Complete Idiot’s Guide to American History

by Alan Axelrod

  Hearts and Minds

  In the early stages of the war, President Kennedy had spoken of the need to win the “hearts and minds” of the Vietnamese people. And even as America’s technologically advanced weaponry (including napalm incendiary bombs and highly toxic chemical agents to defoliate the jungle and expose the enemy) destroyed the country, the hearts and minds of the people remained elusive targets.

  Hell, No! We Won’t Go!

  The fact is that American war policy had not only failed to win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese, but it was rapidly losing influence over the hearts and minds of citizens of the United States. President Johnson increasingly relied on the Selective Service system—the draft—to supply troops. Relatively well-off young people could often avoid conscription through student deferments (college enrollment skyrocketed during the war) and by other means. Less-privileged and minority youth bore the brunt of the draft, a fact that stirred resentment and unrest, especially in the African-American community.

  But antiwar sentiment was hardly confined to black America. What rapidly evolved into a full-blown antiwar movement began with leftist college students and peace activists. And its more Americans came home in “body bags,” the movement spread into the mainstream. College campuses first served as centers of discussion about and against the war, and then. they became the staging areas for demonstrations, including a series of marches on Washington starting in 1965 and continuing through 1968 and again in 1971.

  Antiwar protest widened what was popularly called the generation gap, pitting young people against “anyone over 30.” The antiwar movement became associated with a general counterculture movement, which featured young people in long hair (for both sexes) and wearing what to their elders seemed bizarre gypsy-hobo outfits. Such youngsters called themselves hippies and ostentatiously indulged in “recreational” drugs (such as marijuana and the hallucinogenic LSD) and “recreational” sex. Government officials assumed that the entire peace movement was backed by communists and used the FBI as well as the CIA (illegally) to infiltrate antiwar organizations. True, some organizations associated with the movement were undoubtedly subversive; however, most protesters were mainstream individuals, aged 20 to 29, who were simply disgusted and outraged by the war.

  The student fringe of the peace movement became increasingly vocal during the 1960s, with demonstrations—sometimes destructive—disrupting and even temporarily closing down some college campuses. In mass demonstrations across the country, young men burned their draft registration cards and chanted, “Hell, no! We won’t go!” So-called “confrontations” between demonstrators and police or even National Guardsmen became commonplace.

  The Light at the End of the Tunnel

  By the end of 1967, it was clear that the Vietnam War was gruesomely stalemated. President Johnson repeatedly went before the nation, assuring television viewers that there was “light at the end of the tunnel.” But the increasing numbers of U.S. casualties created a credibility gap between what the administration claimed and what the public believed.

  Tet Offensive

  In this period of growing doubt, Hanoi staged a series of massive offensives, first along the border, with attacks against the U.S. base at Khe Sanh, then against South Vietnamese provincial capitals and principal cities beginning on January 30, 1968, a Vietnamese lunar holiday called Tet. The offensive, which included an assault on the U.S. embassy in Saigon, was costly to U.S. and ARVN forces, but even more costly to the Viet Cong. However, the three-week campaign was a devastating psychological victory for the communists and convinced many Americans, including politicians and policy makers, that the war was unwinnable.

  With American casualties now topping 1,000 a month, it was hard to believe official military pronouncements that Tet was by no means a defeat. Tet hardened public opposition to the war and sharply divided legislators, with hawks (war supporters) on one side, and doves (peace advocates) on the other.

  Resignation of Johnson

  On March 31, President Johnson made two surprise television announcements. He declared that he would restrict bombing above the 20th parallel, thereby opening the door to a negotiated settlement of the war, and he announced that he would not seek another term as president. Johnson recognized that his advocacy of the war was tearing the nation apart.

  Cease-fire negotiations began in May, only to stall over Hanoi’s demands for a complete bombing halt and NLF (National Liberation Front) representation at the peace table. Johnson resisted but in November agreed to these terms. Despite the boost this move gave the sagging presidential campaign of Democrat Hubert Humphrey, Richard M. Nixon (whom many had counted out of politics after he lost the race for California governor in 1962) emerged victorious in the presidential contest.

  Nixon’s War

  Richard Milhous Nixon (1913-94) was a man who believed in winning at any cost. To ensure victory in the 1968 election, he made repeated-though vague-promises to end the war. Yet, after he was elected, Nixon did not hesitate to expand the war into neighboring Laos and Cambodia. Nixon had evolved a grand strategy with his foreign policy advisor, Henry Kissinger (b. 1923). The strategy called for improving relations with the Soviets (through trade and an arms-limitation agreement) in order to disengage Moscow from Hanoi, and for normalizing relations with China. After the U.S.S.R. and China had cut the North Vietnamese loose, Nixon and Kissinger reasoned, the United States could negotiate a “peace with honor” in Vietnam. The strategy didn’t work. The Soviets announced their recognition of the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG) formed by the NLF in June 1969, and the peace talks foundered.

