the road to vietnam -...

The Vietnam War

Sources:

American History: Connecting with the Past (Fifteenth Edition)

Give Me Liberty!: An American History (Third Edition)

American Pageant (Fourteenth Edition)

America: A Concise History (Fourth Edition)

Looking For A Hero: Staff Sergeant Joe Ronnie Hooper and the Vietnam

War

Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam: Or, How Not to Learn From the Past

American History

APUSH: MR. ROLOFSON

The Vietnam War

“From 1964 to 1972, the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the history of the world made a maximum military effort, with everything short of atomic bombs, to defeat a nationalist revolutionary movement in a tiny, peasant country – and failed.”

-A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn (1995)

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Ho Chi Minh

Ho Chi Minh was the political leader of North Vietnam.

“You will kill ten of our men, and we will kill one of yours. Yet, in the end, it is you who will tire.” –Ho Chi Minh warning the French Prime Minister

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Why did the United States assist

France in Vietnam?

Containing the Soviet Union in Europe required substantial French military participation and France’s consent to rearm West Germany. If the U.S. refused to help France in Vietnam, France might frustrate America’s grand strategic design in Europe.

-Looking For A Hero: Joe Ronnie Hooper and the Vietnam War (2004)

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Battle of Dien Bien Phu, 1954

This is one of the most decisive battles of the 20th century.

At the Geneva Conference that same month, France negotiated a face-saving compromise. Twenty years later the U.S. would be in exactly the same situation.

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The Geneva Accords, 1954

The Geneva Accords focused primarily on ending the war between France and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

The Accords temporarily divided Vietnam at the seventeenth parallel, creating a northern zone under DRV authority and a southern region dominated by the French Union.

U.S. HISTORY: MR. ROLOFSON

How did we get involved in Vietnam?

1) McCarthyism and a fear of being “soft” on communism

2) The domino theory

3) The need to maintain credibility

4) Ignorance

APUSH: MR. ROLOFSON

1) McCarthyism and a fear of being

“soft” on communism

Successive presidents worried about preventing a revived McCarthyism at home. The Wisconsin senator cast a long, ugly shadow over domestic political life.

No politician wanted to risk being perceived as “soft” on Communism by “losing” any more territory, especially territory in Asia, no matter how insignificant.

APUSH: MR. ROLOFSON

2) The domino theory

“If Indo-China were to fall and if its fall led to the loss of all of Southeast Asia, then the United States might eventually be forced back to Hawaii, as it was before the Second World War.”

- Secretary of State Dean Rusk, explaining the domino effect


3) Credibility

American policy makers considered every “domino” a test of America’s character, of its will and determination, its national honor.

APUSH: MR. ROLOFSON

4) Ignorance

Overconfidence in American capabilities deceived policymakers and strategists into ignoring Vietnamese history and culture.

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Kennedy’s Vietnam Policy

Kennedy initially supported the government of Ngo Dinh Diem because Kennedy feared that Communists would take over South Vietnam.

South Vietnamese leaders later overthrew Diem because he did not have the support of the Vietnamese.

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Johnson Commits to Containment

Johnson’s objective in Vietnam was to prevent a Communist takeover.

By 1964, it became distressingly obvious that South Vietnam had neither the skills nor the will to preserve its artificially created independence.

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Summarize the following quote:

“If I left the woman I really loved – the Great Society – in order to get involved with that bitch of a war on the other side of the world, then I would lose everything at home. All my programs. All my hopes to feed the hungry and shelter the homeless. All my dreams to provide education and medical care…But if I left that war and let the Communists take over South Vietnam, then I would be seen as a coward and my nation would be seen as an appeaser, and we would both find it impossible to accomplish anything for anybody anywhere on the entire globe. Oh, I could see it coming all right.”

- President Lyndon Johnson

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The Gulf of Tonkin Incident, 1964

The U.S. alleged that North Vietnamese torpedo boats launched an unprovoked attack against American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin.

President Johnson used the Gulf of Tonkin incident to deepen American involvement in Vietnam.

(Over 40 years later, in December of 2005, the National Security Agency finally released hundreds of pages of secret documents that made it clear that no North Vietnamese attack had actually taken place.)

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The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, 1964

(also referred to as the Tonkin Gulf Resolution)

The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passed by Congress in 1964 increased the power of the president to conduct war in Vietnam.

The President now had nearly complete control over what the U.S. did in Vietnam, even without an official declaration of war from Congress.

