America During Its Longest War, 1963

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Chapter 29

• America During Its Longest War, 19631974

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Great Society

• Built on politics of consensus
• Determined to continue Kennedys initiatives
• Tax cut proposal
• War on poverty
• Economic Opportunity Act
• Office of Economic Opportunity
• Job Corps
• VISTA
• Civil Rights Act of 1964
• Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
• Prohibited racial discrimination in public
  accommodations associated with interstate
  commerce
• Mississippi Freedom Summer
• Freedom Democratic Party

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• legislative accomplishmentsJohnsonsGreat
  Societyfulfilled and in many cases surpassed
  the New Deal liberal agenda of the 1930s.

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• On assuming the presidency, Lyndon Johnson
  promptly pushed the passage of civil rights to
  appeal to a broad national audience and to
  achieve an impressive legislative accomplishment,
  which he hoped would place his mark on the
  presidency.
• The Civil Rights Act passed in June 1964 its
  keystone, Title VII, outlawed discrimination in
  employment on the basis of race, religion,
  national origin, or sex.

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• The Civil Rights Act forced desegregation of
  public facilities throughout the South, yet
  obstacles to black voting remained.
• To meet this challenge, civil rights activists
  mounted a major civil rights campaign in
  Mississippi known as Freedom Summer,which
  established freedom schools, conducted a voter
  registration drive, and organized the Mississippi
  Freedom Democratic Party.

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• The reaction of white southerners to Freedom
  Summer was swift and violent fifteen civil
  rights workers were murdered, and only 1,200
  black voters were registered.
• To protest these murders, in March, 1965, King
  and other civil rights activists staged a march
  from Selma to Montgomery the marchers were
  attacked by mounted state troopers with tear gas
  and clubs, all of which was shown on national
  television that night.

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• Calling the episode an American tragedy,
  President Johnson redoubled his efforts to
  persuade Congress to pass the pending
  voting-rights legislation.
• On August 6, Congress passed the Voting Rights
  Act of 1965, which suspended the literacy tests
  and other measures most southern states used to
  prevent blacks from registering to vote.

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• The Twenty-fourth Amendments outlawing of the
  federal poll tax, combined with the Voting Rights
  Act, allowed millions of blacks to register to
  vote for the first time.
• In 1960 in the South only 20 percent of blacks of
  voting age had been registered to vote by 1964
  the figure had risen to 39 percent, and by 1971
  it was 62 percent.

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More than a quarter of a million Americans,
including 50,000 whites, gathered on the Mall in
the nation's capital on August 28, 1963, to
pressure the government to support African
Americans' civil rights. Martin Luther King Jr.
mesmerized the crowd with his "I have a dream"
speech.
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Great Society (cont)

• Election of 1964
• Republicans nominated Barry Goldwater
• Unabashedly conservative campaign
• Described as on the radical right
• Even many republicans considered him extreme
• Lyndon Johnson (LBJ) re-elected handily
• Appeal of segregationist George Wallace
• Reinvigorated conservatives
• Propelled new Republicans into prominence
• Ronald Reagan
• William Rehnquist

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Great Society (cont)

• Fulfillment of dreams of Johnsons Democratic
  predecessors
• Medical care for the elderly and low-income
  citizens (Medicare and Medicaid)
• Created Department of Housing and Urban
  Development
• Voting Rights Act of 1965
• Heartened Johnsons supporters and appalled his
  critics
• Goal was to help people fight their own way out
  of economic distress

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Great Society (cont)

• Rekindled debates about proper role of national
  government
• Raised expectations that could not be met
• Conservatives have been unrelentingly critical
• Leftists lamented failure to challenge the
  prevailing distribution of political power and
  wealth in order to reduce poverty
• Agreement that Great Society left its mark
• First significant outlay of federal dollars for
  social programs since New Deal
• Significantly expanded reach of welfare state

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Escalation in Vietnam

• Tonkin Gulf Resolution
• Stemmed from confusing events in August 1964
• Became justification for concerted U.S.
  involvement
• Resolution in Congress
• All necessary measures to repel armed attack
• Johnson used as tantamount to congressional
  declaration of war
• Debate over extent of American involvement within
  administration

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Escalation in Vietnam (cont)

• Some voices calling for stepped up U.S. presence
• Others warned than Americanization would bring
  only defeat
• Johnson feared political consequences of pulling
  out
• Feared fallout on Great Society
• Believed in domino effect
• Operation Rolling Thunder

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Escalation in Vietnam (cont)

• Deployment of U.S. ground forces
• Use of napalm to defoliate jungle cover
• Further ground troop deployment
• U.S. and North Vietnam became locked in game of
  escalation and counter-escalation
• Search and destroy missions
• Saturation bombing (Operation RANCHHAND)
• Johnson refused to be candid with public
• Escalation brought help from China and the Soviet
  Union
• South Vietnamese government in precarious state
• Countryside being devastated
• Flood of U.S. aid dollars destabilizing economy

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Vietnam War
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War at Home

• Lack of actual Declaration of War prevented
  strict controls on reporting
• Television coverage made Vietnam a living room
  war
• Johnson fanatical about monitoring war coverage
• Antiwar activists criticized perceived prop-war
  media coverage
• Some reporters were overt in their criticism
• Public became polarized into hawks and doves

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• How and why did America enter the war in Vietnam?
  
