The 10,000 Day War 1946-75

Phase One - War of Independence

• Vietnam - French colony under the name of French Indochina (along with Cambodia and Laos)

• Vietnam fights for independence from France during WWII

• Vietnamese revolutionary leader was Ho Chi Minh, a Communist

• Wanted to be the leader of an independent, communist Vietnam; received support from both the USSR and “Red” China

• French are defeated in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu

• Peace conference in Geneva, Switzerland (attended by France, Vietnam, the US, and the USSR)

• Vietnam divided at the 17th parallel. Communist north (led by Ho) and democratic south (led by Ngo Dinh Diem

• Elections to be held in 1956 to end partition

• The US sees Vietnam as a “Domino.” Determined to stop it falling according to the US policy of “Containment”

• Estimated that 80% of Vietnamese would have voted for the Communists - elections were never allowed to happen

• Many ordinary Vietnamese viewed Diem as an elite who had cooperated with the French

• Diem tortured and executed nearly 40000 political prisoners

• The Southern resistance increases as communist support grows - creation of the National Liberation Front (NLF)

• The Southern “freedom fighters” were also known as the Viet Cong

1963

• With US approval, the South Vietnamese Army kills Diem

• and of course, Kennedy is killed

Phase Two - American Military Movement

• Phase originated with “Ike” and JFK but was intensified under Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ)

• 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Incident - 2 American destroyers were “supposedly” fired upon by the North Vietnamese

• Congress passes Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

• Congress gave LBJ their support in sending American personnel and material

1965 - Operation Rolling Thunder

• sustained American bombing raids on North Vietnam

• 864,000 tons of bombs dropped on North Vietnam

  • 503,000 tons in the Pacific theater during the Second World War

• 4 objectives

  • boost the Morale of South Vietnam

  • Persuade North Vietnam to stop supporting rebels in the south

  • destroy North Vietnamese industry and air defenses

  • cease the flow of men and material along the Ho Chi Ming Trail

• US ground forces sent to Vietnam

  • over 200,000 by the year’s end

• Danang: The first American combat troops the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade, arrive in Vietnam to defend the US airfield at Danang

Ho Chi Minh Trail

• The US was never entirely successful in shutting down the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a supply line that ran between North and South Vietnam

• Difficult jungle terrain often underground and through neighboring nations like Cambodia and Laos

1968

• In January, the Vietnamese launched the Tet Offensive, a surprise offensive on a major Vietnamese holiday that saw attacks all over the country including in Saigon itself

• A Vietnamese defeat, but many in the US now saw the war as unwinnable

• ongoing US casualties and led to an increase in the antiwar sentiment on the American Home Front in large part because Vietnman was a TV War where American audiences saw the brutality of war firsthand

• Americans witnessed the usage of weapons like napalm and Agent Orange, which devastated the people and environment of Vietnam

My Lai

• Who is the enemy?

• How do you “find and eliminate the enemy” if you can’t tell which side anyone is on?

• Between 350 and 500 raped, tortured, and murdered

• 26 US soldiers were initially charged with criminal offenses

• Only Second Lieutenant William Cally, a platoon leader was convicted

  • Found guilty of killing 22 villagers, he was originally given a life sentence but only served three and a half years under house arrest

Hippies

• inherited values of the 1950s Beatniks

• created their own communities

• listened to psychedelic rock

• embraced the sexual revolution

• and used drugs such as cannabis, LSD, and magic mushrooms to explore altered states of consciousness

Protests Increase at Home

• Hippies led the Counterculture movement

• Protests became widespread and began to polarize the nation

• not just hippies

Election

• Polls show that over half of the country doesn’t agree with the handling of the war

• LBJ chose not to run for reelection in 1968

• Increasingly the American people came to perceive the “Credibility Gap”

• Republican Richard M. Nixon was elected on a platform of “Peace with Honor”

• Vietnamization: Nixon wanted the South Vietnamese to play a greater role in the war

• Despite that, he continues to carpet-bomb Hanoi and orders a secret invasion of Cambodia

  • seen as a further widening of the war, Americans feel deceived and protests

Kent State, May 1970

• Kent State University, Ohio

• Student protests turn deadly when National Guard troops open fire on students

• 4 students dead

The Draft

• in 1969, a “lottery” was held to select young men from the age of 18 to 26 to fight in the war

• the voting age was 21

• The first 122 dates drawn would be drafted to go to Vietnam

• The next 122 “may” have been drafted

• If the number was from 245 to 365 you were spared from being drafted until the next draft lottery

Tinker vs. Des Moines

• Mary Beth Tinker

• 13-year-old junior high school student

• she and others wear black armbands to school to protest the war in Vietnam

• 5 students suspended

• 1960 - Supreme Court rules that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

Pentagon Papers

• classified documents stolen from the Pentagon

• exposed government knowledge that war would cost more lives than the public was being told

• the public was told the war was ending but escalation was happening

• government censures the information but SCOTUS says no

• Public distrust of the government

1973

• the US agreed to remove troops on Jan 27, 1973

Phase 3 - Vietnamese Civil War, 1973-75

• the NVA easily defeated the South by 1975

• 1975 - the US abandoned its embassy in Saigon which was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in the newly unified and communist Vietnam

War Powers Act 1973

• “the President can send US armed forces into action abroad only by authorization of Congress or in case of a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces”

• POTUS must notify Congress within 48 hours of committing armed forces to military action

• forbids armed forces from remaining for more than 60 days, without congressional authorization or declaration of war

Remembering Vietnam

• Vietnamese

  • approximately 3 million military and civilian deaths

• America

  • 58,000 dead

  • 300,000 wounded

• Many felt it was a pointless war that could have been avoided - veterans were not seen as “heroes”

• Returning veterans were ignored or in some cases suffered verbal and physical abuse

Post War America

• Losing a pointless war

• distrustful government

• a weak and divided America

• 1982 - the Vietnam War Memorial (“the wall") encourages Americans to reflect on the war and “heal some of the war’s wounds”