Chapter 18 Notes

The Impossible Victory: Vietnam

• The US lunched military endeavor against a revolutionary movement in a peasant country an lost
• modern technology vs. human beings, the humans won
• brought the largest anti-war movement in the country, helped to end the war
• Ho Chi Minh, a communist, led a revolution to end Indochina’s colonial status, expelled the Japanese (used to be French colony, Japan took it in WWII, western powers it returned to France )
• Indochina created a declaration of independence in 1945
• Issues against the French were: inhumane laws, killed patriots, ruined the public opinion, took their fields, mines, and raw materials, and unfair taxes resulting in extreme poverty
• England and China, who occupied parts of Indochina returned it to the French
• Minh wrote to the UN and Truman to remind him of self-determination, letter were ignored
• In Oct. 1946, the French bombed Northern Vietnam, started 8 year war between the French and Vietminh
• US gave military aid to the French and by ’54 it financed 80% of the French war effort
• The public in the US believed the US was trying to stop communism
• Domino Theory- that like a row of dominos if one country fell to communism then others would fall too
• ’53- state department knew the French were losing the war, if they withdrew the US would consider taking up in Indochina
• ’54- unable to get popular support from natives, the French withdrew
• Peace conference in Geneva, French removed to South and Vietminh stayed in the north. An election was planned to unify Vietnam, they would decide their own government
• US prevented unification, and set up Ngo Dinh Diem as the head of government in Saigon and pressured him to not hold elections
• Diem was unpopular, his land reforms did nothing, and imprisoned many who spoke against him
• ’58 guerrilla attacks began against the regime, communist helped them
• ’60- the National Liberation Front was made, it untied the opposition against the government, and was powered by the peasantry
• Kennedy continued the policies of Truman and Eisenhower
• In June ’63, a Buddhist monk set himself on fire in a public square, others monks did the same to protest the Diem government, many other people began to protest in mass demonstrations
• Vietnamese generals plotted with a CIA agent and others to overthrow Diem, Diem was given no warning of the coup and was executed
• In August ’64 President Johnson lunch full scale war on Vietnam, the public was told American destroyers were attacked unprovoked, but it was fake and the CIA actually lunched an attack
• The Tonkin Resolution gave Johnson the right to attack without a declaration of war
• free fire zone, where anyone who remained was considered enemies, including children and civilians, and bombs could be dropped there at will
• search and destroy missions were used on villages accused of harboring Viet Cong, all men of military age were kill, the homes burned, and the women, children and elderly were marched to refugee camps
• “Operation Phoenix” was a CIA program that kill about 20 thousand civilians, secretly without trial, who were suspected communist
• March 16, 1968 soldiers ordered civilians into a ditch and murdered them, later investigations showed two other mass grave sites
• ’68 the NLF infiltrated Saigon and paralyzed the airfield, they were beaten back, but proved to the US they weren’t broken yet
• in Laos, the CIA installed government was facing a rebellion
• ’68 Johnson’s popularity was diminishing, he didn’t run for president again, and said negotiations with the Vietnamese would start
• Nixon was the next president, and promised to remove troops, by ’72 150,00 were left
• Vietnamization was Nixon’s policy, the Saigon government, with Vietnamese troops and US money and air power would continue the war
• In ’70 the US invaded Cambodia, it was a failure and led to protest, and Nixon wasn’t allowed to use Us troops without the congress’s approval
• In ’71, US supported the South Vietnam’s invasion of Laos, which failed
• The beginnings of protest in the US started with civil rights movements
• The Student Nonviolence Coordinating Committee called for withdrawal, blacks and whites joined together in protest, men refused to register for the draft or be inducted, registered men would burn their draft cards, in October ’67, all over the nation men returned their draft cards to the government
• In ’65 two people burned themselves, and that year a hundred gathered on Boston common, four years later the numbers were up to a hundred thousand. In ’71 twenty thousand were in Washington protesting, 14 thousand were arrested, the Peace Corp volunteers spoke out.
• Priest and nuns of the catholic church voiced their anger against the war and joined the antiwar movement
• Students were greatly involved with the early protest against the war, at Kent University there was a demonstration that was fired upon, 4 students died and one paralyzed, 400 collages/universities went on strike in protest of that, ROTC programs were canceled in 40 schools
• In ’65 61% of the population was for the war and believed it was right, by ’71 61% thought the US involvement was wrong
• Separate incidents of refusing to go to Vietnam, or fight, acts began to increase, desertion to Western Europe and Canada grew. A GI antiwar movement got organized, they had underground newspapers, and even on the war front, soldiers wore black armbands to show their support. Veterans formed Vietnam Veterans Against the War, they testified about the atrocities they had witnessed
• In April 1975 North Vietnamese troops entered Saigon, the government fell, and the war was over. Reunified into the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
• During the war judges and juries were less likely to convict demonstrators and the antiwar movement
• This was the first defeat to the American empire (that was formed after WWII), it lost to a strong peasantry overseas and a large protest movement at home.