Congress did not know that the resolution had been drafted several months before the Tonkin incident took place.

APUSH: MR. ROLOFSON

Operation Rolling Thunder

Operation Rolling Thunder is the sustained bombing of North Vietnam.

The U.S. would drop 7 million tons of bombs - twice the total dropped on Europe and Asia during WWII – on an area about the size of New England.

APUSH: MR. ROLOFSON

America in 1965

Malcolm X is assassinated by rival Black Muslims

Civil rights workers are being murdered

A race riot in Watts leaves thirty-five dead

Biographies of the late JFK by administration insiders hit the bookstores

Mariner 4 flies within 5,700 miles of Mars and transmits pictures of the red planet back to earth

American bodies are piling up by the hundreds in Vietnam

APUSH: MR. ROLOFSON

By 1965, the U.S. was already losing…

It did not make good press to tell the truth, which was that the U.S. was propping up a corrupt, authoritarian regime that inspired the insurgency in the first place.

The enemy’s goals (national unification, the preservation of a distinctive Vietnamese culture) meant more to them than U.S. goals meant to the Americans.

APUSH: MR. ROLOFSON

So why continue fighting in Vietnam?

APUSH: MR. ROLOFSON

This is why…

“As Democrats living under the double shadow of Truman’s “loss” of China and Republican-driven McCarthyism, Kennedy and Johnson feared being “soft” on Communism. If they failed to escalate and the Communists gained control of South Vietnam, a right-wing backlash might sweep them from office. Johnson insisted “he was not going to be the President who saw Southeast Asia go the way China did.” If the dominoes started falling there, “God Almighty, what they said about us leaving China would just be warming up, compared to what they’d say now.”

-Looking For A Hero: Staff Sergeant Joe Ronnie Hooper and the Vietnam War (2004)

APUSH: MR. ROLOFSON

U.S. Tactics and Strategy

Agent Orange: a herbicide used mainly to expose Viet Cong hiding places.

Napalm: a fuel, made from jellied gasoline, used in incendiary bombs.

“Search and Destroy”: missions in which small units attempted to find and fight the enemy.


American Soldiers

Early on, Americans believed they were in Vietnam to stop communism and help the South Vietnamese.

It never dawned on them that the political leadership committed Americans to a questionable cause or that their blood was being expended in pursuit of a flawed strategy.

APUSH: MR. ROLOFSON

Playing Politics

Caught among the conflicting pressures not to “lose” Vietnam, to avoid war with China or the Soviet Union, and to win the next election, successive presidents managed the war politically but never resolved the fundamental issues.

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The Military High Command

IGNORANCE: The military leaders’ ignorance about Vietnam’s militant past nourished their arrogance.

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE: The military high command simply ignored facts that did not fit their intentions.

CAREERISM: Nothing guaranteed rapid promotion more than combat command. Westmoreland limited command to six months so that more officers got their “combat command” ticket punched.

- “An Examination of Vietnam War Senior Officer Debriefing Reports: An Individual Essay” (1986)

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Group Think

“Our senior officers knew the war was going badly,” wrote Colin Powell, a junior officer in Vietnam who eventually became Chairman of the JCS and then Secretary of State. “Yet they bowed to group think and kept up pretenses…As a corporate entity, the military failed to talk straight to its political superiors and to itself.” - My American Journey (1996)


Who are the noncombatants?

“Children were trained to throw grenades,” said a VC, “not only for the terror factor, but so the American soldiers would have to shoot them. Then the Americans feel very ashamed. And they blame themselves and call their soldiers war criminals.” - Vietnamese Women at War: Fighting for Ho Chi Minh and the Revolution (1999)


Flawed Assumptions

Westmoreland assumed that Americans could find and pulverize enemy main force units.

He could not accept that his units were being ambushed so he insisted on calling these affairs “meeting engagements.” - End of the Line: The Siege of Khe Sanh (2002)

APUSH: MR. ROLOFSON

Apparent advantage in firepower

Most combat veterans experienced firefights, ambushes, sniper fire, a low-tech, high-fear war…but few fought in a battle that brought all of America’s high-tech arsenal to bear.

-Through the Valley: Vietnam, 1967-68 (1999)

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Apparent advantage of air mobility

Helicopter-borne operations were noisy and limited as to where they could land.

Finding or creating LZ’s was difficult, flat areas were at a premium.

Old LZ’s were often booby trapped.

“How could anyone be taken by surprise by a flight of Huey’s?”

