delta 0 100 KM

Roughly 35,000 Americans killed in Vietnam were under age 22, about 60 percent of all American deaths. Source: Vietnam Veterans The memorial fund youngest American killed in action was 15 years old. He enlisted at 14 with a doctored birth certificate. Source: Vietnam Veterans memorial fund U.S. soldiers in South Vietnam, September 1965

April 21 2014 19 Timeline vietnam & the u.s.

1954 1964 1965 1968 French Defeat Gulf of Tonkin Troops & Protests Tet After Communist forces Following a disputed attack Johnson sends combat troops In January, the Communists defeat the French, Vietnam is on a U.S. ship by North to Vietnam; youth-led protests launch a brutal month-long partitioned into a Communist Vietnam, Congress authorizes (above) intensify as U.S. troop offensive at the start of the North and pro-Western South. President Johnson levels increase to 543,000 lunar New Year. The attack President Eisenhower sends (above, with U.S. troops) by the end of the decade. turns more Americans advisers to help the South to respond without a formal against the war. battle Communism. declaration of war.

map, p. 19). Whether his account was the evening news programs showed rela- After Tet, CBS news anchor Walter accurate is still disputed; but Congress tively uncensored images of GIs plodding Cronkite, known as the “most trusted / R e d ux passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, through jungles and rice paddies, bombs man in America,” offered this analysis: s authorizing the president to “take all dropping from B-52 airplanes, and piles of “We’ve been too often disappointed ork Time necessary measures to repel any armed and wounded on both sides. As by the optimism of the American lead- Y w attack” against U.S. forces in Vietnam, media scholar Marshall McLuhan wrote ers . . . both in Vietnam and Washington N e S/The S/The

without formally declaring war (see box). in 1975, “Vietnam was lost in the living to have faith any longer in the silver lin- O

At the start of 1965, Johnson sent 25,000 rooms of America—not on the battlefields ings they find in the darkest clouds. For it AN T

U.S. combat troops to South Vietnam. of Vietnam.” seems now more certain than ever, that JOEL S Most Americans initially support- the bloody experience of Vietnam is to AARON ed the war. But as it escalated—from America’s First Guerrilla War end in a stalemate.”

184,000 troops at the end of 1965 to Vietnam was also America’s first In March, with his popularity plum- B I S; COR more than half a million by the end of the real guerrilla war. Much of the fight- meting, President Johnson announced decade—a powerful antiwar movement ing involved confusing the start of peace talks in Paris—and s ; Be tt mann/ o began taking hold. against Vietcong guerrillas who attacked, that he would not run for re-election. t Mass protests, led mostly then easily melted back into Johnson’s vice president, Hubert by students and young peo- ‘Vietnam the civilian population (sim- Humphrey, lost the 1968 presidential ple, began in 1965 and grew was lost in ilar to what U.S. soldiers election to Republican Richard M. Nixon / M agnum larger and more intense. the living have faced in the current of . Nixon promised to restore In 1967, 300,000 people war in ). at home and said he had a “secret rooms of d Free d L eonar marched in New York and It was a month-long battle plan” to get the U.S. out of the war.

100,000 in Washington, America.’ at the start of 1968 that really In 1969, President Nixon and Secretary I mage; G e tt y

with protestors trying to close down the turned the tide. In January, amid fireworks of State began a process / s Pentagon. Sit-ins, teach-ins, and peace and parties celebrating “Tet,” the lunar of “,” withdrawing U.S. ama) t ure

marches took over college campuses; New Year, 80,000 Communist troops troops and training the South Vietnamese b s (o

men burned their draft cards, and radicals launched a surprise attack across the army to carry on the fight. By 1972, only L i f e Pic I mage attacked college ROTC buildings. South. Though ultimately a military defeat 70,000 U.S. troops remained in Vietnam. : Time & Johnson kept insisting that the U.S. for and the Vietcong, the After a cease-fire was announced in 1973 G e tt y A FP/

was winning. But Americans got a very proved a psychological blow as part of the , nearly f rom le ft different impression of what was essen- to Americans, who saw it as evidence that all U.S. troops were withdrawn. AMA D/ W EL S

tially the first televised war. Every night, the war was still escalating. In Vietnam, fighting soon resumed T IMELINE , JE

