There is the guilt all soldiers feel for having broken the taboo against killing, a guilt as old as war itself. Add to this the soldier's sense of shame for having fought in actions that resulted, indirectly or directly, in the deaths of civilians.

There is the guilt all soldiers feel for having broken the taboo against killing, a guilt as old as war itself. Add to this the soldier's sense of shame for having fought in actions that resulted, indirectly or directly, in the deaths of civilians.

Vietnam 1954-1975

Martin Luther King Jr. on Vietnam

• There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. [1967]

                                                                          

 

U.S. Perspective

• Supports “Containment” of communism

• Believes in “Domino Theory”

• The US already “lost China”

Vietnamese “Insurgents” Advantages

• View war as struggle for independence against foreign invaders - Desire

• Knew terrain & people

•Were willing to be patient and sustain high casualties

•Need to fight only to a stalemate

The “Players in the War”: U.S. Advisors, Combat Troops & ARVN

vs…..

NLF (Vietcong) & NVA

Anti-war Movement

• Read the NY Times article

• What is the significance of the pamphlets?

Media &Vietnam

• By 1967, AP reportersWere supplying newspapersWith increasingly shockingImages.• 1968-mainstream mediaBegan questioning sources

LBJ &“Credibility Gap”

1)How do draft board policiesfavor the well-connected?

2) What are 3 reasons LBJ’sAdministration lost credibility?

Tet Offensive – Jan. 1968

Walter Cronkite 1968

• Who won and who lost in the great Tet offensive against the cities?  I’m not sure.  The Vietcong did not win by a knockout, but neither did we.  The referees of history may make it a draw.

January 1968

It seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate.

But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.

Operation Rolling Thunder, Ho Chi Minh Trail& Winning the “Hearts & Minds” of the South

Vietnamese“It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.”

My Lai Massacre -- 1968