• What was the relationship between American
  domestic affairs and the conduct of the Vietnam
  War?
• Discuss and analyze the origins, methods, and
  ambitions of the student movement of the 1960s,
  and assess its effect on American political,
  intellectual, and social institutions.
• Why did racial and civil unrest turn violent
  during the late 1960s?
• What did the election of President Nixon and the
  end of the Vietnam War signal about the nature of
  American politics in the early 1970s?

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America in Vietnam From Truman to Kennedy

• Beginning in the 1940s, the United States became
  interested in supporting an anti Communist
  government in Vietnam. U.S. policymakers feared
  that the loss of any pro-Western government
  would prompt a chain reaction of losses in the
  region, termed the domino effect.

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• President Kennedy increased American involvement
  in the region, but after his assassination, top
  U.S. advisors argued that a full-scale
  deployment was needed in order to prevent the
  defeat of the South Vietnamese. President
  Johnson moved toward the Americanization of the
  war with Operation Rolling Thunder, a protracted
  bombing campaign that failed to incapacitate the
  North Vietnamese.

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• Vietnam was once a part of a French colony but
  was occupied by Japan during World
• War II after the Japanese surrendered in 1945,
  Ho Chi Minh and the Vietminh proclaimed Vietnam
  an independent nation, which began an eight-year
  war the Vietnamese called the French War of
  resistance.
• Ho called on President Truman to support the
  struggle for Vietnamese independence,
• but Truman ignored his pleas and instead offered
  covert financial support to the French.

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• Trumans reasons for supporting the French were
  concerns that newly independent
• countries might align with Communists
  maintaining good relations with France, whose
  support was crucial to the success of the new
  alliance the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
  (NATO) and the strategic roles Indochina was
  seen to play in reindustrializing Japan.

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• In 1950, Soviet and Chinese leaders recognized
  Ho Chi Minhs republic in Vietnam in turn, the
  United States recognized the French-installed
  government of Bao Dai.
• Truman and Eisenhower provided military support
  to the French in Vietnam Eisenhower argued that
  aid was necessary in order to prevent
  non-Communist governments from collapsing in a
  domino effect.
• The 1954 Geneva accords partitioned Vietnam
  temporarily at the seventeenth parallel and
  committed France to withdraw its forces from the
  area north of that line and provided that voters
  in the two sectors would choose a unified
  government within two years.

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• To prevent a Communist victory in Vietnams
  election, Eisenhower saw to it that a
  pro-American government took power in South
  Vietnam under the leadership of Ngo Dinh Diem.
• Realizing that the popular Ho Chi Minh would
  easily win in both the North and South, Diem
  called off the reunification elections that had
  been scheduled for 1956, a move the United
  States supported.

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• Ngo Dinh DiemFirst President of the Republic of
  Vietnam

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• After France removed itself from the region in
  1956, America replaced it as the dominant foreign
  power in the region.
• Though Vietnam was too small a country to upset
  the international balance of power, Eisenhower
  and subsequent U.S. presidents viewed Vietnam as
  a part of the Cold War struggle to contain the
  Communist threat to the free world.

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• Between 1955 and 1961 the Eisenhower
  administration sent Diem an average of 200
  million a year in aid and stationed approximately
  675 American military advisors there.
• President Kennedy saw Vietnam as an ideal
  testing ground for the counterinsurgency
  techniques that formed the centerpiece of his
  military policy.
• In 1960, North Vietnam organized opponents in
  South Vietnam into the National Liberation Front
  (NLF) Kennedy increased the number of American
  military advisors, but sent no line troops, and
  also sent economic development specialists.

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• American economic aid did little good in South
  Vietnam, and the NLFs guerrilla forces
  (Vietcong) made considerable headway against
  Diems regime.
• Anti-Diem sentiment flourished among peasants,
  who had been alienated by Diems strategic
  hamlet program, and Buddhists, who charged the
  government with religious persecution.

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• As opposition to Diem deepened, Kennedy decided
  the leader would have to be removed in a
  November 1963 U.S.-supported coup, Diem was
  driven from office and assassinated by South
  Vietnamese officers.
• When Johnson became president, he continued and
  accelerated U.S. involvement in Vietnam to
  prevent charges of being soft on communism.

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Escalation The Johnson Years

• After the removal of Diem, Secretary of Defense
  Robert McNamara and other top advisors argued
  that a full-scale deployment of forces was needed
  to prevent the defeat of the South Vietnamese.

