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1960s Politics & Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh & Vietnam. Election of 1960. Election of 1960. John F. Kennedy (1961-1963). - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
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1960s Politics & Vietnam
Ho Chi Minh & Vietnam
Election of 1960
John F. Kennedy (1961-1963)“Let every nation know, whether
it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship,
support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the
success of liberty.”
“And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for
your country.”
“Macho” presidency
Camelot
New Frontier• Convinced Congress to continue deficit spending to deal
with recession (unemployment was at 6%)
• Pushed for higher minimum wage, increased Social Security benefits, and modest housing and educational programs
• Congress defeated plans for federal aid to education, health insurance for the elderly, and programs to help migrant workers, unemployed youths, and urban commuters
• Peace Corps – addressed poverty in Third World countries
• Alliance for Progress – economic assistance to Latin America to prevent the spread of communism
• Space Race
New Frontier
New Frontier• Began to address issues of poverty and race relations in 1963
(The Other America by Michael Harrington, 1962 and Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin, 1961)
• African Americans had supplied Kennedy’s margin of victory in 1960; expected presidential actions
• At first Kennedy was quiet on civil rights issues to win southern congressional support
• Attorney General Robert Kennedy helped protesters when federal laws were violated
• Increasing (televised) violence in South led Kennedy to act in 1963; publicly supported integration of schools and end of Jim Crow in South
Kennedy & Cold War
Cuba & Fidel Castro
Bay of Pigs Invasion
Bay of Pigs Fiasco
Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962
Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962
Kennedy & Cold War• Kennedy was criticized for “brinkmanship” policy and
for not ousting Castro; Cubans switched to Republican Party
• Khrushchev was forced out of power in USSR
• “hot line” established between U.S. and U.S.S.R.
• Limited Test Ban Treaty, 1963
Tragedy in Dallas
Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-
1969)
“War on Poverty”• Economic Opportunity Act, 1964
(Job Corps, Neighborhood Youth Corps, VISTA, Head Start)
• 1964 tax cut to spur economic growth
• 1964 Civil Rights Act
Election of 1964
Election of 1964
Election of 1964
Election of 1964• Barry Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative
(1960)
• Kevin Phillips’ The Emerging Republican Party (1969)
– 1964 returns showed important shift in power to West and South; rise of Sunbelt and conservatism
Great
Society
Great Society• Johnson’s domestic agenda resulted in Congress passing more
than 206 bills in the areas of education, housing, poverty, health, civil rights, the environment, and consumer advocacy.
• Child Health Improvement and Protection Act, 1968
• Fair Housing Act of 1968
• Executive Order 11246 (1965)
• Robert Weaver, first black Cabinet member (1966)
• Constance Baker Motley, first black female federal judge (1966)
• Thurgood Marshall, first black Supreme Court justice (1967)
Warren Court• Warren Court rejected loyalty oaths, affirmed
free speech, and affirmed church-state separation; Engel v. Vitale (1962)
• Warren Court forced reapportionment; Baker v. Carr (1962)
• Warren Court greatly increased the ability of accused criminals to defend themselves; Mapp v. Ohio (1961), Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), Escobedo v. Illinois (1964), Miranda v. Arizona (1968)
Legacy of Great Society• In 1960, 20% of population (40 million) were classified as poor;
in 1969, only 12% (24 million) were classified as poor
• Great Society extended health insurance to poor and elderly and provided better housing for low-income families; Number of families living in home without indoor plumbing fell from 20% to 11%
• Infant mortality rate among the poor fell by one-third between 1965 and 1975; By 1970 only 8% of poor had never seen a doctor (20% in 1965)
• African American median family income rose 53%; employment in professional fields and educational attainments also rose
• Percentage of African Americans below the poverty line fell from 55% in 1960 to 27% in 1968
Legacy of Great Society
Legacy of Great Society
White Backlash• Ghetto rioting, rise of black militancy, and resentment over Great
Society social legislation combined to produce a backlash among many whites; acceleration of “white flight”
• 1968 Republican candidate Richard Nixon appealed to “silent majority” and promised to restore law and order, eliminate “wasteful” federal antipoverty programs, and appoint “strict constructionists” to Supreme Court
• As president, Nixon did away with Model Cities program and Office of Economic Opportunity; urged Congress not to extend Voting Rights Act of 1965 or to enforce Fair Housing Act
• Appointed four conservatives to the Supreme Court including Chief Justice Warren Burger and later Chief Justice William Rehnquist; Milliken v. Bradley (1974) and Bakke v. Regents of University of California (1978)
In the beginning…la mission civilisatrice
Declaration of Independence (1945)
Ho Chi Minh
Vietminh
Franklin Roosevelt
Harry Truman
Mao Zedong & Joseph Stalin
$2.6 billion
Dien Bien Phu (1954)
In the beginning…Geneva Agreements (1954)
17th Parallel
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Ngo Dinh Diem
“because we know no one better”
“Diem’s the only boy we got out there”
“free” elections – 98.2 percent
strategic hamlet program
Vietcong & Ho Chi Minh Trail
Kennedy & Vietnam
“flexible response”
Conventional & counterinsurgency forces as well
nuclear response
Special Forces (Green Berets)
American “advisors”
1961 – 3205 “advisors”
1962 – 11,300 “advisors”
1963 – 16,300 “advisors”
“save” South Vietnam
Kennedy & Vietnam
Ngo Dinh Diem
Buddhist monk protests
Madame Nhu – “barbecues”
American reporters
isolation and paranoia
November 1, 1963
Kennedy assassination
De-escalation?
