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24 1 2022 Vietnam
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hello and welcome to today's lecture on
the vietnam war so before this we've
been moving kind of president by
president and then we have the civil
rights movement and we've been moving
kind of through the civil rights
movement but also acknowledging
president by president as we go
today we're going to pause for a moment
we know the vietnam war has been going
on during most of that 60 stuff we've
been talking about so we're going to
pause we're going to back up and talk
about the history of the vietnam war
we'll get through the war we'll actually
end in the nixon administration so we're
kind of going both before during and
after the point of american history that
we've gotten to up to this point
and then we'll jump back in
in kind of regular lecture after exam two
two
so we're looking at which american
presidents escalated the war and there
are several what made the war so
difficult to win and we'll be defining
credibility gap now if you look at that
center photo here
that is provided by my friend dr bill
columbi he's a phd in american history
but he was also in the marine corps in
vietnam and he has generously given me
um the ability to use some of his
photographs from that time period so
you'll see quite a few photos from uh
colonel bill as we call him during this lecture
so lbj's presidency would be
overshadowed by the war in vietnam
vietnamese nationalists were led by ho
chi minh who you see there on the side
and the indo-chinese communist party now
all the way back in the 1930s they had
tried to free their nation from french
colonial rule so they were a colony of
france they wanted to be independent
they wanted their own nation
when japan invaded vietnam during world
war ii the viet men these vietnamese
nationalists were on the same side as
the u.s fighting against the japanese
because they didn't want to be a colony
of france but they didn't want to be a
colony of japan either
the u.s office of strategic services the
oss the precursor to the cia
trained ho chi minh and his men and
provided them with weapons so they could
fight the japanese
after world war ii the french wanted
their colonies back including vietnam
and ho chi minh and the viet minh wanted
a free vietnam but they were communists
so american officials argued the domino
theory that if one nation fell to
vietnam its neighbors would soon follow
suit and then communism would just
engulf the world so they couldn't let
vietnam fall to communism
so the u.s supported the french effort
to retake vietnam because it would
remain capitalist if it remained a colony
colony
france was an important anti-communist
ally in western europe and the u.s
wanted to be on friendly relations with
them during the cold war in case the
cold war turned into a hot war in europe
they needed france to be on the side of
britain in the united states in the
capitalist powers
with american money and with british
ships france fought the vietnam from
1946 to 1954
but the viet minh defeated the french at
the battle of dion benfu in may of 1954.
two months later the geneva accords
divided vietnam at the 17th parallel so
north vietnam is now separate from south
vietnam much the way we saw with korea
in earlier lectures
national elections monitored by the
united nations were supposed to be held
in two years to reunify the nation
and whoever became the leader of north
and south would be able to run in those
elections and then who won would lead
the unified country
ho chi minh forces solidified control of
the north and the french pulled out entirely
entirely
the eisenhower administration however
intervened and prevented the elections
from happening ali feared that the
communists who were pretty popular would win
win
without the election south vietnam would
remain capitalist instead of communists
and the division
that had been temporary between north
and south vietnam
now became permanent so we have
capitalist south vietnam
communist north vietnam and we can kind
of see a little bit of this on the map
here north vietnam
right here's the gulf of tonkin which
we'll be talking about
thailand we've got laos and cambodia here
here
and of course south vietnam here
the u.s established the republic of
vietnam in the south led by the roman
catholic anti-communist no din diem
in north vietnam the sometimes brutal
internal revolution for the creation of
a socialist society proceeded with an
extensive program of land
redistribution but in south vietnam dm
ruled for eight years with increasing
repression of communists and anyone who
dissented against his government
southern members of that old viet men
those vietnamese nationalists who had
fought for independence began a sabotage
campaign in south vietnam they didn't
approve of this government
they formed the national liberation
front the nlf in 1960 with the support
of north vietnam because they wanted to
liberate south vietnam
diem and his american supporters called
them the viet cong or vc which is
roughly equivalent to the derogatory
american english term kami's
diem's government and its army of the
republic of vietnam or arvind for short
could not contain this insurgency
seeking to reunify vietnam under a
communist government
jfk continued the strategies of truman
and eisenhower before him fight
communism in south vietnam by supporting
dm's corrupt but capitalist regime
but the nlf were winning in the struggle
against dm
so kennedy increased the number of
military advisors in vietnam from 800 to 17
17
and by 1963 it was still obvious that
dm's brutal regime was about to fall
acting with jfk's consent several of
dm's own generals assassinated him in
november of 1963.
