history lesson 19 review

Johnson faced a dilemma in Vietnam: his predecessors had made a commitment to stopping Communism there and the public seemed willing to follow his leadership, but some advisers cautioned him against continued American involvement.

Some critics of the war advised the administration to pursue a face-saving way out of Vietnam but Johnson continued to dispatch more advisers, weapons, and economic aid.

In 1964 Johnson, believing American credibility was on the line, seized the opportunity to increase the pressure on North Vietnam.

In response to a report that North Vietnamese gunboats had fired on U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, Johnson ordered air strikes on North Vietnamese targets and requested and received Congress's permission to repel further armed attacks against United States forces.

Johnson's tough stance in the Gulf of Tonkin crisis, just two months before the 1964 elections, helped counter the charges made by his opponent, Arizona senator Barry Goldwater, that he was ?soft on communism.?

Both the American and president?s own credibility on the line, Johnson and his advisers believed that the long-standing commitment to South Vietnam and the fear of repercussions and disengagement without victory might not achieve the Great Society.

The apparent success in the Dominican Republic no doubt encouraged the president to press on in Vietnam.

Johnson widened the war, rejecting peace overtures from North Vietnam and initiating Operation Rolling Thunder, a bombing campaign against them.

Early in 1965, Johnson ordered the first U.S. ground troops to South Vietnam, and in July, Johnson shifted U.S. troops from defensive to offensive operations.

Operation Rolling Thunder lasted for 3 and half year bombing campaign.  Military officials that United States should have stick with the bombing until devastation to bring down North Vietnam but the thought of civilian compelled military to fight with one hand tied behind its back.

Antiwar sentiment also entered society's mainstream and by 1968 there were many prominent critics of the war.

Opposition to the war took diverse forms: letter-writing campaigns to officials, teach-ins on college campuses, mass marches, student strikes, withholding of federal taxes, draft card burnings, and civil disobedience against military centers and producers of war materials

Many refused to fight in the war and opponents of the war held far from unanimous views; some opposition was morally based, some practical.

The antiwar movement outraged millions of Americans who supported the war and President Johnson tried a number of means to silence critics.

The critical turning point came with the Tet Offensive, which began on January 30, 1968, when the North Vietnamese and Vietcong attacked key cities and every major American base in South Vietnam.

The Tet Offensive underscored the credibility gap between official statements and the war's actual progress. In the aftermath of Tet, Johnson considered a request from Westmoreland for 200,000 more troops, but advisers persuaded him to take steps to disengage.

On March 31, 1968, Lyndon Johnson announced in a televised speech that the United States would reduce its bombing of North Vietnam and that he was prepared to begin peace talks with its leaders; he then stunned the audience by declaring that he would not run for reelection.

That announcement marked the end of the gradual escalation that had begun in 1965, and the beginning of the shift from increasing American forces to ?Vietnamization,? a reliance on the South Vietnamese.

Negotiations began in Paris in May 1968, but nothing was settled immediately and the war continued.

At home, the violence escalated; during the spring of 1968 the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Democratic presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy both took place.

In August, protesters battled the police in Chicago, where the Democratic Party had convened to nominate its presidential ticket.

Chicago's Mayor Richard Daley issued a ban on rallies and marches, ordered a curfew, and mobilized thousands of police.

On August 25, police responded to jeering protesters with tear gas and clubs, initiating three days of street battles, and culminating in a so-called police riot on the night of August 28 in which police used mace and nightsticks not only on those who had come to provoke violence but also reporters, convention delegates, and peaceful demonstrators.

The bloodshed in Chicago and upheaval across the country had little effect on the outcome of either major party's convention.

A strong third party also entered the electoral scene: staunch segregationist George C. Wallace ran on the ticket of the American Independent Party.

With nearly ten million votes, the American Independent Party produced the strongest third-party finish since 1924, but Republican Nixon managed to edge out Democrat Hubert Humphrey by just half a million popular votes.

The 1968 elections revealed deep cracks in the coalition that, except in the Eisenhower years, had kept the Democrats in power for thirty years.

With nearly ten million votes, the American Independent Party produced the strongest third-party finish since 1924, but Republican Nixon managed to edge out Democrat Hubert Humphrey by just half a million popular votes.

The 1968 elections revealed deep cracks in the coalition that, except in the Eisenhower years, had kept the Democrats in power for thirty years.

Nixon and Kissinger embraced the overriding goal of the three preceding administrations?a non-Communist South Vietnam ?but that goal had become almost incidental to the larger objective of maintaining American credibility.

From 1969 to 1972, Nixon and Kissinger pursued a four-pronged approach in Vietnam: (1) to strengthen the South Vietnamese military and government, (2) to disarm the antiwar movement at home, (3) to negotiate with North Vietnam and the Soviet Union, and (4) to conduct a massive bombing campaign.

As part of the Vietnamization of the war, ARVN forces grew to over one million, and their air force became the fourth largest in the world.

The other side of Vietnamization was the withdrawal of U.S. forces.

In the spring of 1969, Nixon began a ferocious air war in Cambodia, carefully hiding it from Congress and the public for more than a year.

In April 1970, Nixon ordered a joint U.S.-ARVN invasion of Cambodia, thus turning Vietnam into ?Nixon's? war, provoking more outrage at home.

The Cambodian invasion failed to break the will of North Vietnam and North Vietnamese presence in Cambodia strengthened the Khmer Rouge and spurred on a brutal civil war in that country.

By 1971, Vietnam veterans themselves were a visible part of the peace movement, the first men in U.S. history to organize against a war in which they had fought.

After the spring of 1971, there were fewer massive antiwar demonstrations, but protest continued, especially after Americans learned of the My Lai massacre and the government's cover-up of the event.

Administration policy suffered another blow in June 1971 with the publication of the Pentagon Papers, a secret government study critical of U.S. policy in Vietnam, and military morale sank in the last years of the war

The dire predictions of three presidents that a Communist victory in South Vietnam would set the dominoes cascading turned out to be false, and in the end, the long pursuit of victory in Vietnam only complicated the United States' relations with its allies and alienated many countries in the Third World.

In addition, the war shattered consensus at home, increased presidential power at the expense of the congressional authority and public accountability, weakened the economy and domestic reform, and contributed to the downfall of two presidents.

Veterans generally expressed two kinds of reactions to the defeat. Many regarded the commitment as an honorable one and felt betrayed by the U.S. government for not letting them and their now-dead comrades win the war; others blamed the government for sacrificing the nation's youth in an immoral or useless war.

Because the Vietnam War was in large part a civil, guerrilla war, combat was especially brutal.

Most veterans came home to public neglect, while some faced harassment from antiwar activists who did not distinguish the war from the warriors.

The Veterans Administration (VA) estimated that nearly one-sixth of the three million veterans suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.

The incorporation of the Vietnam War into the collective experience was symbolized most dramatically in the Vietnam Veterans Memorial unveiled in Washington, D.C., in November 1982.