Part III the vietnam war
When President Johnson took office, American foreign policy was still aimed at keeping communism from spreading. Because of this, the US became involved in many different parts of the world during the Johnson years. This put a great strain on American relations with other countries and on the unity of the American people.
American leaders believed it was necessary to stop the spread of communism in Southeast Asia and put forth the domino theory. It went like this: Asia had a lot of unsettled countries, if one of them fell to communism, the countries next to it would soon do the same. They were mostly interested in Vietnam which had been part of French Indochina. American involvement in Vietnam did not begin with President Johnson. When Communist and nationalist rebels fought French colonialism in Indochina after World War II, President Truman sent military aid to France. In 1954 the French were driven out by the soldiers of the communist leader Ho Chi Minh. Like Korea, Vietnam was then divided into two, Communists ruled the North and non-communists the South. The next step was supposed to be the election of one government for the whole country. But the election never took place, mainly because the government of South Vietnam feared that communists would win. Ho Chi Ming set out to unite Vietnam by war. Americans were especially afraid that communist China might try to take control in Southeast Asia as the Soviet Union had done in Eastern Europe. In the 1950s and early 1960s, the US poured money and weapons into South Vietnam. In 1955, the first American advisors were sent to South Vietnam to train their army.
In the
early 1960s it was clear that the government of South Vietnam was
losing the war. By that time, a group of Vietnamese Communists called
the Vietcong were well established in South Vietnam. They fought as
guerrillas – bands who make war by harassment and sabotage. In
August 1964, after an attack on American warships by North Vietnamese
gunboats, President Johnson asked the Congress to allow him to take
steps to prevent any future attacks. The Congress replied by passing
the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which allowed the President to use any
measures necessary to halt an attack on American forces and to
prevent further aggression. President Johnson launched air strikes
against North Vietnamese naval bases. The first American combat
soldiers were sent to Vietnam in March 1
965.
By 1968 500,000 American troops had arrived. Meanwhile, the Air Force
gradually stepped up raided against North Vietnam, first bombing
military bases and routes, later hitting factories and power stations
near Hanoi. The war was thought to be costing the US about $25
billion a year.
The Vietnam War was one of ambushes and sudden attacks. After an attack the Vietcong would melt away in the jungle, or turn into peaceful villagers. A guerilla war like this meant the Americans often had no enemy to strike back at. As one soldier put it, to find the Vietcong was “like trying to identify tears in a bucket of water”. American fighting men grew angry and frustrated. They spread vast areas of countryside with deadly chemicals to destroy the Vietcong’s supply trails and burned down villages which were suspected of sheltering Vietcong soldiers.
As the number of Americans wounded and killed in Vietnam grew, so did the number of Americans against the war. College students especially were against it. All over the country demonstrations took place. In 1967, more than 100,000 people took part in an antiwar parade in New York City. That same year, more than 50,000 paraded in San Francisco, and some 55,000 marched from the Lincoln Memorial to the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. The Vietnam War caused a split among the American people. Many felt the war was necessary to stop communism. Others felt that it was a civil war which should be settled by the Vietnamese. The Congress also divided between “hawks”, who favored greater military effort, and “doves”, who wanted the war effort to be lessened.
President Johnson saw that by sending American soldiers to fight in Vietnam he had led the US into a trap. The war was destroying his country’s good name in the world and setting its people against one another. In 1968 he stopped the bombing of North Vietnam and started to look for ways of making peace.
In 1969 Richard Nixon was elected to replace Johnson as President. He wanted to end the war in Vietnam without the Americans looking as if they had been beaten. Nixon worked out a plan he called “Vietnamization”. This was a program in which American troops would equip and train the South Vietnamese to take over the fighting so that Americans could withdraw.
The peace talks dragged on, and so did the war. In March 1970, matters grew worse, as a new leader of Cambodia asked President Nixon for aid against Communists in his country. Soon American forces went into Cambodia to attack Communist strongholds. This angered many Americans who were against the war. Huge demonstrations to protest the Cambodian invasion broke out at many American colleges.
Almost three years passed before the agreement was reached on the war. In January 1973 the US, South Vietnam, and North Vietnam and Vietcong finally came to terms. The North Vietnamese and Vietcong agreed to return all American prisoners of War. By March 1973 the last American troops had left Vietnam. But the real end of Vietnam War came in May 1975, when victorious communist tanks rolled into Saigon, the capital city of South Vietnam. The Communists marked their victory by giving Saigon a new name – Ho Chi Minh City.
In Korea, twenty years earlier, the Americans had claimed they had containment work. In Vietnam they knew, and so did everyone else, that they had failed.
DISCUSSION
Why did the US become involved in many different parts of the world during the Johnson years?