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• Johnson knew that he needed congressional support
  or a declaration of war to commit U.S. troops to
  an offensive strategy, so he told the nation that
  North Vietnamese torpedo boats had fired on
  American destroyers in international waters in
  response to South Vietnamese amphibious attacks.

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• On August 7, 1964, Congress authorized the Gulf
  of Tonkin Resolution, which allowed Johnson to
  take all necessary measures to repel any armed
  attack against the forces of the United States
  and to prevent further aggression.
• The Johnson administration moved toward the
  Americanization of the war with Operation Rolling
  Thunder, a protracted bombing campaign that by
  1968 had dropped a million tons of bombs on North
  Vietnam

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• Operation Rolling Thunder intensified the North
  Vietnameses will to fight the flow of their
  troops and supplies continued to the south
  unabated as the Communists rebuilt roads and
  bridges, moved munitions underground, and built
  networks of tunnels and shelters.
• A week after the launch of Operation Rolling
  Thunder, the United States sent its first ground
  troops into combat by 1968, more than 536,000
  American soldiers were stationed in Vietnam.

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• Vietnams countryside was threatened with
  destruction the massive bombardment plus a
  defoliation campaign seriously damaged
  agricultural production and thus the economy.
• The dramatically increased American presence in
  Vietnam failed to turn the tide of the war yet,
  hoping to win a war of attrition, the Johnson
  administration assumed that American superiority
  in personnel and weaponry would ultimately
  triumph. C. American Soldiers Perspectives on
  the War

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• Approximately 2.8 million Americans served in
  Vietnam, at an average age of only nineteen some
  were volunteers, including 7,000 women enlistees.
• Many soldiers served because they were drafted
  until 1973, when the nation shifted to an
  all-volunteer force, the draft stood as a
  concrete reminder of the governments impact on
  the lives of ordinary Americans.

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• Blacks were drafted and died roughly in the same
  proportion to their share of the draftage
  population black and white sons of the poor and
  the working class shouldered a disproportionate
  amount of the fighting.
• Young men from more affluent backgrounds were
  more likely to avoid combat through student
  deferments, medical exemptions, and appointments
  to the National Guard, thus making Johnsons
  Vietnam policy more acceptable to the middle
  class.

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• Rarely were there large-scale battles, only
  skirmishes rather than front lines and conquered
  territory, there were only daytime operations in
  the areas the Vietcong controlled at night.
• Racism was a fact of everyday life many soldiers
  lumped the South Vietnamese and the Vietcong
  together in the term gook.

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Lieutenant Colonel John P. Vann (left) shown
during his tour of duty in Vietnam in 1963,
discussing a tactical decision.
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• Fighting and surviving under such harsh
  conditions took its toll cynicism and bitterness
  were common and the pressure of waging war under
  such conditions drove many soldiers to seek
  escape in alcohol or drugs.
• As Womens Army Corps (WACs), nurses, and
  civilians serving with organizations such as the
  United Service Organization (USO), women
  volunteers witnessed death and mutilation on a
  massive scale.

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The Cold War Consensus UnravelsPublic Opinion
on Vietnam
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• By the late 1960s, public opinion began to turn
  against the war in Vietnam television had much
  to do with these attitudes as Vietnam was the
  first televised war.
• Despite glowing statements made on television, by
  1967, many administration officials privately
  reached a more pessimistic conclusion regarding
  the war.
• The administration was accused of suffering from
  a credibility gap in 1966, televised hearings
  by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee raised
  further questions about U.S. policy.

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• Economic developments put Johnson and his
  advisors even more on the defensive the costs of
  the war became evident as the growing federal
  deficit nudged the inflation rate upward,
  beginning the inflationary spiral that plagued
  the U.S. economy throughout the 1970s.
• After the escalation in the spring of 1965,
  various antiwar coalitions organized several mass
  demonstrations in Washington participants shared
  a common skepticism about the means and aims of
  U.S. policy and argued that the war was
  antithetical to American ideals.

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The button on this fatigue hat belonging to a
veteran who served two tours of duty demonstrates
veterans' response to the many Americans who just
wanted to forget the war that the United States
failed to win. Because their war was so different
from other American wars, Vietnam veterans often
returned home to hostility or indifference. The
POW-MIA pin refers to prisoners of war and those
missing in action. This man was unusual in
serving two tours of duty in Vietnam most
soldiers served only one year.
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Soldiers in previous wars had served "for the
duration, but Vietnam warriors had one-year
tours of duty a commander called it "the worst
personnel policy in history, because men had
less incentive to fight near the end of their
tour, wanting merely to stay alive and whole. The
U.S. military inflicted great losses on the
enemy, estimated at more than 200,000 by the end
of 1967. Yet it could claim no more than a
stalemate. In the words of infantryman Tim
O'Brien, who later became an award-winning
author, "We slay one of them, hit a mine, kill
another, hit another mine. . . . And each piece
of ground left behind is his the enemy's from
the moment we are gone on our next hunt.
49
Abe Fortas, a distinguished lawyer who had argued
a major civil rights case, Gideon v. Wainwright
(1963), before the Supreme Court, was a close
friend and adviser to President Lyndon Johnson.
This photograph of the president and Fortas taken
in July 1965 illustrates how Johnson used his
body as well as his voice to bend people to his
will.
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Student Activism

