“He learns how it feels to drop bombs on human beings and watch huts go up in
. . . orange flames when his aluminium napalm tanks tumble into them.”
It was estimated that 1961-65 89,000 Vietcong had been killed and considering the indiscriminate use of bombing and artillery it is impossible to say how many were innocent civilians. By 1966, the American CIA estimated at least 30,000 civilians were killed by American forces. One US General admitted to a French reporter, Jean Bertolino, that he hunted VC from his helicopter with a rifle, when the reporter pointed out that the General could not possibly tell the difference between civilians and VC at such a height, the General shrugged.
PACIFICATION:
JFK's gov't supported/funded `Strategic Hamlets Programme'
- launched in early 1962 in Mekong Delta; by August spread to all of South Vietnam
- third of peasant population to be resettled into fortified `secure' villages surrounded by barbed wire, gun towers, military guards and free fire zones = more like prisons than villages.
- 1000's built to please Diem's government and get US aid money.
Plan was to separate peasantry from Vietcong - cutting off shelter, food, supplies, and information from the Vietcong who relied upon the peasantry’s help.
This created the opposite effect:
1. The peasantry had to be forcibly even violently relocated by South Vietnamese Army = great resentment
2. In the free fire zones around the 'Hamlets' the US Airforce bombed - US Army
bombarded the jungle and landscape to kill VC and encourage other peasants to
move into the Hamlets.
- The peasantry saw homes, crops and their animals destroyed and there was further
anger at separation from ancestors' burial grounds and shrines.
This led to an increase in membership/support for Vietcong.
1962 -elite/main VC troops increased from 16,500 to 23,000
-irregulars or part-time guerrillas rose to 100,000
-VC directly controlled 20% of villages
-50% of population (secretly estimated by US) supported VC.
This policy only stored up anger and trouble for future therefore forcing the future escalation of US involvement.
1965 KY, President of South Vietnam estimated that 75% of South Vietnamese actively supported the Vietcong and NVA.
The failure of Westmoreland’s strategy and tactics led to very low morale:
Soldiers lived in constant fear of attack and every Vietnamese person was suspect
Many disagreed with the tactics and the 365 day tour was too short to give the troops the “esprit de corps”. The soldiers just wanted to survive their tour NOT to win the war.
Unpopular officers who wanted to lead missions against the NVA or VC during the 'Vietnamisation' period were often open to attack because the soldiers did not want to be the last to die in Vietnam- between 1969 and 1971 there were 730 ‘fraggings’ which referred to the use of a fragmentation grenade in an officer's quarters. 83 officers were killed by fragging.
This led to low morale which meant their fighting was poor and many took drugs.
1970 - estimate 22% Americans in Vietnam shot up heroin.
1971 - 5,000 treated for combat wounds
- 20,529 treated for serious drug abuse
The Pheonix Programme
This was a CIA secret war begun in 1968 using American soldiers and Vietnamese operatives who would go into villages and secretly assassinated suspected Vietcong. Over 10,000 were interrogated and tortured and at least over 2000 were assassinated. Many were victims of vendettas of the Vietnamese operatives but most were VC. This again undermined support for the Americans.
TOTAL WAR DEAD
1 million dead VC/NVA/North Vietnamese civilians
185,000 dead ARVN
56,000 dead Americans
450,000 dead South Vietnamese civilians
3. AMERICAN SUPPORT FOR SV DICTATORS
US support for oppressive undemocratic gov'ts in SV also destroyed support for the
American policies therefore increasing the attractiveness of the Vietcong cause.
Diem's government was corrupt, oppressive, very unpopular but US support kept him in power-Diem's family dominated his gov't and South Vietnam to their own benefit - his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu and Madame Nhu(who was First Lady as Diem was unmarried) were close advisors and both gained personal fortunes through extortion, opium trading and currency swindles, another brother, Ngo Dinh Can controlled central SV and used this control to take over most economic activity for himself(especially shipping and cinnamon trade).
Diem only trusted his own family and feared all rivals especially the army which he constantly tried to weaken and undermine especially after a 1960 failed coup d'etat by a number of senior army officers.
The corruption/oppression of the Diem gov't alienated it from the people of SV and led to the formation of the National Front for Liberation(NFL) which included many political parties opposed to Diem which Diem called the Vietcong(for Vietnamese Communists).
