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24 2 2022 Vietnam
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in a televised speech on march 31 lbj
announced that he would not run for reelection
reelection
and that he was ending american
escalations in the war and would start
peace negotiations in paris with north vietnam
vietnam
so he's not going to run for re-election
and instead he's going to try to use the
rest of his term to end the war
the republican candidate richard nixon
meanwhile ran as the candidate of law
and order now remember it's the late 60s
what laws have been broken a lot in the
60s segregation
so those opposed to civil rights will
largely support nixon and repeat this
phrase again and again law and order
though there will also be a third party
candidate who will run explicitly on
segregation not so much the dog whistles
type stuff that nixon does
and he'll take the deep south
now nixon promised that he had a secret
plan to end the war in vietnam but he
couldn't tell you what it was or else it
wouldn't work you just had to trust him
he also appealed to those who still
supported the war by calling for an
honorable end to u.s involvement which
he later called peace with honor and
this implied that the way lbj was trying
to end the war was not honorable
while nixon campaigned lbj was engaged
in furious 11th hour efforts to end the
war that had already killed 30 000
americans before he left office
but nixon and his aides saw johnson's
attempts at peace as nothing more than a
crude ploy to try to help the democratic
presidential candidate hubert humphrey
win the election
in october of 68 nixon launched what
came to be known as the chino affair
he ordered his campaign chief of staff
haldeman to find ways to sabotage
johnson's plan to stage productive peace talks
talks
he wants to sabotage the peace talks so
the war continues
and he hopes a frustrated american
electorate would then turn to
republicans and to nixon himself to end
the war
the chino affair was named for anna
chanel the republican fundraiser who you
see on the slide there who became
nixon's secret back channel to the south
vietnamese government
her official role in the nixon campaign
was to organize women but she was
secretly telling the south vietnamese
government to hold out at the peace
talks and wait for nixon's presidency
that it would get them a better deal
johnson and his aides suspected the
treachery the u.s was eavesdropping on
their south vietnamese allies and when
chino told the south vietnamese
ambassador to the u.s to hold on and we
are going to win lbj heard
lbj chose not to expose the affair
during the election because he had no
proof that nixon had personally directed
chanel's actions but he raged to senator
edward dirksen of illinois the
republican leader in the senate quote
this is treason
dirksen replied
i know
nixon denied any involvement with the
scandal right up until his death but the
white house taped conversations of nixon
telling lbj i would never do anything to
encourage saigon meaning south vietnam
not to come to the table however
however
in 2007 when the nixon presidential
library finally opened haldeman's notes
to the public historian john a farrell
found four pages of notes alderman had
scrawled in october of 68 while nixon
was on the phone
saying quote keep anna chanel working on
svn meaning south vietnam
haldeman noted they were out to quote
monkey wrench lbj's election eve
attempts to end the war so nixon helped
sabotage the peace efforts to try to
extend the war so that it would get him
into office
the peace talks stalled and nixon won
the presidency in a three-way race as
you can see on the map there winning the
popular vote by less than one percent
almost half of all u.s casualties in
vietnam occurred after nixon sabotaged
anti-war demonstrations reached their
height during nixon's first two years in
office 1969 and 1970
and he and vice president spiro agnew
loached these protesters and pursued
what agnew called positive polarization
they campaigned to further divide or
polarize the nation because they thought
that was a good thing
the goal was to split the respectable
silent majority as the president labeled
his supporters from liberal democrats in
congress and radical anti-war activists
so even if you didn't like the war
you disliked the anti-war protesters
more and therefore agreed with nixon
nixon began wielding the power of the
federal government to harass his
political opponents
as we've discussed other presidents had
used the fbi the cia and military
intelligence agencies to infiltrate and
thin the ranks of civil rights groups
both dr king and malcolm x were targets
of the fbi's cointelpro
lbj had expanded these efforts to
include anti-war demonstrators nixon
went beyond other presidents in
assembling an enemies list that included
mainstream figures especially liberals
the press and his democratic opponents
now the pentagon papers were a
classified defense department history of
american actions in vietnam and they of
course revealed that the government had
been deceiving the american people about
the course of the war
when disillusioned former pentagon
official daniel ellsberg secretly leaked
the study to the new york times for
publication in 1971 an enraged nixon
sued to stop them
and he initially got an injunction
so ellsberg released the papers to 17
other newspapers including the
washington post
so he is betting that even with the
injunction one of these 18 papers is
going to print the paper
and if you have seen the movie the post
with tom hanks and meryl streep that's
what this is all about the post decision
to print the pentagon papers
now the supreme court ultimately allowed
the publication of the pentagon papers
but a furious nixon ordered his plumbers
to find out how the leak happened and to
stop it
the plumbers broke into ellsberg's
psychiatrist's office on september 3rd
1971 to try to get information to
discredit him
nixon and his plumbers believed that
they could carry out illegal acts as
long as they believed it was necessary
for national security
nixon later famously told journalist
david frost when the president does it
that means it's not illegal
now of course that's not true we have
rule of law in the united states the
president doesn't just get to do
whatever he wants to do
ultimately it was this disregard for the
rule of law that ended nixon's presidency
nixon and his national security adviser
henry kissinger wanted to reduce the
number of u.s troops in vietnam
they pursued vietnamization or
withdrawing american troops and leaving
arvin right the army of the republic of
vietnam to actually do the fighting
but this had been exactly what lbj had
been trying to do for years it turned
out there was no secret plan at all
but the key to a successful withdrawal
from vietnam for nixon was to preserve
u.s credibility so there would be no
immediate pull-out it would be a gradual
process that lasted four years from 1969
to 1973 during which almost half of the
total american casualties in vietnam occurred
occurred
looking to incentivize peace talks nixon
pursued a madman strategy he ordered the
secret bombing and invasion of
neighboring countries cambodia and laos
he intensified bombing in north vietnam
and he had the haifang harbor near hanoi mined
mined
he was trying to convince north vietnam
that he would do anything to stop the
war but the attacks failed to spur the
peace process which stalled by the end
of 69.
enormous protest rocked the nation after
the announcement of the cambodian
invasion on april 30th 1970.
national guards troops killed four
students at an anti-war demonstration at
kent state university in ohio you can
see the picture on the top of the slide there
there
and two more students at jackson state
college in mississippi
so they're full of just shooting at
anti-war protesters now
still another three years passed and
another 20 000 american troops died
before a peace deal was reached
by 1972 a majority of americans opposed
the nation's war effort a level of
dissent unprecedented in american history
history
americans cringed at nick oot's
wrenching photograph of a naked
vietnamese child fleeing an american
napalm attack
most telling of all was the criticism of
some veterans returning from the vietnam war
war
the morale of american soldiers still in
vietnam plummeted the steady withdrawal
of their comrades made clear that they
were no longer expected to win this war
drug abuse and racial conflict increase
sharply among gis even fragging that is
killing one's own officers escalated
vietnam veterans against the war staged
very effective protests against the war
these aren't young kids who are safe
because they're college students and not
subject to the draft these are people
who have been to the war
who have lost friends and loved ones in
this war and are coming back to say it's
not worth it bringing them home
so we're going to watch two clips about
vietnam's veterans against the war
vietnam veterans against the war the
first is
rather tidy it shows some of the vietnam
veterans protesting and uh testifying
before congress the second one is some
pretty rough footage of the dewey canyon
protest in front of the halls of
congress in which they are throwing their
their
war medals over the fence basically into
the trash can so take a look at those
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