20 Upfront • upfrontmagazine.com Vietnamese try to board a U.S. leaving Saigon, , 1975.

A shoe factory in Vietnam 1975 1986 1994 Today Communist Victory Economic Reforms Restoring Ties Trading Partners Two years after a cease-fire, After a decade of repression Twenty years after the Vietnam’s economy is North Vietnamese forces and grinding poverty, end of the war, President Bill growing at 5 percent a year; overrun the South. Saigon (now Vietnam’s Communist Clinton lifts the U.S. trade the U.S. and Vietnam are ) falls, and begins embargo and begins restoring vital trading partners, with the last Americans evacuate introducing free-market diplomatic relations with bilateral trade totaling nearly along with a fraction of the reforms. Vietnam. $30 billion. Vietnamese who want to flee.

between the North and South. In April Nearly 3 million Vietnamese were killed 1994, President lifted a U.S. 1975, Saigon fell to the invading North in the war. And for the South Vietnamese, trade embargo and started normalizing / R e d ux s Vietnamese and Vietcong, who renamed the horrors didn’t end. The Communists relations with Vietnam. it Ho Chi Minh City. Remaining U.S. mil- executed as many as 65,000 of their politi- Today, the U.S. is the largest importer ork Time Y itary personnel were hastily evacuated, cal enemies and sent at least 200,000 to of Vietnamese goods, with bilateral trade w N e along with a fraction of the Vietnamese “re-education camps,” where many died between the two countries totaling nearly S/The S/The

O who wanted to flee. In addition to the from starvation and overwork. $30 billion. Many American companies,

AN T 58,000 Americans who died in the war, In 1986, after a decade of including Nike and Columbia Sportswear,

JOEL S 153,000 were wounded, and at least 2,500 grinding poverty, Vietnam began intro- have factories in Vietnam. were unaccounted for. ducing free-market reforms, and in students are the eighth-largest group of AARON foreigners studying in the U.S., and the

B I S; COR U.S. was the fourth-largest source of tour- The War Powers Act ists to Vietnam in 2013. For the more than Did President Lyndon B. Johnson have the right to send U.S. troops to 60 percent of Vietnamese who were born s ; Be tt mann/ o t Vietnam beginning in 1965? after 1975, the war they learn about in Congress never formally declared war on North Vietnam but it gave Johnson school as the “American War” might as authority to do what he wanted through the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. By the well have happened centuries ago. agnum / M agnum Pho end of the war, however, many lawmakers felt that control over the nation’s Secretary of State , who armed forces—which the says is shared by the President and was a Naval officer in the war, recently Congress—had swung too far to the president. So in 1973, over President Nixon’s visited Vietnam to speak about expand- d d Free L eonar veto, Congress passed the War Powers Act, which requires the president to terminate the use of military force after 90 days unless Congress authorizes it. ing trade and security ties. Addressing mage; I mage; Presidents have largely managed to sidestep the Act, often arguing that it businesspeople and educators in Ho Chi G e tt y

/ doesn’t apply to their particular foreign crisis. But historian David L. Anderson Minh City, he marveled over Vietnam’s s says the War Powers Act still changed the economic progress and how far U.S.- ama) t ure way presidents approach war.

b s (o Vietnamese relations have come.

L i f e Pic “Most presidents have . . . felt compelled to “What has taken place in just a lit- I mage be more transparent, to give more information tle over 20 years is extraordinary” Kerry : Time &

G e tt y to Congress,” he says. “In other words, they’ve said. “I can’t think of two countries that

A FP/ behaved in a way that they’re aware of the Act,

rom f rom le ft even if they’ve often argued they’re not being have worked harder, done more, and AMA D/ compelled by it.” • done better to try to bring themselves W EL S President Obama is commander-

T IMELINE , JE together and change history.” in-chief of the military, but only • Congress has the power to declare war. 2014 21