, especially against SV Military overthrow until May 8, 1963
- Government troops fired on Buddhists monks protesting religious discrimination
9 monks were killed, several were crushed by armoured cars
Diems’ Government tried to blame the deaths on a VC attack but everyone knew truth
Diem continued to lie and refused truth and compensation.
June 11 1963 - Thich Quang Duc, a elderly Buddhist monk, publicly immolated himself(poured petrol over himself and set himself on fire) in downtown Saigon to protest Diem's government oppression of Buddhists
- Diem's brother, Nhu said he would be `glad to supply the gasoline' for repeat performance
- Madame Nhu dismissed incident as a `barbecue'
- all of these events and comments SHOCKED westerners especially American opinion = weakened support for Diem.
- plus alienated South Vietnamese Army when Diem disguised his Special Forces as regular army paratroopers to mount August raids on Buddhist temples as punishment for the protest by Thich.
Therefore American ambassador, Henry Cabot Lodge, appointed before these raids let South
Vietnamese military know he favoured overthrow
September 14, US government stopped an aid programme of $18.5M after Diem refused
pressure from Kennedy to reform (not public in USA but known in Saigon)
November 1 - Generals began coup d'etat by November 2 Diem and Nhu were dead and the Army Generals ruled South Vietnam with US support.
November 21 - Lodge finally learned how bad situation was in SV and immediately flew to US to tell Kennedy but JFK was assassinated on November 22 before his arrival
KY AND THE GENERALS
-immediately after the overthrow of Diem, the army generals played musical chairs with the country's leadership; General Nguyen Khanh overthrew the immediate successors to Diem in 1964.
-Khanh was succeeded by Nguyen Cao Ky in 1965 who claimed Hitler as his personal hero and just continued Diem's oppressive and corrupt methods of governing = his army commanders traded opium and black-market rice, dealt in dirty property deals, pocketed American aid money.
-Ky was pressured by the US gov't to return to civilian rule so in 1966 an election for a convention to write a new constitution BUT no socialist or communists were allowed to stand for election which led to an armed rebellion by Buddhists around Da Nang = 75 dead + 9 monks burnt to death.
-the constitution was written along democratic lines and elections held April 1967 BUT massive vote-rigging, disqualification of hostile voters and intimidation used by Ky and the Army to get preferred result even to the point of forcing Ky's strongest opponent, Nguyen Van Thieu, to join Ky's ticket as his running mate. With all of this, Ky-Thieu received only 35% of popular vote but more than any of the other candidates.
-October 1967 Thieu became President and Ky the Vice-president and South Vietnam was technically under civilian rule.
Thieu to the end.
-Thieu's gov't was nothing new - completely dependent on American money and support, bribery, terror, and disqualification of unfriendly voters to stay in power and in the money gained from the opportunities for corruption
-it is rumoured that when Thieu fled SV just before the Communist victory in 1975, he flew out with $2 million worth of gold bullion.
4. ECONOMIC EXPLOITATION OF PEASANTRY
Treatment of 90% of the pop'n, the peasantry, always compared very poorly to that of Ho Chi Minh's North Vietnam:
-in NV Ho's gov't destroyed the power of the landlords(with a fair amount of bloodshed) and the land given to the peasantry who lived in 40 000 co-operatives. This new arrangement removed the age-old threat of starvation from the peasantry as production increased. In SV no land was redistributed by Diem's gov't, actually land given by the Vietminh to the peasantry was taken back so that 15% of the population owned 75% of the land.
-90% of the pop'n was peasantry but only 3% of US aid money went to rural projects in SV.
-the peasantry were very attracted to the NFL who worked with the peasantry, developed personal ties, set up Farmers Associations which settled disputes, assessed taxes on rice, planned irrigation projects and organised the village's defences, helped to reorganise agriculture into co-operatives even setting up schools and medical dispensaries in some villages. The NFL/VC helped the peasants whereas SV gov't only exploited them.
-urban dwellers also suffered economically because of the war and corruption - cost of living increased 170% between 1965 and 1967. Rice, the staple food, increased by 200% in price.
-the elites moved into luxury apartments and drove expensive cars whereas the common people were forced into begging, stealing, and prostitution to survive . There 56,000 registered prostitutes in Saigon alone.
