Harry Truman is an important figure in relation to Vietnam as it was him who made the decision to oppose communism throughout the world. In relation to US support for France, the Truman administration concluded that the French were invaluable allies against Communism in both Indochina and Europe, and therefore deserving of American assistance. However, many articulate Vietnamese were unhappy with French rule, which resulted in a small Vietnamese nationalist group in espouse of Communism grown up in exile under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh. Consequently, Truman offered $10 million to support the French military effort, and established a US Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) in Saigon. This assistance then increased, as by the end of the year, the US had given France $100 million, along with aircraft, patrol boats, napalm bombs and ground combat machinery.
One thing he mentions repeatedly is the reluctance of United States aid money. He mentions the elite trained Aclactl Battalion, and that their American trainers had perhaps instilled their aggressiveness. He mentions that the Americans loved Monterrosa and that the Americans were desperate to finish the war. As an example Danner says, "The Americans had stepped forward to fund the war, but were unwilling to fight it" He mentions the aid of a CIA officer who claims that the largest fighting was taking place at El Mozote. This leads us to America actually acknowledging that something might have been happening at El Mozote.
It was only a few days until the NLF troops had been beaten back and the American troops once again occupied Saigon and their own embassy. The Americans were not Militarily defeated, in actual fact defeating and killing 58,000 north Vietnamese troops (Wiest, 2008) however this attack is ranked high above others as the start of the downward spiral that ended the war. Despite the offensive by the North Vietnamese forces the standoff had not changed anything, Lawrence in, the Vietnam War a concise international history, claims it “merely changed the nature of the stalemate” and that the Tet offensive was “confirming opposition to the war among American public.” (Lawrence, 2008 P116). The North Vietnamese forces being able to take and hold the supposed hub of American power in Saigon, to then have the image of the Vietcong on the roof waving the flag of the opposing army is crushing blow to the American public. This Kind of image and media brought about the anti war movement that believed the war was a ‘quagmire’ and needed to be
He announced his plan of “Vietnamization” which was a strategy which replaced American troops with Vietnamese troops. Vietnamization was supposed created so that the responsibility of the war would fall into the hand of South Vietnam. It allowed American troops to return home slowly. In the same year, President Nixon had planned to secretly bomb Cambodia with an effort to eliminate the Communist camps that were present over there. In 1970, troops started to invade Cambodia which infuriated people because Nixon had promised peace.
The hawks and doves were complete opposites, the hawk’s argument concluded that America must win the war in Vietnam in order to contain communism in Southeast Asia and preserve the nation’s prestige (Davidson-Gienapp-Heyrman-Lytle-Stroff, 2005). The doves on the other hand wanted the conflict in Vietnam ended immediately and the troops returned home. The political and social outcomes facing the United States because of the conflict in Vietnam ranged from a growing distrust of the decisions being made by the political leaders to the ever increasing cost of the conflict in Vietnam. The growing distrust helped to fuel the student unrest because the younger generation decided to voice their opinions and take a stand for those
America’s involvement in the Vietnam War was projected onto the US citizens as one that should almost be laughed about, because according to the US military, Vietnam was just a poor, unsophisticated third world nation whereas America was viewed as an incredibly wealthy superpower. Before things became apparent among the US citizens, no one really questioned the participation in the War, it was perceived as some patriotic venture. Protests seemed to spark in October 1956, where the American state had increased the amount soldiers being drafted. The draft had forced numerous amounts of young, poor men to represent and fight for America. At the beginning of the year America had drafted approximately three thousand soldiers per month, however that
Germans would shell British trenches and the British soldiers would be ready for the attack. The aim of this battle was to ease pressure the Germans had put on the nearby village of Verdun, using the battle as a distraction. They relied heavily on the ‘New Army’ – the civilian recruits brought in by Lord Kitchener’s advertising campaign. These thousands upon thousands of men had absolutely no battle experience and insufficient training. At 7:30 am on the 1st of July, the British began a massive attack against German forces.
Document 1 is a picture extracted from Life, a professional pictorial magazine primarily diffused to upper and middle-class Americans. Document 2 is a caricature from the Berkeley Barb, an underground student-run weekly newspaper. These documents each support a competing vision of US involvement in Vietnam, with the first approaching it from a very patriotic, conservative, pro-war point of view, and the other promoting anti-war feeling. Document 1 was published in 1969, right on the heels of the Tet Offensive of 1968, when the communist Viet Cong forces orchestrated a surprise attack during the Tet New Year celebration on South Vietnamese troops. Although it was a military defeat for the communists, this event profoundly shocked the American
Fortunately, American forces were able to repel the NVA attack and inflict heavy losses on the viet-cong, but while also taking loses themselves. This tet offensive showed America that it was perhaps in a war that it was not bound to win. Due to the heavy losses of the NVA and viet-cong, President Nixon from 1969 to 1974 was able to begin troop withdrawal and the process of vietnamization. This process of vietnamization meant that there were huge American withdrawals from the north as well as a massive effort to train the south Vietnamese army so they could defend themselves. This whole process finally was at its end on April 29th 1975, with the famous televised withdrawal of the embassy marines form Saigon and the famous footage of helicopter being pushed over the side of a U.S. carrier to make room for
Richard Nixon Vietnamize the war (train the South Vietnamese to fight their own and the U.S. support them with bombing raids), mine North harbor, bombing and invasion of Cambodia and Laos ( Kent University demonstration Release of the Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg revealed the war unwinnable, but presidents ignored the conclusion of CIA Nixon tried to stop its release( New York Times Co. v. United States S C: A free press was more important than keeping secrets of the government End draft (voluntary army), 26th Amendment reduced the voting age to 18 Congress passed the War Powers Act which prevented the president from sending troops to a foreign country for more than 60 days without a vote by Congress. “Ping Pong Diplomacy” with China Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty (limit defensive missiles) & Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) (limit offensive missiles) ( Détente with USSR All the President’s Men by Carl Bernstein & Bob Woodward Jimmy Carter: Return of the Panama Canal to Panama, Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel, failure in the Iran Hostage