a merry-go-round of incredibly unpopular
but capitalist military dictators followed
followed
none of them had popular support and the
situation in south vietnam deteriorated
but the american public remained largely
unaware of events in south vietnam after
kennedy's assassination when lbj became
president he faced a swiftly
deteriorating military situation
the us government portrayed the nlf as
just a tool of north vietnam but they
were really popular even in the south
and arvin was demoralized right they're
fighting for a government they don't
have a say in
that's pretty authoritarian
so johnson faced a similar decision in
vietnam as truman had faced in korea he
could either withdraw entirely and let
it fall to communism or he could
escalate american involvement and hope
to keep the nation divided between the
communist north and the capitalist south
johnson escalated the conflict but how
he did so was really really important
there was no national debate there
wasn't even a congressional vote to
declare war
lbj did not want to distract from his
domestic agenda and he didn't want to
provoke the soviet union or china into
this work as that was really bad in korea
korea
but if south vietnam fell to the
communist north lbj would face a
debilitating backlash from republicans
who would attack him like mccarthy had
attacked truman over the loss of china
to communism 15 years earlier
so the president used deceptive language
describing offensive american actions as
defensive in august of 1964 north
vietnamese ships in the gulf of tonkin
fired on the u.s destroyer the maddox
which was aiding south vietnamese
sabotage operations against the north
lbj exploited the incident as an excuse
for escalating american involvement in
vietnam he portrayed the incident as
unprovoked communist aggression against
a u.s vessel that just happened to be in
the area when in fact they were engaged
in the sabotage efforts against the north
north
congress almost unanimously approved the
gulf of tonkin resolution granting lbj
authority to deploy the u.s military to
defend south vietnam
without an actual declaration of war lbj
ordered u.s planes to begin bombing
north vietnam an american marine
splashed ashore in south vietnam in
march of 1965
the american ground war had begun
american forces under general
william westmoreland were tasked with
defending south vietnam against both the
vc and the regular north vietnamese army
the nva
in july lbj decided to add 100 000 more
soldiers with more to follow as necessary
necessary
an american strategy had two key goals
they needed to limit the war so as to
not draw in neighboring china and to
avoid a repeat of the korean war and
possibly even drawing in the soviet
union and risking nuclear war
and they needed to force the nlf and
north vietnam to give up their struggle
to reunify the country under communist control
control
the u.s was basically trying to recreate
the outcome of the korean conflict in
vietnam right they were never trying to
unite vietnam under a capitalist
government that clearly was not going to
work so the problem became the political
nature of this guerrilla war in the
south it was a contest for the loyalty
of the population and the nlf was super
popular and their operatives mingled
easily with the citizenry
so the us used the strategic hamlet
program in which they uprooted rural
peasants concentrated them in fortified
towns and then created free fire zones
where anything that moved was a target
and that's not really a great way to win
friends amongst the people you're trying
to protect here
the u.s air force pounded the south as
well as the north dropping more bombs on
vietnam than had been used in all
theaters on all sides of world war ii
one quarter of the south vietnamese
population became refugees but no matter
how many troops the u.s sent or how many
bombs they dropped they could not win
this guerrilla war
u.s officials like general westmoreland
and secretary of defense robert mcnamara
continued to falsely claim that a
communist defeat was near
but by 1968 half a million american
troops were stationed in vietnam nearly
20 000 had been killed and the war was
no closer to being won
protests emerged across the u.s as early
as 1965 and really gained traction by
as the war escalated the professional
u.s army was diluted with hundreds of
thousands of young draftees who were inexperienced
inexperienced
student deferments protected affluent
americans so gis were predominantly
those who lacked money or access to education
education
and although 70 were white black
hispanic and native american troops
shipped out in disproportionate numbers
they're more likely to be drafted than
their white counterparts
in sharp contrast to the motives of the
nlf and the nva few of these young men
or the 10 000 women who volunteered as
nurses were in vietnam to win the war
regardless of cost or duration
they only had to survive 12 months
before returning home and while lbj
spoke of the vietnam war as a case of
one sovereign nation north vietnam
invading another sovereign nation south vietnam
vietnam
few vietnamese saw the war in these terms
terms
the us had intervened in what was really
an ongoing revolution aimed at
reunifying a nation after its
independence from its colonial power
basically the u.s stumbled into a civil
war in vietnam because they happened to
be communist few vietnamese whatever
their opinions of communism were viewed
the corrupt saigon regime in south
vietnam as legitimate or democratic it
was kept in place by foreigners whereas
the north was ruled by local leaders who
had expelled the french occupiers
and the us gravely underestimated the
appeal of the nlf and the north
vietnamese ho chi minh was extremely
popular and if you compare it to the
american experience he was kind of there
george washington he had helped liberate
the nation and get it independent from a
colonial power
so of course they're going to like him
the nlf recruiting in the south sword
while people in north vietnam remained
largely loyal to their government the
nva regular army units came south to
match the growing number of u.s forces
and occasionally engaged in large
battles like the idrang valley in the
fall of 1965.