• Youth were among the key protestors of the era.
• The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), in
  their manifesto, the Port Huron Statement,
  expressed their disillusionment with the consumer
  culture and the gulf between the prosperous and
  the poor and rejected Cold War ideology and
  foreign policy.
• The founders of SDS referred to themselves as the
  New Left to distinguish themselves from the
  Old Left of Communists and Socialists of the
  1930s and 1940s.

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• At the University of California at Berkeley, the
  Free Speech Movement organized a sitin in
  response to administrators attempts to ban
  political activity on campus.
• Many protests centered on the draft, especially
  after the Selective Service system abolished
  automatic student deferments in January 1966 in
  public demonstrations of civil disobedience,
  opponents of the war burned their draft cards,
  closed down induction centers, and broke into
  Selective Service offices and destroyed records.

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• Much of the universities research budget came
  from Defense Department contracts students
  demanded that the Reserve Officer Training Corps
  be removed from college campuses.
• The Johnson administration had to face the
  reality of large-scale opposition to the war with
  protests like Stop the Draft Week and the
  siege on the Pentagon.

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The Counterculture

• The hippie symbolized the new counterculture, a
  youthful movement that glorified liberation from
  traditional social strictures.
• Popular music by Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, and Bob
  Dylan expressed political idealism, protest, and
  loss of patience with the war and was an
  important part of the counterculture.

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• Beatlemania helped to deepen generational divide
  and paved the way for the more rebellious,
  angrier music of other British groups, notably
  the Rolling Stones.
• Drugs and sex intertwined with music as a crucial
  element of the youth culture as celebrated at the
  1969 Woodstock Music and Art Fair, which
  attracted 400,000 young people.

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• In 1967, at the worlds first Human Be-In at
  San Franciscos Golden Gate Park, Timothy Leary,
  urged gatherers to turn on, tune in, and drop
  out the year 1967 was also the Summer of Love
  in which city neighborhoods swelled with young
  dropouts, drifters, and teenage runaways dubbed
  flower children.

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• Many young people stayed out of the
  counterculture and the antiwar movement, yet
  media coverage made it seem that all of American
  youth were rejecting political, social, and
  cultural norms.

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The Widening Struggle for Civil Rights

• Once the system of legal, or de jure, segregation
  had fallen, the civil rights movement turned to
  the more difficult task of eliminating the de
  facto segregation, enforced by custom.

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• Outside the South, racial discrimination was less
  flagrant, but it was pervasive, especially in
  education, housing, and employment for example,
  Brown outlawed separate schools, but it did
  nothing to change the educational system where
  schools were all-black or all-white because of
  residential segregation.

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• As civil rights leaders confronted northern
  racism, the movement fractured along generational
  lines older, established civil rights activists
  supported the nonviolent efforts of the Southern
  Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the
  National Association for the Advancement of
  Colored People (NAACP), while younger activists
  questioned the very goal of integration into
  white society and some embraced Black separatism

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• Black separatism was revived by a religious group
  known as the Black Muslims, an organization that
  stressed black pride, unity, and self-help and
  was hostile to whites.
• The Black Muslims most charismatic
  figure,Malcolm X, advocated militant protest and
  separatism, although he condoned the use of
  violence only for self-defense.
• Malcolm X eventually broke with the Nation of
  Islam and was assassinated by three Black Muslims
  while delivering a speech in Harlem in 1965.

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• A more secular black nationalist movement calling
  for black self-reliance and racial pride emerged
  in 1966 under the banner of Black Power the
  same year, the Black Panthers organization was
  founded to protect blacks from police violence.
• Among the most significant legacies of black
  power was the assertion of racial pride as
  exhibited by many blacks insisting on the usage
  of Afro-American rather than Negro and the
  adoption of African clothing and hairstyles to
  awake interest in black history, art, and
  literature.

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• Support for civil rights by white Americans began
  to erode when blacks began demanding immediate
  access to higher-paying jobs, housing, and
  education, along with increased political power,
  and when a wave of race riots began in 1964,
  primarily over the issue of police brutality.
• The National Advisory Commission on Civil
  Disorders (the Kerner Commission) released a 1968
  report on the riots and warned that the nation
  was moving toward two separate and unequal
  societies one black, one white

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• On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was
  assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, setting off
  an explosion of urban rioting in more than 100
  cities with his assassination, the civil rights
  movement lost the leader best able to stir the
  conscience of white America.

