Vietnam

Background

Eisenhower Response

Kennedy’s involvement

Johnson’s role

Issues at home

Nixon in Vietnam

Nixon’s Domestic Issue

Nixon and Watergate

• French Indochina fights for independence after WW II

• Ho Chi Minh leads Vietnamese rebellion

• Fall of Dien Bien Phu 1954

• Geneva Accords 1954 split Vietnam in two

• Avoid land war in Asia

• “Domino” theory

• ‘Flexible response’: variety of military options based on the crisis

• Advisors & Green Berets

• Strategic Hamlet program

  • Villagers moved to fortified camps

• Assassination of Diem Nov. 2nd, 1963

• Gulf of Tonkin Resolution Aug. 7, 1964

  • Blank check to escalate the war

• Operation Rolling Thunder

• Napalm and Agent Orange

• Strengthens will of communists

• Use of combat troops

  • Suggested by William Westmoreland 

• Search and destroy missions

• Tet offensive of 1968

  • North Vietnamese offensive dooms Johnson

• Students for democratic society 

  • Free speech

• Opposition to the draft

• MLK Assassinated April 4th, 1968

  • Race riots

  • Bobby kennedy june 6th 1968

• 1968 Democratic COnvention

  • Protesters clash with police

• 1968 Election Nixon defeats Humphrey/Wallace

  • Honorable peace

• Nixon Doctrine

  • Honor existing commitments, no future war

  • Detente

• Vietnamization

• Draft lottery

  • Draft reduction

• Bombing of Vietnam and Cambodia

• Kent State Massacre (1970)

  • 4 students killed in Ohio

• 26th amendment 1971

  • Voting age 18

• Pentagon Papers 1971

  • Lies about US entry into war

• War Powers Act 1973

  • President must report to congress

• Election of 1972

  • McGovern loses white working class

  • Nixon wins Silent Majority

• Break-in at Watergate

  • DNC Headquarters

• Woodward & Bernstein

  • Connection to president

• Nixon claims ‘executive privilege’

• Resigns Aug. 9, 1974

  • Pardoned by Ford