5. VC/NVA DEDICATION/NATIONALISM
The Vietcong and North Vietnamese Army were highly motivated and committed soldiers who were fighting for their country’s freedom and they developed successful strategies, like ‘Grab Them By The Belt Buckle’ to overcome the American military superiority in weapons and technology.
“It is the duty of my generation to die for my country” taken from a diary of a VC fighter. The Vietnamese were fighting to win independence for their country and were willing to make huge sacrifices.
February “Vietnam is their country. We do not even have the right, the French did. We are obviously intruders from their point of view. We represent the old western imperialism in their eyes.” – Senator John Fulbright.
Phillip John Griffiths, a Time-Life Correspondent took a photograph of a Vietcong soldier who fought for 3 days with his intestines wrapped up and stuffed in an enamel bowl.
The Ho Chi Minh trail ran through Laos and Cambodia. The NVA used this as its main supply trail and a large proportion of their 500,000 tons yearly supply transported along it. Over 50% of the NVA supply convoys contracted malaria but the supplies continued to be moved along the trail.
The Battle of An Loc was the key point in the Easter offensive of March 1972. The seige lasted for 95 days and cost the NVA 100,000 casualties. The seige was lifted on 11 July,
In the 1968 Tet offensive, 60,000 Vietcong emerged from a series of tunnels to the north-west of Saigon. With the help of civilian supporters they attacked in a battle which lasted 10 days. 40,000 Vietcong and 1,400 civilians died.
The Iron Triangle, a series of underground tunnels protecting the exits of the Ho Chi Minh trail. Vin Lim region had underground tunnels that sheltered 70,000 people. People in the tunnels had to live for up to 30 days without seeing the sun and to lie face down to the ground so that they would not suffocate during long bombardments.
6. SUCCESSFUL VC/NVA STRATEGY/TACTICS
Another factor in favour of the Vietcong was that they could hide as civilians. Ambassador Ha Van Lau said, “Our fighters moved and worked among the people like fish in water”.
"We were not strong enough to drive out half a million American troops, but that was not our aim. Our intention was to break the will of the American Government to continue the War." Giap, Military Commander of North Vietnam.
The Ho Chi Minh Trail
The trail started in 1959 when North Vietnam decided to start supplying southern battlefields. It was a network of supply trails covering over 12,000 miles of paved and unpaved roads which started in the north on the coast and travelled south through mountains and jungle. When the trail was first laid it took 6 months to travel along it. By the height of the War it took only 6 weeks.
50, 000 women worked to repair the bombing damage to the Trail and the American bombing almost never stopped the movement of war materials to South Vietnam.
By 1964 the trail was highly efficient and men and materials were departing from organised depots. Over 25,000 soldiers guarded the trail, which the Americans considered too dangerous to attack on the ground and so relied on attacking it from the air. 50,000 labourers worked on keeping the trail clear and youth groups were called in to repair the road after bombing raids. The route was never cut. In 1965, 35,000 North Vietnam troops moved south. In 1968, 130,000 moved south.
The trail defenders grew their own food. There was strict military discipline over meal times and rationing. Their camps had their own medics and some even printed newspapers. American soldiers in Vietnam suspected that American military commanders did not believe how huge and advanced the trail was. By 1967, 60 tonnes of supplies a day were being delivered to the south and 10,000 trucks were using the trail at any 1 time.
Tactics
The Vietcong introduced a new tactic in 1966 after losing a battle in the Spring of 1965 at Pleiku in which a battalion of NVA were destroyed by the first time use of Huey helicopters in battle. This new tactic was called “grab them by the belt buckle”. The aim was to try to engage US troops at very short distances so that if the US used helicopters to drop bombs on the Vietcong, Americans would also die. From 1966 to 1972 95% of all battles and attacks were initiated by the VC and NVA and almost always at very close quarters.
B. 1968-1973 After the shock of the TET OFFENSIVE the American people lost confidence in their government's policy in Vietnam and began to question American involvement which led to growing opposition because:
1. PRESIDENTIAL LYING/CREDITABILITY GAP
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
Johnson and McNamara lied about possibility that the NV attack was a radar mistake,
he lied about why the USS Maddox was in the Gulf of Tonkin in first place and he lied about the timing of the resolution which was not written at the last moment by the President in response to the incident but had been written weeks before waiting for a provocation.
LBJ said in 1965, "For all I know, the Navy was shooting at whales out there."
