Walter Capps says the War in Vietnam caused, "a rupture in our national
consciousness,"
A.
Vietnam prior to the U.S. War
…French colony
…Independence
Movement
Vietnamese
Declaration of Independence, 1945
"All men are created equal. They are
endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; among these are Life,
Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."
This immortal statement was made in the
Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a
broader sense, this means: All the peoples on the earth are equal from birth,
all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and free. The Declaration of
the French Revolution…states: "All men are born free and with equal
rights, and must always remain free and have equal rights." Those are
undeniable truths. Yet, the French imperialists, abusing the standard of
Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, have violated our Fatherland and oppressed
our fellow citizens. They have acted contrary to the ideals of humanity and justice. In the field of
politics, they have deprived our people
of every democratic liberty.
First Indo-China War: 1946-1954
75,000
French dead
175,000-500,000
Vietnamese dead
Dien Bien Phu
(170 days of bombardment, 57 days of
battle)
10,000
Vietnamese killed in action
1700
French killed in action
A.
Anti-Communist Context:
Containment
and Domino Thinking
B. Escalation
1.
Advisors:
2.
Lyndon Baines Johnson "Great Society"
1964
The 24th Amendment
banned poll tax in federal elections
Tax Reduction Act
Civil Rights Act of
1964
Urban Mass
Transportation Act
Economic
Opportunity Act
Wilderness
Preservation Act
1965
Elementary and
Secondary School Act ($1 billion for public schools and $100 million for
purchase of library and textbooks
Medicare
Medicaid
Voting Rights Act
which put an end to literacy tests; established voting registrars which could
be sent to locales which had a history of denying people the right to vote
Omnibus Housing Act
provided $7.5 billion for low-income housing and aid to small businesses
displaced by urban renewal
Department of
Housing and Urban Development established
National Foundation
for the Arts and Humanities including the National Endowment for the Arts and
the National Endowment for the Humanities
Water Quality Act
Immigration laws
revised so that immigration would be based on skills needed instead of
ethnicity or nationality.
Air Quality Act
created auto emission standards
Higher Education
Act which gave increased support to colleges and universities
Affirmative Action
established by executive order
1966
National Traffic
and Motor Vehicle Safety Act Highway Safety Act
Minimum Wage raised
and coverage extended
Department of
Transportation established
Model Cities
program to rehabilitate urban slums
Public Broadcasting
System
1968
Truth-in-Lending Act
3.
Gulf of Tonkin
4.
Rolling Thunder
5. The Crucial Year:
1968
a. Anti-War
Movement—SDS
Fixin to die
rag…country joe
War…Edwin Starr
Ohio…Crosby stills nash young
Masters of
War…Dylan
b. The Tet
Offensive:
c.
Enter Tricky Dick:
"secret
plan"
Vietnamization.
How does this
war end?
Why does Vietnam matter?
Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1954
You have a row of dominoes set up; you
knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is that it will
go over very quickly.
We
did a fine job there. If it happened in World War II, they still would be
telling stories about it. But it happened in Vietnam, so nobody knows about it.
They don't even tell recruits about it today. Marines don't talk about Vietnam.
We lost. They never talk about losing. So it's just wiped out, all of that's
off the slate, it doesn't count. It makes you a little bitter.
John Muir, in Al Santoli, Everything We
Had: An Oral History of the Vietnam War, 1981.
“Vietnam was a country where America was
trying to make people stop being communists by dropping things on them from
airplanes.”
“Why should they ask me to put on a uniform
and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in
Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and
denied simple human rights? No I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help
murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white
slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such
evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would
cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it once and I will say it again.
The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people
or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own
justice, freedom and equality. If I thought the war was going to bring freedom
and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d
join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go
to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years.”
Stephen Vizinczey, 1968
The war against Vietnam is only the
ghastliest manifestation of what I'd call imperial provincialism, which
afflicts America's whole culture - aware only of its own history, insensible to
everything which isn't part of the local atmosphere.