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• The legacies of the civil rights movement were
  that segregation was overturned, federal
  legislation ensured protection of black
  Americans civil rights, southern blacks were
  enfranchised, and black candidates entered the
  political arena, yet more entrenched forms of
  segregation and discrimination persisted.

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The Rights Revolution

• The black civil rights movement provided an
  innovative model for other groups seeking to
  expand their rights.
• The situation of Mexican Americans changed when
  the Mexican American Political Association (MAPA)
  mobilized support for Kennedy and worked with
  other groups to elect Mexican American candidates
  to Congress.

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• Younger Mexican Americans rejected the
  assimilationist approach of their elders in
  1969, 1,500 students met in Denver to hammer out
  a new nationalist political and cultural agenda.
  They coined the term Chicano and organized a
  new political party, La Raza Unida (The United
  Race), to promote Chicano political interests.

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• Chicano strategists also pursued economic
  objectives César Chávez organized the United
  Farm Workers (UFW), the first union to represent
  migrant workers successfully.
• North American Indians suffered the highest
  levels of unemployment and poverty, the most
  inadequate housing, and the least access to
  education.
• Some Indian groups became more assertive, taking
  the new label of Native Americans, embracing the
  concept of Red Power, and organizing protests
  and demonstrations. In 1968, the militant
  American Indian Movement (AIM) was organized.

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• As a method of protest, in 1969 Native Americans
  seized and occupied Alcatraz for over a year.
  Later, protesters occupied the Federal Bureau of
  Indian Affairs in Washington.
• In February, 1973, AIM activists began an
  occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, the
  site of an army massacre of the Sioux in 1890.
  The seventy-one-day siege, in which the Federal
  Bureau of Investigation (FBI) killed one
  protestor and wounded another, alienated many
  whites, but it spurred government action on
  tribal issues.

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• The civil rights movement also sparked a new
  awareness among some predominantly white groups
  the elderly, people of various ethnic
  backgrounds, and homosexuals.
• The gay liberation movement gained momentum in
  the 1969 Stonewall riot after it, activists
  took the new name of gay founded advocacy
  groups, newspapers, and political organizations
  to challenge discrimination and prejudice and
  offered emotional support to those who came out.

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The Revival of Feminism

• The black struggle became an inspiration for
  young feminists in the 1960s, but social and
  demographic changes also led to the revival of
  feminism.
• By 1970, 42.6 percent of women were working, and
  40 percent of working women were married.

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• During the baby boom, many women dropped out of
  college to marry and raise families by 1970, 41
  percent of college students were female.
• The birth control pill and the intrauterine
  device (IUD) helped women to control their
  fertility, and more liberal divorce laws resulted
  in an increase in divorce rates.
• As a result of these changes, traditional gender
  expectations were dramatically altered the
  changing social realities created a major
  constituency for the emerging womens movement of
  the 1960s.

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• A report by the Presidential Commission on the
  Status of Women in 1963 documented the
  discrimination women faced in employment and
  education.
• Betty Friedans Feminine Mystique gave women a
  vocabulary with which to express their
  dissatisfaction and promoted womens
  self-realization.
• The Civil Rights Act of 1964 had as great an
  impact on women as it did on blacks its Title
  VII eventually became a powerful tool against sex
  discrimination.

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• Dissatisfied with the Equal Employment
  Opportunity Commissions (EEOC) reluctance to
  defend womens rights, Friedan and others founded
  the National Organization for Women (NOW) in
  1966.
• The womens liberationists came to the womens
  movement through their civil rights work male
  leaders lack of respect for women radicals
  caused them to see the need for their own
  movement.

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• Womens lib encouraged women to throw away all
  symbols of female oppression (hair curlers,
  girdles, bras, etc.), but also engaged in
  consciousness raising sessions that helped
  participants realize their individual problems
  were part of a wider pattern of oppression.

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• By 1970, a convergence of interests began to blur
  the distinction between womens rights and
  womens liberation feminists were beginning to
  think of themselves as part of a broad, growing,
  and increasingly influential social crusade that
  would continue to grow.

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The Long Road Home, 19681975
96
1968 A Year of Shocks

• The Johnson administrations hopes for Vietnam
  evaporated when the Vietcong unleashed a massive
  assault, known as the Tet offensive, on major
  urban areas in South Vietnam.
• The attack made a mockery of official
  pronouncements that the United States was winning
  the war and swung public opinion more strongly
  against the conflict.

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• Launched by the North Vietnamese in January 1968,
  the Tet Offensive took the war to major cities
  for the first time. NLF troops quickly occupied
  Hue, the ancient imperial city, and held it for
  nearly a month. Supported by aerial bombing, U.S.
  marines finally took back the city, street by
  street.
• Nonetheless, the Tet Offensive was considered a
  psychological and propaganda victory for the Viet
  Cong, as it exposed the falsities previously set
  forth by General William Westmoreland and the
  Johnson Administration, and increased domestic
  opposition to the war.