american troops made devastating use of
their superior weapons and air power so
the north vietnamese learned to not
engage u.s troops this way because they
would lose
they changed tactics and began to use
guerrilla warfare which will work for
them for the rest of the war
the bulk of the fighting consisted of
smaller engagements with deceptive
enemies on their home turf who faded in
and out of the civilian population with ease
ease
ambushes and unexpected deaths haunted
americans on patrol and as the war
deteriorated the johnson administration
deployed hundreds of thousands of troops
to try to prevent the communist takeover
of south vietnam
stalemate body counts hazy war aims and
the draft catalyzed an anti-war movement
at home
protesters burned their draft cards
refused to pay their income taxes
occupied government buildings and
delayed trains loaded with war materials
for the most part though they did not
take out their anger on vietnam war
veterans who they saw as further victims
of the war
that myth emerges out of movies in the
1980s so if you ask veterans about this
you may get stories of one person
messing up with one person right
attacking them verbally mostly sometimes
physically in one-on-one situations
which you won't find is what you see in
those movies which is just crowds of
anti-war protesters trying to physically
assault vietnam war veterans
by 1967 anti-war demonstrations drew
hundreds of thousands and u.s soldiers
grew frustrated over the nature of the
war they were being ordered to fight
there was no clear battlefront there was
no understandable strategy
american soldiers were commanded simply
to kill the often mysterious enemy in
the midst of an insurgency and realizing
that few of the people they were
supposed to be defending actually wanted
them there but under orders to produce
enemy bodies u.s ground troops began to
slide toward a racial war against all vietnamese
vietnamese
in 1965 cbs evening news aired a segment
in which american marines callously
burned the south vietnamese village of
cam knee
with little regard for its occupants
or their livelihoods because they had
been accused of aiding vc gorillas
lbj berated the head of cbs yelling over
the phone quote your boys just shat on
the american flag
right because they ran a piece that was
critical of the american military in vietnam
vietnam
in late 1967 the public face of the war
effort remained upbeat general
westmoreland declared that he could
quote see some light at the end of the tunnel
tunnel
the white house and military used press
briefings and interviews to paint a
deceptively positive image but stories
like cbs's cam knee piece exposed the
credibility gap the enormous space
between official claims about the war
and the increasingly evident reality on
the ground
the government was lying
the startling ted offensive further
exposed the scap in 1968. on january
30th of that year the vietnamese new
year called tet communist forces
launched a coordinated attack on more
than 100 american and south vietnamese
sites in south vietnam including an
attack on the u.s embassy itself in saigon
saigon
the blow to american public confidence
in lbj and the military who had assured
the american people that everything was
going great the war was almost over the
boys would be home by christmas it
proved irreversible
although u.s forces repulsed the attack
ted showed the vc were not on the verge
of defeat and the government was not
telling the truth
then in november of 1969 investigative
reporter seymour hirsch revealed that
105 soldiers from charlie company
enraged by the recent deaths of several
comrades and ambushes had committed the
worst atrocity of the war in the village
of maile
the night before the miley massacre army
captain medina told his soldiers that a
string of hamlets including maile would
be full of enemy troops and empty of civilians
civilians
and under these rules of engagement
soldiers were free to fire at any one or anything
anything
when they landed it turned out to be the
opposite lots of civilians and no enemy
but charlie company encouraged by
lieutenant william cali spent four hours
raping and mutilating women murdering
civilians and burning their homes
more than 200 children and infants many
of them herded into a ditch died in a
spray of machine gun fire
photographs of the massacre taken by a
photographer embedded with charlie
company galvanized the anti-vietnam war movement
movement
the army covered up the massacre for a
year and a half and eventually found
only lieutenant cali guilty of murdering
vietnamese civilians
he was paroled after serving three years
lbj's support on the left withered as
the anti-war movement expanded and this
is one of the ironies of the war lbj is
a democrat and yet republicans will be
more supportive of continuing the war
than democrats and especially liberals
and leftists would
lbj's vulnerability led robert kennedy
to enter the presidential race two weeks
after this news
rfk was trying to win the democratic
primary against the sitting democratic
president lbj so anytime a sitting
president receives a primary challenge
that's not great for them
after tet the nations most trusted
reporter walter cronkite traveled to
vietnam to try to figure out what was
really going on there and at the
conclusion of his report on the evening
news he told his audience that the
following clip you're going to watch was
his opinion an editorial
watching the report in the white house
lbj lamented if i've lost cronkite i've
lost middle america
so take a moment and go watch the walter
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