Election of 1960

Election of 1960

• John Kennedy– Democrat

• Richard Nixon– Republican

1st Televised Presidential Debate

“Camelot”

• the “best and the brightest”• “New Frontier”

– 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 Events1960-1963

• 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

• 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…• 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 Phu1954

outcome

Geneva Accords• 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 1954-1975US 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 Communism-

1964 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 ThunderMarch 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

• “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

• aerial bombardment• napalm• herbicides (Agent Orange)• “search and destroy patrols”• “pacification program” – we had to destroy

the village in order to save it