– U.S. pilot

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VC/NVA excelled at military intelligence

The enemy had great success exploiting radio security lapses. U.S. operators usually broadcast new frequencies without encoding them!

VC/NVA often “jammed” frequencies to prevent transmissions.

“They knew when we were going to strike, where we were going to strike, under what conditions – ground, air, or naval.”

–U.S. general

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Inexperience

Patrols often blundered into ambushes because of inexperience.

U.S. forces remained novices because of the one-year rotation policy.

A popular adage maintained that the United States did not fight in Vietnam for ten years, but fought in Vietnam one year ten times over.

APUSH: MR. ROLOFSON

“I have never been more encouraged in the

four years I’ve been in Vietnam. We are

making real progress.”

-- General Westmoreland, 1967

The general’s optimism flowed from an inflated body count and a flawed estimate

of enemy strength.

APUSH: MR. ROLOFSON

The Beginning of the Anti-War Movement

In May, 1966, four ordinary housewives from San Jose blocked trucks loaded with napalm bombs for seven hours.

The government considered an antiwar march on the Pentagon in October 1967 so serious it mobilized federal troops to protect the symbol of American military supremacy from its own citizens.

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Dirty Tricks

Unwilling to consider his critics as intelligent men and women of good will who disagreed with his policy, the president perceived them as personal enemies. Determined to suppress them, he ordered the FBI to uncover evidence that activists were Communists. The FBI never found any communists.

The CIA’s Operation Chaos, a clear violation of its charter prohibiting domestic surveillance, the FBI’s Operation Cointelpro, and an Army illegal domestic Intelligence Command all used an array of “dirty tricks” to tarnish and undermine the movement.

They employed illicit wiretaps, opened mail, forged inflammatory letters and literature, carried out burglaries, framed protesters on drug charges, acted as provocateurs to incite violence, spread disinformation, and kept authorities well-versed on the protesters’ plans.

- End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a Generation (1995)


Tinker v. Des Moines

In Tinker v. Des Moines, a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the students had the right to wear armbands to school to protest the Vietnam War.


The Tet Offensive, 1968

A Turning Point

What happened… Consequences…

In January 1968, the Viet Cong suddenly launched a series of attacks on many South Vietnamese cities, including Saigon.

The Viet Cong were eventually forced to retreat after suffering heavy losses.

The Tet Offensive undermined President Johnson’s credibility.

As a result of the Tet Offensive, public support for the war decreased and antiwar sentiment increased.

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Television and the War

Television coverage of the Vietnam War brought the brutality of the war into American homes.

Credibility gap was a term that came into wide use during the Vietnam War, used to describe public skepticism about the Johnson administration's policies on the war.

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Johnson Does Not Seek Reelection

Johnson decided not to run for President in 1968.

During the election of 1968, the issues dividing the country also caused a split in the Democratic Party.

The winner of the 1968 election was Republican Richard Nixon.

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Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and

Robert Kennedy are Assassinated

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Robert Kennedy

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Conscientious

Objectors

A conscientious objector avoids fighting in a war, on moral or religious grounds.

Most people who refused to be drafted in the early 1960s were conscientious objectors.

Many of those who resisted the draft went to Canada.

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The Veterans Movement

“It was the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time against the wrong people for the wrong

reasons.”

“It is not patriotism to ask Americans to die for a mistake, and…it is not patriotic to allow a president to talk about not being the first president to lose a

war, and using us as pawns in that game.”

- Home to the War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans Movement (2001)

APUSH: MR. ROLOFSON

“If they weren’t pro-VC when we got here, they

sure were when we left.”

-U.S. soldier

APUSH: MR. ROLOFSON

Nixon’s

Vietnam Policy

Nixon began to slowly withdraw American troops from Vietnam and replace them with newly trained South Vietnamese troops.

Known as Vietnamization, this policy tried to preserve U.S. goals and bring “peace with honor.”

In 1970, Nixon invaded Cambodia in order to destroy Viet Cong sanctuaries.

APUSH: MR. ROLOFSON

Hawks and Doves

Hawks Doves

Hawks supported the Vietnam War.

The “Silent Majority” were moderate, mainstream Americans who quietly supported Nixon’s Vietnam War policies. They believed that the U.S. was justified in supporting South Vietnam.

Doves opposed the Vietnam War.

Senator William Fulbright was a leading Dove. He wrote a critique of the war entitled The Arrogance of Power.

