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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.
U.S. Perspective • Supports Containment of communism • Believes in “Domino Theory” • The US already “lost China”
French Fight Communist “insurgents” w/ US help 1945-1954 Abandon Vietnam after Dienbienphu
Ho Chi Minh Ngo Dinh Diem North Vietnam South Vietnam
US Support Diem in the newly created South after Geneva Conference – ‘54
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…..
Gulf of Tonkin • What are justifications for a U.S. response? • What are some of the doubts that surface during the Congressional debate?
Media & Vietnam
Photo Analysis • In groups of five… • Each person examines and records details of one photograph. Create a title for your photograph as well. • Share responses and photograph with group. • Write an evaluation of impact of war photography.
LBJ & “Credibility Gap”
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.”
Home and Abroad: Living Room War Unpinned Part 3
Nixon & Vietnam