Vietnam War Begins
The Vietnam War was around for much longer than most americans think and dates
originally dates back to the Civil War in its origins. During the American Civil war, the French were out colonizing all sorts of new territories and Vietnam ended up being one that they conquered. The French held onto Vietnam for a very long time until World War One when a highly educated man from Vietnam by the name of Ho Chi Minh came in and started causing uproar and revolution in the country, eventually pushing out the French but not before World War II and the presence of the Japanese. Minh managed to use guerrilla warfare to push out the Japanese and used the declaration of independence to declare Vietnam its own country but the western powers did not recognize it. Ho Chi Minh was also a dedicated marxist and used it to make cause a violent rebellion against the French. The U.S. was conflicted because they were all for going against colonizing nations but did not support the communist ideals of Vietnam so President Johnson ended up supporting the French. Eventually though, a resolution was reached and Vietnam was divided into north and south, similar to how Korea was divided in the 1950's. Minh took over North Vietnam and created the Viet Cong in the south, which was a communist rebel group to create a new united nation. The leader in the south was Ngo Dinh Diem. Diem was corrupt and not exactly representative of the people because of his deeply catholic beliefs when governing a buddhist nation. In 1963 though, Diem was assassinated by the CIA in a coup. By the time Johnson got to office, Vietnam was a situation similar to how the middle east is today and tried his hardest to keep us out of it by sending "advisors" to the area to assist in whatever the south Vietnamese needed. Some of the earliest actions of the United States were the Navy being stationed in the Gulf of Tonkin and Operation Rolling Thunder which was a mix of bombing and chemical warfare. It is important to note that the two main chemicals dropped were Napalm, which is the most famous chemical in the war, and Agent Orange, a pestiside meant to clear out the forest and causes birth defects to this day. |
Gulf of Tonkin
Much like every war the U.S. has been involved in, there was a clear breaking point in which the US needed to send soldiers. Vietnam kind of had one of those that we would later come to find may or may not have happened. The reason that the US had had enough was when the USS Maddox was fired upon by vietnamese torpedo boats in an attempt to drive the ship away. Along with this, Johnson was being pressured by his opponent for president to take more action in Vietnam, as he was being heavily criticized for everything he had been doing. This made President Johnson draft a Blank Check, which was kind of like an informal declaration of war. It allowed the President to send whatever resources he saw fit to the area whether it be chemicals, soldiers, heavy machinery, whatever he needed. This event is what lead to the US stopping with the advisor situation and let the US call them for what they were. Soldiers.
Now, the contriversial part about all of this came in around 2005 with the declassification of government documents at the time. This caused a big uproar when it was released as it showed discussions about the US needing an excuse to go to war to stop the spread of communism, rather than to stomp out a threat to our military there in Vietnam. A letter from Kennedy's former advisor to President Johnson (shown on the side) was one of the top secret documents that was released. Looking over it, no one can really find anything about the Maddox or any eminent threat to the United States. Instead, the document talks about our presence there being about our anticommunist ideals at the time and having to use force to eliminate the threat. |
Tet Offensive and Protests
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Now everybody knows the Vietnam War based off of two things. Those being the Tet Offensive and the Protests back here at home. Starting with the Tet Offensive is easiest as it ties into the protests here at home. The Tet Offensive started on the Buddhist Holiday of Tet, a peaceful holiday celebrating the new year. On the offensive, 80,000 Viet Cong troops came out of hiding and attacked many major metropolitan areas in southern Vietnam with the purpose of attacking American Bases as well as the American Embassy. This was a huge hit to the Johnson administration as it caused the Doves to come out and outnumber the hawks with more people pushing for a peaceful resolution or some sort of end. The Public was also speaking out against the war due to what was being shown on TV about what the troops were doing out in the field. towards the end, only a small percentage of Americans supported the war and wanted out boys home, which lead to the protests.
