War in Vietnam

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

Fortunate Son….CCR http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvwQmxLaknc

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.”

― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

“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.”

― Muhammed Ali

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.