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• Antiwar Senator Eugene J.McCarthys strong
  showing in the presidential primaries reflected
  profound public dissatisfaction with the course
  of the war and propelled Senator Robert Kennedy
  into the race on an antiwar platform.
• On March 31, 1968, Johnson stunned the nation by
  announcing that he would not seek reelection he
  vowed to devote his remaining months in office to
  the search for peace, and peace talks began in
  May 1968.

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• The year 1968 also witnessed the assassination of
  Martin Luther King Jr. and its ensuing riots
  students occupied several buildings at Columbia
  University a strike by students and labor that
  toppled the French government and the
  assassination of Robert Kennedy, which shattered
  the dreams of those hoping for social change
  through political action.
• The Democratic Party never fully recovered from
  Johnsons withdrawal and Robert Kennedys
  assassination.

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• At the Democratic convention, the political
  divisions generated by the war consumed the
  party outside the convention yippies
  demonstrated, diverted attention from the more
  serious and numerous activists who came to
  Chicago as delegates or volunteers.

101

• The Democratic mayor of Chicago, Richard J.
  Daley, called out the police to break up the
  demonstrations. In what was later described as a
  police riot, patrolmen attacked protestors at
  the convention with Mace, teargas, and clubs as
  TV viewers watched, which only cemented a popular
  impression of the Democrats as the party of
  disorder.

102

• Democrats dispiritedly nominated Hubert H.
  Humphrey and his running mate Edmund S.Muskie and
  approved a platform that endorsed continued
  fighting in Vietnam while diplomatic means to an
  end were explored.

103

• The turmoil surrounding the civil rights and
  antiwar movements strengthened support for law
  and order many Americans were fed up with
  protest and dissent.
• George Wallace, a third-party candidate,
  skillfully combined attacks on liberal
  intellectuals and government elites with
  denunciations of school segregation and forced
  busing.

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• Richard Nixon tapped the increasingly
  conservative mood of the electorate in an amazing
  political comeback, winning the 1968 Republican
  presidential nomination.
• On October 31, 1968, Johnson announced a complete
  halt to the bombing of North Vietnam Nixon
  countered by intimating that he had a plan for
  the end of the war, although he did not.

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• On election day, Nixon received 43.4 percent of
  the vote to Humphreys 42.7 percent, defeating
  him by only 510,000 votes out of the 73 million
  that were cast, and Wallace finished with 13.5
  percent of the popular vote.

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• The closeness of the 1968 election suggested how
  polarized American society had become, and Nixon
  appealed to the silent majority.

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Nixons War

• In March 1969 Nixon ordered clandestine bombing
  raids on neutral Cambodia , through which the
  North Vietnamese had been transporting supplies
  and reinforcements, to convince North Vietnam
  that the United States meant business about
  mutual troop withdrawal.
• When the intensified bombing failed to end the
  war, Nixon and Henry Kissinger adopted a policy
  of Vietnamization the replacement of American
  troops with South Vietnamese forces.

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"Angel's Wing" and the "Crow's Nest"
Svay Rieng Province
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• Antiwar demonstrators denounced the new policy,
  which protected American lives at the expense of
  the Vietnamese on October 15, 1969, millions of
  Americans joined a one-day moratorium against
  the war and a month later more than a quarter of
  a million people mobilized in Washington in a
  large antiwar demonstration.

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• Nixons response was to label student
  demonstrators as bums and his statement that
  North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the
  United States. Only Americans can do that.

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• Nixons secret bombing of Cambodia culminated in
  a 1970 American incursion into Cambodia to
  destroy enemy havens there though only a
  short-term setback for the North Vietnamese, it
  helped to destabilize the country, exposing it to
  takeover by the Khmer Rouge later in the 1970s.

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• When the New York Times uncovered the secret
  invasion of Cambodia, an antiwar national student
  strike ensued at Kent State University, National
  Guardsmen fired into a crowd at an antiwar rally
  killing four and wounding eleven and, soon
  afterward, National Guardsmen stormed a dormitory
  at Jackson State College, killing two black
  students.

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• More than 450 colleges closed in protest, and 80
  percent of all campuses experienced some kind of
  disturbance in June 1970, a Gallup poll
  identified campus unrest, not the war, as the
  issue that most troubled Americans.

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• Congressional opposition to the war also
  intensified with the invasion of Cambodia in
  June 1970, the Senate expressed its disapproval
  for the war by repealing the Tonkin resolution
  and cutting off funding for operations in
  Cambodia.
• Soldiers themselves were showing mounting
  opposition to their mission those who refused to
  follow combat orders increased and thousands
  deserted. Of the majority who fought on, many
  sewed peace symbols on their uniforms, and
  incidents of fragging occurred.

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• In 1971, Americans were appalled by revelations
  of the sheer brutality of the war when Lieutenant
  William L. Calley was court-martialed for
  atrocities committed in the village of My Lai.