What is the domino theory?
When did American involvement in Vietnam begin?
After France was driven out of the country, Vietnam was divided into two, wasn’t it?
Why did Americans fear the Chinese involvement in Vietnam?
When were first American advisors sent to South Vietnam?
What was the tactics of Vietcong?
What actions did President Johnson take after the Gulf Tonkin Resolution?
What was the approximate number of American troops in Vietnam in 1968?
Why did one American soldier say the fighting the Vietcong was “like trying to identify tears in a bucket of water”?
Did the Vietnam War split American society?
What was the objective of the program called Vietnamization?
How did many American people react to the news that American troops entered Cambodia?
When did the last American troops leave Vietnam?
Why did the Vietnamese give their capital a new name – Ho Chi Minh City?
MATCH THE TERMS WITH THEIR DEFINITIONS
1) New Frontier
2) NATO
3) human rights
4) cold war
5) antiwar movement
6) Berlin blockade
7) domino theory
8) Marshall Plan
9) guerilla warfare
10) Brown v. Board of Education
a) the political protest against US policy in Vietnam during the war years
b) the Russian blockade of the western- occupied section of Berlin
c) Supreme court decision that separate schools for black and white students were unconstitutional (1954)
d) hostility and sharp conflict between states, such as in diplomacy and economics, without actual warfare
e) the theory that a certain result will follow a certain cause like a row of dominoes falling if the first is pushed; specifically, the theory that if a nation becomes a communist state, the nations nearby will too
f) a type of combat in which rebels who specialize in sudden, hit-and-run attacks make surprise raids on their enemies
g) the rights and privileges of all human beings, including those stated in the Declaration of Independence and those guaranteed and protected by the Bill of Rights
h) the policies adopted by John F. Kennedy that included Madicare, federal aid to education, creation of a Department of Urban Affairs, a lowing of tariffs between the US and the European Common Market, and programs to help fight unemployment and pollution
i) the post-World War II plan for aid to European countries formulated by General George Marshall in 1947
j) an international organization, founded in 1949 as an alliance between the USA, Canada, and ten western European countries
SUPPLEMENTARY ACTIVITIES
1. Read the text about Abraham Lincoln and John Kennedy? Were there many similarities in the lives of two American presidents?
DOES HISTORY REPEAT ITSELF?
THE LINCOLN AND KENNEDY COINCIDENCES
This strange story is about a series of uncanny coincidences which link two of America's most popular presidents: Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy.
Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846, Kennedy was elected 100 years later, almost to the day in fact. After their deaths from assassination, both of these presidents were succeeded by Southerners with the surname Johnson. Lincoln was succeeded by Andrew Johnson, who was born in 1808, and Kennedy was succeeded by Lyndon Johnson, who was born in 1908. Both Johnsons have 13 letters in their names and both of them served in the US Senate.
Mary Lincoln and Jackie Kennedy both had children who died while their husbands were in the White House. Both Lincoln and Kennedy studied law. John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald both had fifteen letters in their names, and were both Southerners, were both in their 20s, and of course, both assassins were shot before they could stand trial. Kennedy had a secretary named Miss Lincoln, and Lincoln had a secretary named John Kennedy.
John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln in a theatre and ran to a warehouse, and Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and ran to a theatre. Stranger still, the car Kennedy was traveling in when he was shot was a Ford Lincoln. Lincoln was shot in Ford's Theatre.
Both assassinations took place on a Friday, and the two presidents were shot in the back of the head while their wives were at their side.
Kennedy and Lincoln were both historic civil rights campaigners who were heavily criticized while in office but were glorified after they died.
On the day of the assassinations Kennedy and Lincoln made strange prophetic statements. Hours before Lincoln was shot, he said to his personal guard, "If somebody wants to take my life, there is nothing I can do prevent it."
And hours before Kennedy went to Dallas in 1963, he said to his wife Jackie, "If somebody wants to shoot me from a window with a rifle, nobody can stop it, so why worry about it?"
And finally, both presidents were said to have been victims of a conspiracy. When Lincoln was shot, the telegraph lines out of Washington, D.C., remained silent for three hours on the orders of a high ranking official who has never been identified. It is thought this information blackout was arranged to give John Wilkes Booth – who was fleeing from the scene of the crime – a head start.
Tom Slemen
2. On August 28, 1963 Dr King helped lead a famous civil-rights march on Washington, D.C. that brought more than a quarter of a million people to the nation’s capital. Thousands of blacks and whites marched behind the black leaders. The march ended in front of the Lincoln Memorial, Dr King was the last speaker. It was here that he made his famous “I have a dream” speech, in which he told about the dream he had for his four children and all children. Read one of the most important speeches in American history.