Yaolee Chen

HIS 359

Vietnam Class Discussion

Robert McCoy

 

  1. Kennedy’s new approaches to the third world were actively.   In 1961, South Vietnam signed a military and economic aid treaty with the United States leading to the arrival (1961) of U.S. support troops and the formation (1962) of the U.S. Military Assistance Command. Mounting dissatisfaction with the ineffectiveness and corruption of Diem's government culminated (Nov., 1963) in a military coup engineered by Duong Van Minh; Diem was executed
  2. The reason of that Kennedy venture the United States into a quagmire in Vietnam was that French since 1954 lost its power in Indochina after the French-North-Vietnam War at Dienbienphu.  The US therefore sported Diem (1955-1963) in the south, but Kenndy failed to see the true facts what was happening in South Vietnam in the 1960s were that Diem became less and less popular.  On the other hand Ho Chi Minh (1954-1969) in the north became popular by the people of Vietnam as Viet Cong (the National Liberation Front) became a major military support to Ho Chi Minh.  So, Kennedy had no idea what he was doing in Vietnam.
  3. Johnson shore up the United State’s commitment in Vietnam: before 1965, the US sent advisors to the South Vietnam.  In 1965, North Vietnam attacked the U.S. base Pleku, 8 dead and 100 wounded.  Lyndon Johnson through the Tonkin Gulf resolution, alter the Operation Flaming Dust into a full scale offensive Operation Roaring Thunder, despise the controversial view of Kennedy’s involvement in the South Vietnam.
  4. The “Americanize” the Vietnam War by Johnson was that:  In early 1965, the United States began air raids on North Vietnam and on Communist-controlled areas in the South; by 1966 there were 190,000 U.S. troops in South Vietnam. North Vietnam, meanwhile, was receiving armaments and technical assistance from the Soviet Union and other Communist countries. Despite massive U.S. military aid, heavy bombing, the growing U.S. troop commitment (which reached nearly 550,000 in 1969), and some political stability in South Vietnam after the election (1967) of Nguyen Van Thieu as president, the United States and South Vietnam were unable to defeat the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces. Optimistic U.S. military reports were discredited in Feb., 1968, by the costly and devastating Tet offensive of the North Vietnamese army and the Viet Cong, involving attacks on more than 100 towns and cities and a month-long battle for Hue in South Vietnam.
  5. The nation was polarized by the war.  Walter Crocan’s reports from Veitnam, media new reports, photos, media imagines.  On March 31, 1968 Lydon Johnson denounced, “ I could not and would not accept the nomination of the war.  Continuing trunas, 200 demonstration, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Los Angeles, police riots at National Democratic Committee, body count in Vietnam continued to rise, social unrest and social riots brought into American home each and every night.  Americans believe that the war in the Southern East Asia is causing a civil war at home.
  6. About the Tet Offensive:  The Tet offensive, which began January 30, 1968, was a climactic battle of the Vietnam War, a coordinated surprise attack by the Viet Cong (the rebel forces, sponsored by North Vietnam) on hundreds of cities, towns, and hamlets throughout South Vietnam.

      By late 1967, forces of the U.S. Army and the Army of the Republic of Vietnam arvn had established themselves in the urban centers of South Vietnam and were reporting growing success in the countryside. Late in the year, however, a series of scattered diversionary attacks by the Viet Cong gradually drew more and more American and arvn soldiers away from the cities. Then in late January 1968, on the first day of Tet (the lunar new year holiday previously observed with a truce), Viet Cong units attacked five of South Vietnam's six cities, most of its provincial and district capitals, and fifty hamlets. In Saigon they assaulted the airport, the presidential palace, and the arvn headquarters and broke into the U.S. embassy compound. The U.S. and arvn forces, though caught off guard, responded quickly and within a week had regained most of the ground the attackers had won. Only in Hue did the Viet Cong hold on; by the time that city was retaken on February 24, thousands had died, 100,000 Vietnamese had lost their homes, and there was little left of the ancient capital but rubble.