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• A Few Survivors
•    
• TRUONG THI LEE           TRUONG
  MOI                     PHAM THI THUAM

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• The antiwar movement was weakened in part by
  internal divisions within the New Left and by
  Nixons promise to continue troop withdrawals,
  end the draft, and institute an all-volunteer
  army by 1973.

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Withdrawal from Vietnam and Détente

• Nixons policy of détente was to seek peaceful
  coexistence with the Communist Soviet Union and
  China and to link these overtures of friendship
  with a plan to end the Vietnam War.
• Nixon traveled to China in 1972 in a symbolic
  visit that set the stage for the establishment of
  formal diplomatic relations

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• "This was the week that changed the world,
  proclaimed President Richard M. Nixon in February
  1972, emphasizing the stunning turnaround in
  relations with America's former enemy, the
  People's Republic of China. Nixon's trip was
  meticulously planned to dramatize the event on
  television and, aside from criticism from some
  conservatives, won overwhelming support from
  Americans. The Great Wall of China forms the
  setting for this photograph of Nixon and his wife
  Pat.

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• He then traveled to Moscow to sign the first
  Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) between
  the United States and the Soviet Union.
• The treaty limited the production and deployment
  of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs)
  and antiballistic missile systems (ABMs) and
  signified that the United States could no longer
  afford massive military spending to regain the
  nuclear and military superiority it had enjoyed
  after World War II.

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• The Paris peace talks had been in stalemate since
  1968 in late 1971, as American troops withdrew,
  Communist forces stepped up their attacks on
  Laos, Cambodia, and South Vietnam.
• After yet another North Vietnamese offensive
  against South Vietnam, Nixon ordered B-52
  bombings against North Vietnam and the mining of
  North Vietnamese ports.

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• With the help of a cease-fire agreement, Nixon
  won a resounding victory in the 1972 elections
  however, the peace initiative stalled when South
  Vietnam rejected a provision concerning North
  Vietnamese troop positions.
• Nixon stepped up the military actions with the
  Christmas bombings the Paris Peace accords
  were signed on January 27, 1973.

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• The accords did not fulfill Nixons promise of
  peace with honor, but they did call for the
  withdrawal of American troops in exchange for the
  return of American prisoners of war (POWs) and
  for most Americans that was enough.
• The South Vietnamese government soon fell to
  Communist forces horrified Americans watched as
  American embassy personnel and Vietnamese
  citizens struggled to board helicopters leaving
  Saigon before North Vietnamese troops entered the
  city.
• On April 29, 1975,Vietnam was reunited, and
  Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in honor of
  the Communist leader who had died in 1969

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The Legacy of Vietnam

• The Vietnam War occupied American administrations
  for nearly thirty years U.S. troops fought the
  war for over eleven years, from 1961 to 1973.

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• Some 58,000 U.S. troops died in Vietnam, and
  another 300,000 were wounded.
• Those troops who returned unharmed encountered a
  sometimes hostile or indifferent reception,
  making the transition to civilian life abrupt and
  disorienting and led to recurring physical and
  psychological problems.

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• In Southeast Asia, the war claimed an estimated
  1.5 million Vietnamese lives and devastated the
  countrys physical and economic structure Laos
  and particularly Cambodia also suffered when
  between 1975 and 1979 the Khmer Rouge killed an
  estimated 2 million Cambodians in a brutal
  relocation campaign.
• The war produced nearly 10 million refugees, many
  of whom immigrated to the United States among
  them were more than 30,000 Amerasians, the
  offspring of American soldiers and Vietnamese
  women.

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Pol Pot AKA 'Brother Number One'. Birth name
Saloth Sar. Kill tally One to three million
(or between a quarter and a third of the
country's population).
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• The defeat in Vietnam prompted Americans to think
  differently about foreign affairs and to
  acknowledge the limits of U.S. power abroad.
• In 1973, Congress declared its hostility to
  undeclared wars like those in Vietnam and Korea
  by passing the War Powers Act, which required the
  president to report any use of military force
  within forty-eight hours and directed that
  without a declaration of war by Congress
  hostilities must cease within sixty days.

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• Vietnam distorted American economic and social
  affairs costing over 150 billion, the war
  siphoned resources from domestic needs, added to
  the deficit, and fueled inflation.
• The war also shattered the liberal consensus that
  had supported the Democratic coalition.
• The conduct of the war spawned the discrediting
  of liberalism, increased cynicism toward
  government, and growing social turmoil that would
  continue into the next decade, paving the way for
  a resurgence of the Republican Party and a new
  mood of conservatism

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War at Home (cont)

• Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)
• Endorsed civil rights and the fight against
  racial discrimination
• Port Huron Statement
• Called for participatory democracy that would be
  responsive to the wishes of local communities
• General opposition to the establishment
• Unrest on college and university campuses
• War came to dominate agenda of student protesters
  by 1966
• Debate over student deferments
• Draft card burning
• Unstructured demonstrations dominated campus life