Mekong Delta
Johnson & Vietnam
Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ)
“domino theory”
“nail coonskin to the wall”
Election of 1964
Gulf of Tonkin incidents
U.S.S. Maddox, 1964
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
Lyndon’s War“He made appointments, approved
promotions, reviewed troop requests, determined deployments, selected
bombing targets, and restricted aircraft sorties. Night after night, wearing a
dressing gown and carrying a flashlight, he would descend into the White House basement “situation room” to monitor the conduct of the conflict … often, too, he would doze by his bedside telephone, waiting to hear the outcome of a mission to rescue one of “my pilots” shot down over Haiphong or Vinh or Thai Nguyen.
It was his war.”
Lyndon’s War• Succession of unstable military dictators in South
Vietnam
• Johnson’s advisors were divided:
• SecDefense Robert McNamara and SecState Dean Rusk wanted a more aggressive military presence in Vietnam including more ground troops
• George Ball believed United States was making same mistake as the French; “Once on the tiger’s back, we cannot be sure of picking the place to dismount.”
• Johnson chose to escalate the war
Lyndon’s War• February 1965 – Vietcong attacked an American base,
killing several American soldiers
• Operation ROLLING THUNDER
• Between 1965 and 1973, American pilots flew more than 526,000 sorties and dropped 6,162,000 tons of bombs on enemy targets (3x the total amount of bombs dropped by all belligerent countries in World War II)
• Bombings had no harmful effects on North Vietnamese morale and actually increased support for communist regime; undermined U.S. counterinsurgency efforts in South Vietnam
Lyndon’s War• Massive use of air power actually Bombing raids killed
enemies and civilians; napalm, Agent Orange
• Larger air war led to escalation of ground troops under command of General William Westmoreland:
1965: 184,300 troops 636 killed
1966: 385,300 troops 6644 killed
1967: 485,600 troops 16,021 killed
1968: 536,000 troops 30,610 killed
Lyndon’s War
Lyndon’s War• Search-and-destroy missions displaced South
Vietnamese; 3 million refugees by 1967
Tet OffensiveLoyalty to the “party line’
William Westmoreland
Tet Offensive
Saigon, Hue
Walter Cronkite
“credibility gap”
Eugene McCarthy
Robert Kennedy
Pete Seeger
March 31, 1968
Fall of JohnsonModus operandi
Duplicity
Should have called up reserves and National Guradsmen and pushed
for higher taxes
Slow, steady escalation
Dissatisfaction surfaced first with the young who were being asked
to fight and die for the cause
Fighting in the Jungle
Vietcong were everywhere
Vietcong tunnel system
I & I
“smoke-in”
“hearts and minds”
Fighting in the Jungle
My Lai Massacre
Fighting in the Jungle
Desertion and AWOL rates skyrocketed; lowered morale
1966 – 14.9/57.2 per thousand
1971 – 73.5/176.9 per thousand
“fragging” – 1101 officers
Terrain, weather
Student Protests at Home
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)
doves
Eugene McCarthy
Robert Kennedy (RFK)
Assassination
Election of 1968
Election of 1968
Hubert Humphrey
Democratic party
Richard M. Nixon
Republican party
George Wallace
American Independent
Election of 1968
Richard Nixon, 1969-1973
Henry Kissinger
Vietnamization“peace with honor”
“madman” theory
Nixon Doctrine
Vietnamization
Nguyen Van Thieu
ARVN
Secret bombings of Cambodia & Ho Chi Minh Trail
Invasion of Cambodia –
April 30, 1970
Kent State Massacre
Vietnamization
By 1972, Vietnamization failed to end the war
U.S. Invasion of Cambodia and S. Vietnamese invasion of
Laos
Only 70,000 American troops remained in S. Vietnam in
1973
A “Decent Interval”
Sino-Soviet Rift
ping-pong diplomacy
Nixon’s China visit, 1972
“the vastest ocean in the world, twenty-five years of no
communication”
Leonid Brezhnev
Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty of 1972 (SALT I)
ICBMs & MIRVs
Election of 1972
*End of New Deal Coalition
End of Vietnam War
Operation LINEBACKER II
“Christmas bombings”
Paris Peace Conference
January 27, 1973
cease-fire
58,000 Americans, over 2 million Vietnamese killed
End of Vietnam War
“South Vietnam has gained the right to determine its own
future … Let us be proud that America did not settle for a
peace that would have betrayed our ally … that
would have ended the war for us but continued the war for
the fifty million people of Indochina.”
End of Vietnam War
“I could not stomach [it], so nauseating was its hypocrisy and self-delusion … there is
no reason why they [the Communists] should stop now
… I give them a couple of years before they invade the
South.”
Nguyen Cao Ky
Fall of Saigon, 1975
Fall of Saigon, 1975
Legacy of Vietnam War
Returning veterans faced hostility; reports of drug use
and “fragging”
First Blood (1982)
Taxi Driver (1976)
Apocalypse Now (1979)
“Magnum, P.I.”, “The A-Team”, and “Airwolf”
Legacy of Vietnam War
1.5 million Refugees
Reconstruction in Vietnam
Cambodia
Khmer Rouge, 1978
Vietnam, 1986
POW-MIA
diplomatic recognition, 1995
Legacy of Vietnam War
• Vietnam War left a divided America
• Effectively neutralized the Great Society
• End of the “imperial presidency”
• Abolition of the military draft
• War Powers Act of 1973
• Caused U.S. leaders to revaluate nature of communism
• Increased media, public cynicism of government and leaders