  Paris, Cambodia, and Laos

  As peace negotiations went round and round in Paris, the Nixon administration sought to accelerate the Vietnamization process by turning more and more of the responsibility for the war over to ARVN forces, which, however, continued to perform poorly. Despite the discouraging results, U.S. casualties did drop, and President Nixon was able to begin troop withdrawals.

  With the failure of diplomacy, Nixon turned to force, striking at communist supply and staging areas in Cambodia. This incursion triggered angry protests at home, including a demonstration at Kent State University in Ohio on May 4, 1970. The event resulted in the killing of four unarmed students and the wounding of nine more when inexperienced National Guardsmen fired on them. Subsequently, 100,000 demonstrators marched on Washington, and Congress registered its own protest by rescinding the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. Nixon withdrew troops from Cambodia but stepped up bombing raids, and when communist infiltration continued unabated, the U.S. supplied air support for an ARVN invasion of Laos in February 1971.

  By the end of 1971, withdrawals had reduced troop strength to 175,000 in Vietnam, somewhat calming protests at home but destroying front-line morale, as remaining troops saw themselves pawns in a lost cause. Drug and alcohol abuse assumed epidemic proportions among soldiers, who were openly rebellious; some transformed search-and-destroy missions into “search-and-avoid” operations, the object of which was to get home safely.

  Death for Easter

  In March 1972, the communists launched a new invasion, initially routing ARVN troops until President Nixon retaliated by redoubling air attacks, mining Haiphong harbor, and establishing a naval blockade of the North. Following the communist “Easter Offensive,” Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese representative Le Duc Tho finally formulated an agreement. The terms were to withdraw U.S. troops, return POWs, and lay the foundation for a political settlement through establishment of a special council of reconciliation. South Vietnamese president Nguyen Van Thieu rejected the peace terms because they permitted Viet Cong forces to remain in place in the South.

  Bombs for Christmas

  The fact that Nixon’s negotiator, Kissinger, had been able to announce that “peace is at hand” assured the president reelection in 1972. Once in office, however, Nixon supported Thieu, repudiating the peace terms Kissinger had negotiated. Nixon then ordered massive
B-52 bombing raids north of the 20th parallel, which forced the North Vietnamese back to the negotiating table.

  The agreement reached after the bombing was not materially different from what Kissinger had originally concluded. This time, President Thieu was ignored.

  Paris Accords and the Fall of Saigon

  On January 31, 1973, the United States and North Vietnam signed the Paris Accords, which brought U.S. withdrawal and the return of the POWs, some of whom had been languishing in North Vietnamese prisons for nearly a decade. A four-party Joint Military Commission and an International Commission of Control and Supervision supervised the cease-fire. However, the Nixon administration continued to send massive amounts of aid to the Thieu government, and both the North and South freely violated the accords. To pressure the North into abiding by them, the United States resumed bombing Cambodia and menaced North Vietnam with reconnaissance overflights.

  But a war-weary Congress had turned against the president, whose administration (as you shall see in the next chapter) was now wallowing and disintegrating in the Watergate Scandal. In November 1973, Congress passed the War Powers Act, which required the president to inform Congress within 48 hours of deployment of U.S. military forces abroad; the act also mandated the forces’ withdrawal within 60 days if Congress did not approve. In 1.974, U.S. aid to South Vietnam was reduced from $2.56 billion to $907 million, and to $700 million in 1975.

  What hopes Thieu held out for support from the Nixon administration were dashed when the U.S. president, facing impeachment, resigned in August 1974. Beginning in early 1975, the dispirited South suffered one military defeat after another. After Congress rejected President Gerald Ford’s request for $300 million in supplemental aid to South Vietnam, Nguyen Van Thieu hurriedly resigned his office. He left the leadership of his nation to Duong Van Minh, whose single official act was unconditional surrender to the North on April 30, 1975. A dramatic, frenzied evacuation of Americans remaining in Vietnam followed. The spectacle of U.S. personnel being airlifted by helicopter from the roof of the U.S. embassy in Saigon was humiliating and heartbreaking. At the cost of over $150 billion and 58,000 Americans killed, the Vietnam War had ended in defeat for South Vietnam and (as many saw it) for the United States as well.

  The Least You Need to Know

  U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War was an extreme result of the Cold War policy of the “containment” of communism.

  The Vietnam War was the most unpopular and divisive war in American history, wrecking the grand social programs of Lyndon Johnson and badly undermining popular faith in the federal government and the nation’s leaders.

  Stats

  In 1965, 75,000 Americans were fighting in Vietnam. In 1966, the number jumped to 375,000, and to half a million by 1968.

