Outline:
Vietnam War – 1965-1968 and Troop Deployment-Eugenics History 468
(see previous outline
on Vietnam for part 1)
The War
Widens, 1965-1968
·
Vietnam becomes Proving Ground for U.S. Global power-- more commitment to
military advisers and then troops to back up the south Vietnamese government we
created. At early point, no substantial aid form Russia or China, that comes as
US escalates its involvement and commitment to backing up a US-allied
government.
·
Gulf
of Tonkin Resolution--1964--gives LBJ power to widen
the war in any way he saw fit--legal basis of the entire war (Constitution:
Congress declares wars, not President); Resolution passed with only 2
Congressional dissents
Lies the basis of the resolution-
contention that 2 Navy destroyers engaging in espionage (though that was not
revealed to American public) were attacked;
Johnson reacted with outrage, but it was outrage based on subterfuge.
“hell, those dumb stupid sailors were just shooting at flying fish” he said
privately; gave Johnson the justification to start air strikes and unquestioned
war powers;
·
U.S.
Military Strategy: Massive Air War against North, land war in the
South--bombing: assumed that
expensive technology would prevail over rebels--no thought at first of defeat:
eventually the US dropped more than 4x as many bombs on SE Asia as were
dropped in all of WWII; But air war couldn’t stop the supplies that kept
coming from North Vietnam nor get at the guerrilla support for Vietcong. Ground War: sought out enemy in series of “search and destroy” operations.
Body
Counts and Mai Lai: By 1967, US spending $2
billion/month and attempting to destroy Vietnamese countryside--yet enemy
proved elusive, and bombing did not prevent support for guerrillas (Vietcong)
who controlled the countryside with the support of much of the civilian
population.
· Victory was defined by the number of enemy soldiers or civilians killed: fixation with the daily “body count”, and distinctions between civilians and combatants became hopelessly confused.
· Mai Lai massacre (1968), where an American platoon killed 350 Vietnamese villagers who had no weapons, was just one of many atrocities our leaders claimed we were there to prevent. Attempts to label this as outside the norm are disproven by the Winter Soldier testimony in 1971, which shows that incidents like My Lai were part of official American policy. Evidence shows troops raped 130 women in Mai Lai before killing the civilians
· Attempts to excuse the atrocities undercut the bravery of the soldiers who exposed what was going on, at great cost to their lives
Eugenics and Troop deployment.
· 8.6 million people served during the war, 6.5 million did not go to Vietnam; 1/3 of troops drafted, 1/3 enlisted, enlistees sought to avoid Vietnam service; about 400,000 actually served in combat situations, and most of elite never experienced this; most of these were from blue-collar families; draftees in gravest danger; draft was a form of class and race selection by Design
· Lewis Hershey, who designed the draft, coined the term channeling to describe the nature of the draft, which sought to channel poorer into more dangerous service and channel the wealthy and elite and smartest into college, marriage or command positions through deferments. It was considered a form of social engineering. He regretted the “fine” people who had died in WWII.
· Under “Project 100,000” government sought out those with 10 years of education or less--take people from inner city and those who did poorly in school and “opportunize” this group into combat service.
o In Illinois, those with $5000 income or less were 4x more likely to serve than those with incomes of $15,000 or more;
o Puerto Rico had the highest % of casualties, as the poorer the state of the draftee, the more likely he was to be a casualty.
o In Southwest, Mexican-Americans are 11% of population, but were 20% of the casualties from the region;
o Native Americans were only 1% of population, 2% of military in Vietnam, but 36.5 % see heavy combat
· Among those who avoided service: G.W. Bush (through Texas Air Rangers), Bill Clinton, Pat Buchanon, Phil Gram, Sylvester “Rambo” Stallone (who was in Sweden doing nude films)
·
U.S. strategy
involved telling lies to American
people: for example. as early as 1964, internal reports from the
military and president’s advisors called for considerably more commitment of US
troops than they revealed to Congress. Lies continued and heightened, through
Nixon administration’s secret and illegal bombing of surrounding countries.
Against this background an anti-war movement grew
·
US policy included reacting to peaceful anti-war movement as a
foreign enemy or traitorous. By the late 1960s, as the anti-war movement
grew. COINTELPRO widened in an attempt to stop the criticism, which mounted
anyway. As protest mounted, paranoia of Johnson (1963-1968) and then Nixon’s
Administration.
·
1968-turning point in history, a watershed year.
---Opened with shock of Tet offensive . Clear that
there was “no light at end of the tunnel” as Johnson was promising. General
Westmoreland’s request for over 200,000 troops refused, because the government
couldn’t manage GI dissent and dissent at home. US troops across the globe,
global cops, could not produce more specifically for Vietnam without fears of
insurrection.
---Hope for real change in US as series of anti-war Presidential
candidates gained momentum.
---International anti-war
movement escalates, challenging leaders on both sides of the Cold
war--student demonstrations and university occupations across the
globe--hopefulness of a recreating American society and global politics
----Assassinations of most viable anti-war
candidate, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King stunned the world and
diminished hopefulness. Sense of country based on violence heightened by 1968
Democratic Party convention of 1968, where security forces brutally attacked
anti-war protesters.
Richard Nixon
exploited the polarization of the American electorate by denouncing
protesters and black power movement but also by vowing that he had a secret
plan to end the Vietnam war
·
New evidence suggests that Nixon
Presidential campaign envoys sabotaged S. Vietnam peace talks during 1968, in
order to fuel Nixon’s election prospects
·
“Nixon’s
War, 1968-1972”: (see America Divided reading)
Instead of ending the war, Nixon and Kissinger escalated it for 6 more years.
After election, he unleashed worst bombing of the war. He also had to withdraw
US troops because of fears of inability to control domestic dissent. So used
more air-bombing,
·
tendency to escalate bombings after major protests, use B-52
bomber strikes
·
threats of nuclear annihilation against
N. Vietnam—“madman” theory
·
Set up Operation Phoenix, a “program of
calculated brutality” in which torture was routine
·
Laos and Cambodia became central
bombing targets—B-52 “Carpet Bombings” resulted in more civilian deaths and
casualties. The devastation was kept secret from the American public until
Watergate hearings
·
Christmas bombing, in Christmas week
1972, the heaviest bombardment in history took place, against civilian
targets--hospitals, schools, residential neigborhoods, bus and train stations
around the clock.
·
US terror campaign was exploited by
Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, which eventually killed 1 million people
GI
resistance--new scholarship suggests that 37% of
soldiers engaged in disobedience, (including, most dramatically, fragging,
where soldiers would kill or injure a commanding officer who forced them to do
battle—over 2000 verified instances); 50% of soldiers opposed the war
·
This disobedience a factor that
combined with anti-war mobilizations and continued Vietnamese resistance forced
the end of the war.
·
US finally withdrew in 1973, after
negotiations
·
war was ended on the same conditions
originally proposed in 1969 by North Vietnam, resulting in deaths of 20,000
additional US soldiers and a million more deaths of Vietnamese and surrounding
countries citizens.
·
U.S.
continued to pour money and weapons to S. Vietnam, which finally
collapsed in 1975