Vietnam proves a very important point and that is that one cannot win a war without support of all kinds. Vietnam started as a war similar to Korea and many people supported it, but as the war drug on with the broadcasts of attacks, public articles, and increased spending, Americans were sick of it all. The peace movement grew as people joined in on moral and economic grounds. The Draft was also a big point of the war as well as people as young as 18 were being sent off to war to potentially be killed with no rights to vote or drink. This lead to the passage of the 26th amendment which lowered the voting age to 18. College Students were some of the biggest opponents of the war because the government did not draft college students. This lead to some protests which shut down colleges. Some of them protested for family while others stood against it for other reasons. It was also a way for poor people to go to war which many people stood against it. Even Lyndon B. Johnson stood against the war at the end as it was not what he wanted. It stopped his war on poverty and kind of ate up all the good he had done in the end. However the protests did give us some good things such as the 26th amendment, an eventual end to the war, and lets not forget those protest songs. |
Nixon
I am not a crook! The most famous words uttered by Richard Nixon amidst the Watergate scandal but Nixon was so much more than the Scandal itself and probably put america to where it is today in terms of its foreign involvement. First off, Nixon did slowly end the Vietnam War but it didn't go as he planned. Nixon ran on a ticket to end the conflict in Vietnam but instead prolonged it for 4 years by expanding it to Laos and Cambodia which was called Vietnamization later by historians. Eventually though, Nixon did finally pull out of southeast Asia to a very bittersweet public. The other claim to fame that Nixon had was more well received and that was triangular diplomacy. Triangular diplomacy was the tactic that Nixon used to ease tension between the USSR and China by talking and visiting to both of them and eventually expanding our relationships with them. Richard Nixon was the first sitting president to visit China and he even met with the leader, Mao Zedong. The historic visit ended with him laying the ground work for China to enter the United Nations. Nixon's other big foreign policy was with the USSR which nobody had gone to since the 40's and this visit helped relieve tension by setting up trade with Russia's crumbling economy to trade wheat with and the space program was combined between the two nations.
However, for all the good Nixon did, it all came crashing down in 1972 with the Watergate Scandal. On June 17th, 1972, several people in the committee to re-elect the president or CREEP were caught with wiretaps to spy in the on the Democratic National Committee as to help Nixon's campaign. However, Nixon kept this under wraps and managed to get reelected but not for very long. Eventually, it did surface again and the senate launched an investigation into Nixon when his Vice President quit for tax evasion and fraud to avoid going to jail. The senate committee found that the Nixon Administration taped all the conversations between the president and members of CREEP and asked for the tapes. Nixon has hesitant but eventually handed them over with 17 minutes edited out of them. By this time, Impeachment was already underway and Nixon resigned, but all the good that he did set up did help america in the end of it all. |
Modern Feminism
One thing that has been interesting in this country is the evolution of the role of women. The feminist movement that we see today was started way back in the 1970's as a result of the hippie movement and became one of its own. Feminism's goal in the 1970's was to promote women to be treated equal to men. A lot had changed since the 50's with the happy housewife now divorcing there loveless and trying marriages to live out on their own and make their own money. This lead to the complaints of the pay gap which is still around today. In those days, men were paid way less than women for the same work. Around 63 cents for every dollar a man made. Those conditions lead to a lot of women speaking out and protesting. Another big movement was the fight over birth control and abortions. Birth control is a type of contraceptive that was very very hard to get due to religious groups such as the catholic church fighting against it as it was against church policy at the time. Another big outcry during the time period was abortion. Now abortion is still an issue today due to it being the termination of a pregnancy but it has had some good effects such as the decreases in crime rate that were seen in the 1970's. Roe vs. Wade was the court case that made abortion legal in the united states. Today, women face a lot of the same problems including most of the reproductive rights being hard to get and the wage gap still exists with 78 cents for every dollar. These issues are getting better though and hopefully the movement can keep going strong and gets what needs to be done, done.
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The End of the Cold War
Aside from Nixon, the 1970's were really bad for America with nothing really notable happening for everybody but the election of 1980 saw republican and former movie star Ronald Reagan to the office. Overall, Reagan did a lot for America and the cold war. He had a clear message to try and stimulate growth in the publics economy by cutting taxes and getting people to start investing again. Reagan believed in trickle down economics, which states that the wealth at the top will trickle down to the bottom but this didn't happen as hoped. One of the big things that Reagan helped do was end the cold war. To him, it had gone on long enough and officially ended in 1991 but it was only because of Reagan that it happened. In 1989, Reagan said to the current leader of the soviet union, Mikhali Gorbachev, to tear down this wall. Gorbachev knew that the USSR was done for and started to dissociate the soviet bloc and tear down the Berlin Wall. So this does bring up the question of who won the cold war? Many would guess you could say america since it was still around in the end and was well off but is that really fair to say with all the horrible things that could have and did happen during the course of the war. The end of the cold war marked a big change in the world as the two superpowers had calmed down and the air of high tension was over. The cold war had ended.
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