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American Attitudes Toward Vietnam War
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War at Home (cont)

• Violence overseas
• Tet Offensive, January
• Serious psychological defeat for United States
• Called into question claims of imminent victory
• Contributed to policy that would later be called
  Vietnamization
• Johnson announced he would not run for
  re-election, March
• Halted bombing of North
• Initiated peace talks

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War at Home (cont)

• Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in April
• Spurred violence and riots across the country
• Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in June
• Violence at political conventions
• Republicans plagued by racial violence in Miami
• Democrats hurt by brutal suppression of
  anti-protesters in Chicago

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War at Home (cont)

• Election of 1968
• Vice-President Hubert Humphrey was Democratic
  nominee
• Republicans ran Richard Nixon
• George Wallace ran on American Independent Party
• Spoke of using nuclear weapons to end war in
  Vietnam
• Nixon won narrow victory

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Nixon Years, 19691974

• Two decades of economic growth came to an end
  during Nixon presidency
• Inherited high levels of domestic spending, and
  expensive war in Vietnam, and the deteriorating,
  but still favorable balance of trade
• Soaring unemployment and price inflation
• What economists came to call stagflation
• Nation ran its first trade deficit of the
  twentieth century in 1971
• New Economy policy
• 90-day freeze on wages and prices
• Subsequent government monitoring to detect
  excessive increases in either

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Nixon Years (cont)

• Abandoned gold-to-dollar ratio in 1971
• Dollar would thereafter float against both gold
  and all other currencies
• Devalued dollar in 1973
• Cheapened price of American goods in foreign
  markets
• Little improvement of U.S. trade balance resulted

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Nixon Years (cont)

• Family Assistance Plan
• Abolish other welfare programs, including AFDC
• Institute a guaranteed annual income for all
  families
• End post-New Deal system of aid to those in
  particular circumstances
• Provide aid to everyone
• Not implemented
• New federalism plan to return federal tax money
  to the states in the form of block grants
• Supplementary Social Security Insurance for the
  elderly, blind, and disabled
• Gradual expansion of Medicare and Medicaid
• Social Security payments indexed to inflation in
  1972
• Environmental Protection Agency

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Nixon Years (cont)

• Supreme Court
• Dominated by activist majority devoted to
  recognizing a broad range of constitutionally
  protected rights
• Miranda v. Arizona guaranteed rights to persons
  accused of violent crime
• Conservatives saw as coddling of criminals
• Three conservative justices appointed by Nixon
• Harry Blackmun, William Rehnquist, and Lewis
  Powell
• Dandridge v. Williams declared that welfare was
  not a national right
• Roe v. Wade ruled that a state law making
  abortion a crime violated a womans right of
  privacy

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Foreign Policy Under Nixon and Kissinger

• Key advisor was Henry Kissinger, National
  Security Advisor
• Détente as major foreign policy goal
• Strategic Arms Limitation Talks with Soviet Union
• Opening toward China
• Vietnamization
• Withdrawal of U.S. troops
• Stepping up of air war and intensifying
  diplomatic efforts to reach settlement
• Nixon Doctrine
• U.S. military assistance to anti-Communist
  government in Asia
• Nations left to provide their own military forces

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Wars of Watergate

• Caused collapse of Nixons presidency
• Stemmed from Nixons deep mistrust for nearly
  everyone in Washington
• Established plumbers unit to protect
  administration from enemies
• Funded by illegal campaign contributions
• Broke into Democratic Partys headquarters during
  1972 re-election campaign
• Irony is that Nixon won election handily and
  didnt need to resort to dirty tricks to win
• Administration was involved but denied it and
  instituted cover up instead
• The press, Congress, and the federal judiciary,
  all began searching for the truth
• Eventually bits of the truth began trickling out,
  and Nixon was implicated in both the original
  break in and in the cover up

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Watergate (cont)

• Nixon continued to deny involvement
• White House taping system that could implicate
  him if the tapes were surrendered to the courts
• Supreme Court ruled unanimously in U.S. v. Nixon
  that he had to give them up
• House Judiciary Committee voted three articles of
  impeachment
• Obstruction of justice, violation of
  constitutional liberties, refusal to produce
  evidence requested during the impeachment process

Web
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Watergate (cont)

• In the end, Nixon chose to resign rather than
  face trial by the senate
• Left office in disgrace on August 9, 1974,
  succeeded by Gerald Ford
• Received an unconditional pardon by Ford
• Public knowledge and understanding of Watergate
  not high today

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Discussion Questions

• What is the Great Society? Was it successful in
  its goals for the United States? Does it still
  exist today?
• Examine Johnsons Vietnam policy. Explain why he
  took the steps he did in the war. Was his policy
  successful?
• Examine the youth movement of the late 1960s.
  What effect did the New Left and the
  counterculture movement have on American society?
• Evaluate Nixons presidency. What were his
  triumphs? Why did his presidency end in such
  dishonor?