APUSH: MR. ROLOFSON

Hamburger Hill

The battle for Dong Ap Bia, nicknamed Hamburger Hill by the troops who were in the meat-grinder, lasted for ten days.

Having Americans die for real estate and then abandon it reinforced the public’s sense of the war’s absurdity and futility.

“The waste of people, for what? To possess a hill?”

-U.S. Army chaplain


My Lai Massacre

The officer in charge of the My Lai massacre was William Calley.

The death toll at My Lai might have been even greater but for the heroics of an American helicopter crew.

APUSH: MR. ROLOFSON

Summarize the following quote:

The “Study on Military Professionalism” (1970) revealed moral and ethical transgressions were pervasive in the officer corps. Engulfed in selfish career competition, senior officers routinely “sacrificed integrity on the altar of personal success”; were preoccupied with attaining “trivial short-term objectives even through dishonest practices”; and nourished self-deception by insisting on perfection, thus discouraging subordinated from relaying bad news and compelling them “to lie, cheat, and steal to meet the impossible demands of higher officers.”

- U.S. Army War College, Study on Military Professionalism

Westmoreland had the study classified. U.S. HISTORY: MR. ROLOFSON

The Draft Lottery

Because of the draft, riots and demonstrations of resistance occurred.

The first draft lottery of the Vietnam era is instituted in an effort to reduce criticism that the

draft is unfair because college students could easily avoid the draft.


“Search and Evade”

To avoid outright combat refusals, officers implicitly ordered them to go on “search and evade” missions.

Noting the lack of aggressiveness, the Viet Cong ordered their men not to attack passive American forces.

-Working Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam (1993)


Bombing Cambodia

Code-named Operation Menu and kept from secret from the public or Congress, Nixon ordered B-52 raids on Cambodia.

Astounded and angered that Nixon was widening the war, not ending it, antiwar protesters were reenergized.

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Kent State

Stunned by the invasion of Cambodia, college students across the nation erupted in protest. More than 1.5 million angry students shut down 1,200 campuses.

At Kent State University, nervous members of the National Guard fired into a crowd of protesters, killing four students and wounding nine.

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Twenty-sixth Amendment

The Twenty-sixth Amendment (1971) lowers the voting age to eighteen.

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Pentagon Papers

In June of 1971, the New York Times begins publication of the Pentagon Papers, the top-secret history of American involvement in Vietnam.

Nixon tries to stop publication of the documents, but the Supreme Court rules that the Times and the Washington Post may resume publication.

APUSH: MR. ROLOFSON

Paris Accords

On January 23, 1973, all parties signed the Paris Accords, initiating a “peace” that was little different from what the United States could have achieved four years earlier.

1. 17th parallel stays

2. prisoners released

3. U.S. withdraws from South Vietnam

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War Powers Act

Over the President’s veto, Congress passes the War Powers Act in 1973, which restricts the President’s power to commit troops to foreign countries without congressional approval.

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American Withdrawal

The Vietnam War’s last battle started at 4:00am on April 29, 1975 when enemy rockets blasted MACV’s former headquarters.

The next day South Vietnam unconditionally surrendered.

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Consequences of the Vietnam War

The war affected the economy:

The U.S. could not afford both President Johnson’s Great Society programs and the Vietnam War.

The combination of spending on the war and expensive social programs produced the high inflation rates of the late 1960s and 1970s.

The war affected international involvements:

The Vietnam War increased public skepticism toward international involvements (often called Vietnam Syndrome).

In 1973, Congress passed the War Powers Act, which stipulated that the president must inform Congress within 48 hours if U.S. forces are sent into hostile areas.

APUSH: MR. ROLOFSON

Possible Synthesis Point:

The Domino Theory Applied to Terrorism

“If we left Iraq prematurely, as the terrorists demand, the enemy would tell us to leave Afghanistan and then withdraw from the Middle East. And if we left the Middle East, they’d order us and all those who don’t share their militant ideology to leave what they call the occupied Muslim lands from Spain to the Philippines.” –Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 1996

Clearly, the domino theory had been updated to apply to terrorism. “You could practically hear the dominoes falling as he told the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday that it was dangerous for Americans to even talk about how to end the war in Iraq.” –New York Times, August 4, 2006

APUSH: MR. ROLOFSON

3-2-1- Summary Assignment

1. Describe three things you learned about the Vietnam War:

2. Discuss two questions you still have about U.S. involvement in Vietnam:

3. Describe one part of today’s lecture you wanted to hear more about.

APUSH: MR. ROLOFSON

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