August 7 - because they believed their president, by absolute majorities the Senate and House of Rep's(only two Senators voted against) passed the GULF OF TONKIN RESOLUTION House of Representatives = 466 votes - 0
Senate = 88 votes - 2
This was all exposed by the publication of the Pentagon Papers.
Tet Offensive 1968
President Johnson had sent General Westmoreland on a speaking tour during the autumn of 1967 during which Westmoreland repeatedly stated that America was winning in Vietnam, that the VC were defeated and only "a couple of years of mopping up" were required to finish them off and that they could, "see the light at the end of the tunnel". Johnson supported these remarks so when the massive VC attack came during the Tet holiday, it was a huge psychological blow. Either Johnson was lying or a fool.
Nixon and his National Security Advisor and later Secretary of State Henry Kissinger hoped to use heavy bombing to force the North Vietnamese to negotiate peace or be bombed into rubble. Kissinger called this 'jugular diplomacy'
+ 1969-71 -US Airforce dropped 2,539,743 million tons of bombs = more than total of WWII
+ 1969-70 -3,630 secret B52 bombing raids on neutral Cambodia targetting
the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
-LAOS - 4500 bombing raids/month in 1969 increased to 12500 - 15000/month in 1970 again targetting the Ho Chi Minh Trail
ALL of these raid were illegal attacks upon neutral countries at peace with the US and without the approval of the US Congress.
These attacks were made public knowledge in 1973.
THE PUBLISHING OF THE PENTAGON PAPERS
Criticism of the War heightened in mid 1971 when the New York Times published a series of articles based on the Pentagon Papers. A Pentagon analyst, Daniel Ellsberg leaked these top secret government documents on the Vietnam War which represented two years of research by the Pentagon and exposed the lies about the war and the complete lack of any plan to win in Vietnam.
The papers “chronicled a major breakdown of democratic government”, Jonathan Schell wrote, “for the overall effect of the Johnson War Policy had been deception of the public on the most important issue facing the country at the moment it was choosing it’s President”. To the Nixon White House, as guilty as Johnson of treating “what it said and what it did as 2 separate matters”.
The papers detailed the American’s military role in Vietnam during the Kennedy and Johnson administrators, and the diplomatic proceedings of the Truman and Eisenhower years.
Publishing of the Pentagon Papers exposed LBJ and Nixon’s lies which resulted in a loss of faith in the Presidency and increased hatred of the War from the American people.
2. PUBLIC OPINION
The methods used by the President and the gov't to wage the Vietnam War, the actions
of the US Forces in SV and the mounting death toll in what appeared after the 1968 Tet
Offensive to be an unwinnable war caused higher and higher levels of popular anti-war
protests until the very social stability of America seemed threatened.
March 10, 1968 a New York Times story revealed to the public that Westmoreland was requesting an additional 206,000 troops. A March Gallup Poll showed that 67% of Americans no longer believed the government knew what it was doing in South Vietnam and if the United States was winning the War, even the 33% of the country who believed in its progress might reasonably wonder, why this new request?
After Tet, “Win or Get Out” became a common bumper sticker in America.
A photo was taken during the Tet Offensive in February 1968 by Eddie Adams. The photo show’s Police Chief General Nguyen Ngoc loan executing a Vietcong officer captured in Saigon.
A 1972 photo which was very influential was the “Trang Bang” or "Napalm Girl" photo. It shows 4 children, 1 is a small girl running naked after tearing off her burning clothes and fleeing from a napalm bombed village.
Kent State
On April 30, 1970 Nixon made a speech announcing the armed invasion of Cambodia. As a result of this speech there was a reaction of protest from college campuses, professional circles, Congress, government agencies, even the cabinet. Over one third of all the colleges and universities in the country shut down as staff and students joined in the protest.
At Kent State University students burned the Reserve Officer Training Corps Centre.
On May 4, 1970 Nixon sent the National Guardsmen to Kent State University. They opened fire on un-armed group of protesters, killing 4 and wounding 11.
The photographs of dead students turned many Americans against the War. Kent State is an example of moral opposition because it shows that now (after Tet) it was not just the students but a wide range of people who were so opposed to the war that they went to great lengths to demonstrate this opposition; some even lost their lives in protest. In the immediate aftermath of Kent State 80 universities were closed by protests and 100’s more were disrupted. Also Reserve Officer Training Centres(ROTC) were burned at a rate of about 4 a day on university campuses.
