The Vietnam War

French Indochina (Vietnam War)

Ho Chi Minh (communist Leader)

GULF OF TONKIN

U.S. ship attacked

LBJ asks for action (war)

-Operation Rolling Thunder

Begins bombing vietnam

Ho Chi Minh

Began Viet-cong

Us war leaders

Sec. Robert McNamara

-Gen. William Westmoreland

Viet Cong used

 guerilla tactics

-Agent Orange

leaf killing toxin

COSTS OF WAR

low morale of soldiers

-Great Society spending is reduced to pay for war effort

-first television war

-credibility gap develops

-protest begin

Hawks

SUpported the war

Doves

Opposed the war

Protests Begin

Students for a Democratic Society

-teach-ins about the war

-picketing the White House

-backlash against anti-war view

Tet Offensive

Jan. 1968 major attack by Vietcong shows no sign of defeat to come

-public opinion turns on LBJ

-My Lai Massacre, 1968

US troops go into small farm villaige and kill everyone. Claimed they were attacked first

-Pentagon Papers

classified documents taken from the Pentagon that document the actions of several Presidents during Vietnam acting without Congressional knowledge

-Vietnamization

policy of pulling American ground forces out of Vietnam while training Vietnamese troops to do most of the ground fighting with American air support

bombing of Laos and Cambodia

attempting to stop Viet Cong supply lines

-Passage of the 26^th Amendment

voting rights now 18

-Paris Peace Accords

-early 1973 US leaves Vietnam

-War Powers Act

limits the ability of Presidents to wage war