     American spokespersons initially described the Tet offensive as a failure for the Viet Cong, pointing to their rapid retreat and terrible casualties (estimated as high as forty thousand). But when Gen. William C. Westmoreland reported that completing the Viet Cong's defeat would require 200,000 more American soldiers (necessitating a call-up of the reserves, a step President Lyndon B. Johnson had long avoided), even steadfast supporters of the war began to feel that changes, at least in strategy, were essential. To a growing segment of the American public, as well as a number of senior policymakers, Tet demonstrated the unimpaired resilience of the Viet Cong and the fragility of South Vietnam's control over its own territory.

  1. In what ways did 1968 live up to its reputation as the year of upheaval?  In 1968, The Americans suffered from the nerves bread-down.  Nixon promised “Peace and Honor” and gained the election in 1968.  He continued the Vietnam War unwillingly by the Vietnamization of War and the lottery draft.
  2. Following the Tet offensive, American leaders began a slow and agonizing reduction of U.S. involvement. Johnson limited the bombing, began peace talks with Hanoi and the nlf and withdrew as a candidate for reelection. His successor, Richard M. Nixon, announced a program of Vietnamization, which basically represented a return to the Eisenhower and Kennedy policies of helping Vietnamese forces fight the war. Nixon gradually reduced U.S. ground troops in Vietnam, but he increased the bombing; the tonnage dropped after 1969 exceeded the already prodigious levels reached by Johnson. Nixon expanded air and ground operations into Cambodia and Laos in attempts to block enemy supply routes along Vietnam's borders. He traveled to Moscow and Beijing for talks and sent his aide Henry A. Kissinger to Paris for secret negotiations with the North Vietnamese. In January 1973, the United States and North Vietnam signed the Paris Peace Agreement, which provided for the withdrawal of all remaining U.S. forces from Vietnam, the return of U.S. prisoners of war, and a cease-fire. The American troops and pows came home, but the war continued. Nixon termed it "peace with honor," since a separate government remained in Saigon, but Kissinger acknowledged that the arrangement provided primarily for a "decent interval" between U.S. withdrawal and the collapse of the South. In April 1975, North Vietnamese troops and tanks converged on Saigon, and the war was over.
  3. In what ways did Vietnam become Nixon’s war?  The domestic consequences of the war were equally profound.  Since Nixon, the American liberalism was killed. From Truman through Nixon, the war demonstrated the increasing dominance of the presidency within the federal government. Congress essentially defaulted to the "imperial presidency" in the conduct of foreign affairs. Vietnam also destroyed credibility within the American political process. The public came to distrust its leaders, and many officials distrusted the public. In May 1970, Ohio National Guardsmen killed four Kent State University students during a protest over U.S. troops invading Cambodia. Many Americans were outraged while others defended the Ohio authorities. As this tragic example reveals, the war rent the fabric of trust that traditionally clothed the American polity. Vietnam figured prominently in inflation, unfulfilled Great Society programs, and the generation gap. The Vietnam War brought an end to the domestic consensus that had sustained U.S. cold war policies since World War II and that had formed the basis for the federal government's authority since the sweeping expansion of that authority under Franklin D. Roosevelt.
  4. Nothing was achieved at the peace accords.  In 1971, Daniel said in the Pentagon Papers that, the dishonesty of the American government in the war: soldiers disobeyed orders, flagging, using drugs.  And Nixon responded, 66% of the Americans wanted to get out of the war; so, peace accord signed in Paris on January 21st, 1973.  But FBI and CIA surveillance continued.  March 1975, North Vietnam lunched a full scale on attack on the South Vietnam.  April, North Vietnam seized Saigon as the US and South Vietnam official fleet.
  5. What were the legacies of defeat? After January 13, 1973, the US spent another 2 billion to support the South Vietnam secretly, ignoring what the treaty of Paris had said.  The US did not totally withdraw the troops.