Nixon would also to pander to public opinion.
In September 1969, Nixon announced the withdrawal of 60,000 troops to defuse a planned anti-war rally in Washington.
He changed the draft age to exclude any male over 20 in 1969 and achieved a 71% approval rating.
In October 1972, Nixon ordered a halt to bombing north of the 20th Parallel and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger claimed “Peace was at hand” in order to win more votes in the coming November 1972 Presidential elections.
Public Opinion Polls
1. President Eisenhower did not commit American troops to help the French in 1954 because he knew that this would be very unpopular.
May 19 1954 Gallup Poll
What do you think America would gain by getting into a fighting war in Indochina?
Nothing - 48%
No gain – lead to World War III - 7%
No gain – lead to bigger debt/ill will - 3% =58% were opposed!
Stop communism spread - 18%
Keep allies – future security of US - 6%
Bring peace to Asia - 3%
Maintain US prestige - 3%
No opinion - 12%
2. Between 1960 and 1963 during Kennedy's Presidency the Gallup opinion poll company did not perceive Vietnam as a sufficiently important issue to conduct even 1 poll of American’s opinion about it because not controversial enough.
3. Between 1964-1968 President Johnson 's increasing commitment to South Vietnam was seen as necessary to stop the spread of Communism even if the American people were not fully convinced that the cost was worth it. This support began to disappear after TET exposed the unwinnable nature of the war in Vietnam.
April 3 1966
What are your overall feelings about the Vietnam situation?
“Neccessary evil” - 43%
“US should get out” - 15%
“We should be more aggressive” - 12%
“Wish for quick ending” - 10%
General fear of War
“Too many lives being lost” - 5%
Other reasons - 6%
Don’t know - 6%
1968 – Before Tet – January 3
In the view of developments since we entered the fighting in Vietnam, do you think the US made a mistake in sending troops to fight in Vietnam?
Yes - 45%
No - 46%
No Opinion - 9%
Directly after Tet – March 10
The same question was asked.
Yes - 49%
No - 41%
No opinion - 10%
President Nixon had committed to withdrawing American ground troops from South Vietnam during his successful 1968 Presidential campaign. This became know as Vietnamisation but Nixon wanted to rely upon massive aerial bombing to support the South Vietnamese government against the North and this became increasingly controversial during his presidency.
January 11 1969 March 15 1969
Withdraw all troops immediately - 19% 21%
Withdraw all by end of 1970 - 22% 25%
Withdraw troops but no time limit - 40% 38%
Send more troops and step up fighting - 11% 7%
No opinion - 8% 9%
June 28 1969
US made a mistake sending troops to fight in Vietnam?
Yes - 56%
No - 36%
No opinion - 8%
June 6 1971
Same question asked.
Yes - 61%
No - 28%
No opinion - 11%
1969
Public Opinion Poll which demonstrated the declining support of the American
people for the Vietnam War:
Here are 4 different plans the US could follow in dealing with the war in Vietnam. Which do you prefer?
Plan A - Withdrawal all troops from Vietnam immediately - 19%.
Plan B - Withdraw all troops by end of 1970 - 22%.
Plan C - Withdraw troops but take as many years to do this as are needed to turn the war over to the South Vietnamese - 40%.
Plan D - Send more troops to Vietnam and step up the fight - 11%.
No opinion - 8%.
(81% opted for some kind of end to the war in Vietnam)
-November 1969 500,000 people assembled at the Washington to protest against the war but Nixon watched American football on TV instead of responding to the protest.
1969 Opinion Poll
- 57% of Americans said they thought the US should withdraw from Vietnam.
April, 1971
Public opinion poll showed that 60% of Americans thought that the Vietnam war was
morally wrong; only 26% supported the war and Nixon's policy of bombing in Vietnam.
3. MORAL OPPOSITION
The Students for a Democratic Society of SDS was founded in 1962. The SDS was a national left-liberal organisation which was against racism, poverty and the War in Vietnam. The SDS mobilised 100,000’s in anti-war protest’s.
One example of this was April 17, 1965 in Washington DC where an anti-war demonstration was called. The SDS only expected a handful of people but were supported by crowd’s of some 25,000.
