Election of 1960
• John Kennedy
• Richard Nixon
– Democrat
– Republican
1st Televised Presidential Debate
“Camelot”
• the “best and the brightest”
• “New Frontier”
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NASA and the Moon Project
cuts taxes, raises min. wage
increases defense spending
Peace Corps
proposes some civil rights reforms
• Ended with his assassination in Nov. of 1963
– VP Lyndon Baines Johnson
Important Cold War Events
1960-1963
• Berlin Wall
• Cuba
– Castro’s Revolution
– Bay of Pigs
– Cuban Missile Crisis
• Test Ban Treaty-1962
– “hotline”
• American involvement in Vietnam
The Origins of the
Vietnam War
Cold War Continued
The Vietnam War Memorial
Ryan McFarland and direct a link to www.zieak.com.
Conclusion
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58,000 US dead
300,000 wounded
$150 billion
8 million tons of bombs (64 Hiroshimas)
2+million Vietnamese dead
America’s 1st “lost war”
deep divisions in the cultural life of the
country
The Vietnam War
• The 1st Indochina War
• A national war of
liberation caught in
the context of the
Cold War
French Indochina 1945
The 1st Indochina War
• French
– colonial power
• Vietnamese
– independence
France fights to keep its colony.
• “First Indochina War”—8 years.
Vietnam has a long history of
resistance to foreign occupiers
• Chinese
• French
• Japanese
Viet Minh nationalist movement seeking
independence for Viet Nam
• Sept. 2, 1945 –Ho Chi Minh declares
independence
Because of the Cold War…
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Truman decides to aid the French
“containment”
$2.6 billion 1950-1954
US pays 80% by 1954
US actions
French are defeated at Dien Bien Phu
1954
outcome
Geneva Accords
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Viet Minh
France
China
Cambodia
Laos
USSR
US
UK
• temporary division of
Vietnam at the 17th
parallel
– Ho and the Viet Minh
in North
– US/French-backed
government in the
South
• elections scheduled
for 1956 to reunite
US Response
Eisenhower’s “Domino Theory”
Second Indochina War 1954-1975
US supplies money, materiel and military advisors
After French defeat, US supported
the South’s Ngo Dinh Diem
• aristocrat
• rejected land reform
• cronyism
• Catholic
• cancels national
election, rigs
local
referendum
National Liberation Front resists the
Diem regime
• “Viet Cong”
• Communists and members of Viet Minh in
the South
• insurgency against US-supported
government in the South
Monks protest Diem
June 11, 1963, Thich Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk from Vietnam, burned
himself to death at a busy intersection in downtown Saigon to bring attention to
the repressive policies of the Catholic Diem regime that controlled the South
Vietnamese government at the time. Buddhist monks asked the regime to lift its
ban on flying the traditional Buddhist flag, to grant Buddhism the same rights as
Catholicism, to stop detaining Buddhists and to give Buddhist monks and nuns
the right to practice and spread their religion.
While burning Thich Quang Duc never moved a muscle
JFK continues “containment”
• strengthened South’s army “ARVN”
• pressured Diem for reform
• By 1962 – 9,000 military advisers
Nov. 1963
•coup d’etat against Diem
•assassination of JFK
Lyndon Johnson (LBJ)
• keeps Kennedy’s advisors
• needs to appear tough on Communism1964 election
• needs political cause to escalate war
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
• NVN torpedo boats fire
on US destroyers
• “unprovoked”
• president can “take all
necessary measures to
repel any armed attack
against US forces and to
protect against further
aggression”
• “like grandma’s
nightshirt—it covers
everything”
Operation Rolling Thunder
March 1965-October 1968
• 3 year bombing
campaign against
NVN
– military targets
– then all economic
targets
– Ho Chi Minh Trail
1st regular ground combat troops
troops arrive in
Da Nang (major US air base)
3,500 arrive March, 1965
In spite of dropping more bombs,
by 1967, than we had used in all
WWII, the Vietnamese fight on.
Americans are failing to defeat
their enemy.
Why?
General William Westmoreland
US objective
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“war of attrition”
destroy VietCong resistance
negotiate a political settlement
therefore, “body counts”
• Ho: “You can kill 10 of us for every 1 of
you, but you will lose and we will win”
US tactics
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aerial bombardment
napalm
herbicides (Agent Orange)
“search and destroy patrols”
“pacification program” – we had to destroy
the village in order to save it