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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