An American, Norman Morrison, immolated himself in protest against the war in November 1965.
In mid 1965, there were already 380 prosecutions for induction refusal, 3 years later the number was 3,305.
Moderate anti rights groups condemned the exclusion of blacks; but in 1966 the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), one of the major civil rights organisations in the south, declared its support for “the men in this country who are unwilling to respond to military draft which would compel them to contribute their lives to US aggression in the name of the ‘freedom’ we find so false in this country”. There were daily demos against the Atlanta induction centre and many arrests. In May 1967, as part of a “We Won’t Go” campaign, Cleveland Sellers, SNCC Program Secretary, refused induction on the grounds that the draft boards in South Caroline, Georgia, Alabama, Mississipi and Louisiana employed only 6 blacks out of 1,691 members. By the summer of 1967, 17 staff members of BNCC had refused induction and were under indictment.
Antiwar rallies and demonstrations drew larger crowds in 1966 and 1967, and the participants became more outspoken in their opposition. Protestors marched daily around the White House chanting “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids have you killed today?” and “Ho, ho, ho, Chi Minh, NLF is going to win”.
The most dramatic single act of protest came on October 21 1967, when as many as 10,000 foes of the War gathered in Washington and an estimated 35,000 demonstrated at the entrance to the Pentagon, the “nerve centre of American Militarism”.
In the fall of 1967, plans for a national draft card turn-in merged with the call for a march against the Pentagon planned by A.J. Muste’s group, now called the National Mobilisation Against the War. On the West Coast, organisers planned a “Stop the Draft” week, focusing on the Oakland draft board. Both events involved direct confrontation with the police reminiscent of the Southern civil rights battles. In California, 3,000 protesters surrounded the induction centre at dawn on October 16, 1967. The police ordered them to leave and when they stayed, attacked the crowd with nightsticks, injuring 20 and clearing the area. The demos returned and 97 were arrested. On the 3rd day, 10,000 demonstrators appeared. This time when the police attacked protesters successfully blocked the streets.
In October 1967, in Washington DC, about 100,000 people arrived for a protest rally in The Mall. The march went across the Arlington Memorial Bridge and sat in front of the Pentagon. Over 1,000 sat down in front of a line armed. When it got dark small flames appeared as “dozens of draft cards began to burn, held aloft amid increasing cheers and applause”.
In August 1968 the Democratic Party gathered in Chicago to hold their presidential nomination convention which became a magnet for student protesters. Chicago Mayor Daley was determined to crush the student protests and put 12,000 police and 12,000 army and national guardsmen on the streets with orders to clear the students – 1,000’s of students were injured and 8 prominent protest leaders were arrested for inciting the crowds to riot.
1972
May 8, 1972 Nixon's announcement of mining Haiphong harbour and bombing of NV
sparked new wave of widespread national protests.
June 22, 1972 A Ring Around Congress protest was organised by folk-singer Joan
Baez; anti-war protesters joined hands and completely encircled the Congress
building.
Nixon's Christmas bombing of North Vietnam led to further outrage and protests in
dozens of cities across America: 'Sign-the-Peace-Treaty' petitions were signed, candle
light vigils in front of Churches and shopping centres, as well as marches and pickets in
front of Federal Buildings. 41 religious leaders also publicly condemned the bombing
and even some bomber pilots refused to go on missions or sabotaged their equipment.
- Nixon was further condemned by Sweden's Premier Olaf Palme and the Roman Catholic Pope Paul VI.
- Even Congress condemned the bombing with the Democrat Party representatives passing a resolution calling for an end of military action in Indochina pending the release of American POW's.
Military age males(18-21) who were liable to be drafted(conscripted) into the Armed Forces protested the war by ‘draft-dodging’:
300,000 fled to Canada to avoid the draft.
10,000 fled to Europe.
10,000 hid or went ‘underground’ in America
up to 250,000 young men refused to register with the government for the draft.
4. MEDIA OPPOSITION
Before the Tet Offensive in 1968, news reporters were in favour of the war as opposing communism or they presented a neutral viewpoint. There were very few anti-war reporters UNTIL AFTER Tet when the media became increasingly negative.
Walter Cronkite, Dean of TV News Commentators, was one of the most trusted reporters during the Vietnam War. On February 27 1968 Cronkite during his evening ABC newscast, informed the nation that;
“We are mired in stalemate” in Vietnam “To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past.”