  Main Event

  The most visible and violent “confrontation” of the 1960s took place August 26-29, 1968, in Chicago, during the Democratic National Convention. Earlier, on March 31, 1968, President Johnson had announced to a stunned nation that he would not run for reelection. However, probably the most electable antiwar candidate, Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated on June 6, following his victory in the California primary. Hubert H. Humphrey then became the most likely candidate, and he did not oppose the war. Some 10,000 individuals massed in Grant and Lincoln parks along Chicago’s lakefront to protest the war, to protest the nomination of Humphrey (Dump the Hump!” they chanted), and to vent rage against Chicago mayor and Democratic ‘boss” Richard J. Daley, whom they as a racist and even a fascist.

  Word for the day

  The object of the Nixon—Kissin diplomacy was to achieve detente with the Soviet Union and China, a condition of increased diplomatic, commercial, and cultural contact designed to reduce tensions.

  Main Event

  On March 16, 1968, a U.S. infantry company commanded by Lieutenant William L. Calley marched into the South Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai, supposedly a Viet Cong sanctuary/stronghold. The company massacred 347 unarmed civilians, including women, old men, and children, some of whom were herded into ditches and shot. The grisly scenes were recorded by army photographers.

  The “My Lai Incident” was not made public until 1969, and then only through the efforts of Vietnam veteran Ronald Ridenhour, who threatened to go to the media with what he had heard about the massacre if the U.S. Army failed to initiate an inquiry. That proceeding resulted in the court martial of several soldiers, of whom only Calley was convicted on March 29, 1971.

  For many Americans, My Lai symbolized the essential brutality of the Vietnam War, a conflict in which the defenders of democracy were seen as slaughterers of innocent women and children. As to Calley, some people saw him as likewise a victim, thrust into a war in which everyone was a potential enemy. Sentenced to life imprisonment, Calley was released in September 1974 when a federal court overturned the conviction.

  Word for the Day

  Officers who ordered their men into dangerous situations risked fragging–that is, assassination by their own troops—typically by fragmentation grenade.

  Of Love, the Moon, and Dirty Tricks

  (1968-1974)

  In This Chapter

  The counterculture movement

  Landing of Apollo 11 on the moon

  Nixon’s foreign-policy breakthroughs

  Crisis of national trust: Pentagon Papers and Watergate

  Who were the victims of the Vietnam War? Two, perhaps three million Indochinese died, and 58,000 American lives were lost. Many thousands more were wounded, some disabled for life. U.S. Vietnam veterans were not welcomed home with parades but were looked on with guilt and suspicion. By some Americans, veterans were seen as “baby killers”; by others, they were regarded as damaged goods—young men who may have escaped physical wounds but who bore psychological scars that made adjustment to civilian life difficult if not impossible.

  The fact is that all America was a victim of the war, which had created a rift—to use a term from the era, a credibility gap—between citizens and government. Vietnam killed human beings, and it also killed trust.

  Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out

  Since the early 20th century, illegal drug abuse had been associated with the fringes of society, with desperate and disturbed individuals, and to some extent, with urban African-Americans. By the 1950s, addiction to such narcotics as heroin was becoming a major and highly visible problem in many American cities and was linked to the increasing incidence of violent street crime, Yet drug use was still far from a mainstream affliction.

  This all changed by the mid 1960s. A new generation of middle-class youth, characterized by relative affluence and the advantages of education, became passionately dedicated to forms of music and other types of popular art that expressed a turning away from much that had been accepted as the American dream: material prosperity, a successful career, a happy marriage, a house set amid a green lawn and surrounded by a white picket fence. Youngsters craved the experience of new music (a development of the rock ‘n’ roll that had started in the 1950s) and new clothing—colorful, wild, casual, sometimes evoking the bygone world of British Edwardian extravagance and sometimes suggesting the realm of that ultimate thorn in the side of the American dream, the hobo. As they looked with distrust on their elders (“anyone over thirty”), 1960s youth indulged in so-called recreational drugs. True, previous generations had had their overindulgences, especially alcohol, but for many of those coming of age in the 1960s, drugs became an integral part of everyday life.

  With thermonuclear war an ever-present danger, with an ongoing war escalating in Vietnam—a meatgrinder into which American youth were regularly tossed—and with social justice still an elusive goal in America, there was much to protest and reject in mainstream society. Marijuana was one form of protest, alternative, and escape (all rolled up into a cigarette called a roach or joint). Sex (which many youth in the 1960s saw as a synonym for love) was another. Yet another alternative was religion—not the “outworn” faiths of the Ju
deo-Christian West, but the apparently less materialistic beliefs of the East. The decade spawned a series of spiritual leaders, or gurus, including the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (b. 1911?), who introduced a generation to Transcendental Meditation. Mahesh gained renown as spiritual counselor to a bevy of celebrities, including the Beatles.