APUSH 8.8 - Vietnam

Walter Cronkite

CBS news anchor, goes to Vietnam and joins a group of soldiers, present for the Tet offensive, says he believes the war is unwinnable.

Robert McNamara

Secretary of Defense, promotes limited commitment because he believed that a war in Vietnam was unwinnable, fired by LBJ because of this

Viet Cong

The rebel movement reinforced by North Vietnam, who dont like Diem, aka the National Liberation Front

Ho Chi Minh

The person in charge of North Vietnam

Ngo Dinh Diem

Leader of South Vietnam before his assassination

Operation Rolling Thunder

A huge bombing campaign that didnt work too well - the goal was to bomb North Vietnam with airplanes to prevent them from sending more supplies and troops to the South

Seek and destroy

A strategy in which instead of gaining ground, American troops just tried to kill all of the opposing soldiers to the point where there wouldnt be enough soldiers to fight and they would quit

USS Maddox

A ship fired upon by the North Vietnamese that LBJ used to get Congress to pass the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

A 1964 bill in which Congress effectively gave away their power to declare war, authorizing LBJ to “take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression”, giving him unrestricted, unchecked power over the military

19

The average age of people drafted to the military was __ years old

The Tet Offensive

A 1968 attack by North Vietnam on Saigon and Southern military bases that took place on the holiday of Tet, at which point a ceasefire was presumed to be occurring

Credibility gap

The apparent difference between what the government was telling Americans (that they were winning) and what the footage from Vietnam showed (lots of death and carnage)

Hamlet Villages

Villages that were controlled by the government, meant to keep villages from supporting the North/Viet Cong