LB Johnson said after the broadcast, “If I have lost Walter then I have lost Mr Joe American.”
Pictures-Photographs by the media also had a huge impact upon people's feelings
towards the war especially after the Tet Offensive.
Visual representation of the atrocities in Vietnam also went a long way towards provoking much of the anti-war feeling. These were all made public during or after Tet. Some important ones are:
General Loan’s shooting of a Vietcong suspect in the streets of Saigon during the Tet Offensive, Feb’ 1968 caused many to question what America was fighting for in Vietnam.
Photos of the My Lai Massacre, published in Life magazine in 1969 led to the public demands for the Court Martial of LT William Calley which occurred in 1970.
Kent State: pictures of students lying dead on the campus grounds shot dead by National Guard soldiers, May 1970 greatly disturbed many.
Trang Bang photo of four children, one is a small girl running naked after tearing off her burning clothes, fleeing from a Napalm bombed village, 1972 made Americans question why they were killing children.
1971 Pentagon Papers: Criticism of the War heightened in mid 1971 when the New York Times published a series of articles based on the Pentagon Papers. A Pentagon analyst, Daniel Ellsberg leaked these top secret government documents on the Vietnam War which represented two years of research by the Pentagon and exposed the lies about the war and the complete lack of any plan to win in Vietnam.
The papers “chronicled a major breakdown of democratic government”, Jonathan Schell wrote, “for the overall effect of the Johnson War Policy had been deception of the public on the most important issue facing the country at the moment it was choosing it’s President”. To the Nixon White House, as guilty as Johnson of treating “what it said and what it did as 2 separate matters”.
Vice President Spiro Agnew described the American press because of their negative reporting on Vietnam as:
“nattering nabobs of negativism”
“effete corps of impudent snobs”
“misleading” news media
5. CONGRESSIONAL OPPOSITION
There was almost no Congressional opposition to American involvement in
Vietnam until after TET and after public opinion turned against the war.
As more and more Americans turned against the war and expressed their views to
their elected representatives in Congress, Congressmen and Senators became
increasingly hostile to the Presidents' policy for S.E. Asia and passed laws which
forced the withdrawal of America from the region.
1965 August 7, congress passed the South East Asia resolution granting Johnson considerable power to “take all necessary measures to repel any armed attacks against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression”. Only 2 Senators – Wayne Morse (D-Oreg) and Ernest Gruering (D-Alas) – voted against it. The House of Representatives was even more compliant; it passed the resolution unanimously.
1966 Running through February 18, the Fulbright hearings were an eye opener to the millions of Americans who watched them.
As the Fulbright hearings were getting underway administrative officials were responding to another annoying outburst of establishment opposition to the War. In late January the "lawyers committee on American policy towards Vietnam”, claiming 4,000 members released a letter to the press challenging the legality of US intervention in Vietnam
the shock and surprise of all and then began peace negotiations.
December 1970 Congress voted to repeal the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution but Nixon chose to ignore Congress by arguing he had a duty to protect the ground troops still in South Vietnam.
1971 The 26th Constitutional amendment was made which gave the right to vote to all citizens over the age of eighteen years which was the age of the student protesters and of the men who were being drafted to fight in Vietnam. These new voters voted for the first time in the elections for Congress in November 1972. Congress became increasingly anti-war after this election.
1973 July congress in response to Nixon’s lengthy and continual illegal bombing activities in Cambodia passed the War Powers Act over Nixon’s veto on November 7 1973. This equals an end to all bombing in South East Asia and no new military operations unless Congress approved in every instance. The President had to consult the Congress before sending American forces into foreign countries or present a report to Congress justifying military deployment within 48 hours and to withdraw troops after 60 days unless Congress specifically said otherwise.
April 1974 refused Nixon's request for $474 Million
July 1974 Congress began impeachment proceedings against Nixon for illegal activities during
the 1972 election(Watergate break-in and cover up).
August 6, 1974 aid to South Vietnam limited to $700 Million down from the requested $1600 Million
August 8, 1974 Richard Nixon resigned the Presidency to avoid impeachment and Vice
President Gerald Ford took over Nixon's policy for S.E.Asia.
March 1975 rejected President Ford's request for $500 Million for SV
April 1975 rejected President Ford's request for $700 Million
