Vietnam: The Consensus Unravels

“Why did the world’s most powerful nation fail to achieve its objectives and suffer its first defeat in war, a humiliating and deeply frustrating experience for a people accustomed to success?” -- George Herring

Transcript

1. Vietnam The Consensus Unravels
2. America’s Longest War? 1950 - 1975
3. Why?
4. Why? Despite the expenditure of more than $150 billion,
5. Why?
6. Why? Despite the application of its great technical expertise,
7. Why?
8. Why? Despite the employment of a huge military arsenal,
9. Why?
10. “Why did the world’s most powerful nation fail to achieve its objectives and suffer its first defeat in war, a humiliating and deeply frustrating experience for a people accustomed to success?”
11. George C. Herring Author, America’s Longest War
12. John Olson, ©1968 (Battle of Hue)
13. ~58,000 ~millions
22. Ho Chi Minh
23. Vietminh + OSS Office of Strategic Services
24. 1941-42
25. 1941-42
26. “Your statesmen make eloquent speeches about helping those with self- determination. WE are self- determined.
27. Why not help us? Am I any different from... even your George Washington?”
28. September, 1945 INDEPENDENCE
29. “We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal.”
30. March, 1946
31. “French…troops are making active preparations for a coup….I therefore most earnestly appeal to you… and to the American people to… support…our independence…” TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
32. President Harry S Truman
33. The United States could not “afford to assume that Ho is anything but Moscow-directed.” US State Department, 1947
34. “Fall” of China 1949
35. “domino theory”
37. Bao Dai (SOUTH)
39. $152 million > 1950-51 50
40. $152 million > 1952
42. “New Look”
43. $385 million > 1953
44. Dienbienphu 1954
45. Dienbienphu 1954
46. Dienbienphu 1954
47. Dienbienphu 1954
48. Dienbienphu 1954
49. “No more Koreas!”
50. Geneva Accords 1954
51. “[The USA] has not been party to or is not bound by the decisions taken by the conference.”
52. 17th parallel
53. Elections 1956
54. CIA (formerly, OSS)
55. Ngo Dinh Diem
56. Ngo Dinh Diem 98%
58. patronage
59. abolished elections
60. shut down
61. dissenters
62. A two-part Civil War
63. Ho Diem vs.
64. Ho Diem vs. NLF vs.
65. NLF
66. NLF: National Liberation Front > Vietcong (VC)
67. Understanding Vietnam
68. vs.
69. Consensus Assumptions
70. JFK
71. “Project Beef-up”
72. 16,000 “Advisers” 489 killed
73. Strategic Hamlet program
75. Thich Quang Duc burns himself to death on a Saigon street.
76. “I feel that we must bear a good deal of the responsibility for it…”
77. “Why do the leaves fall?.... <pause> I was shocked by…”
78. Dallas, TX: 11/22/63
80. LBJ “I’m not going down in history as the first American President who lost a war.”
81. Tonkin Gulf Resolution August 7, 1964
82. Tonkin Gulf Resolution 416-0 (House) 88-2 (Senate) 1:48
83. “take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.” Tonkin Gulf Resolution
84. Tonkin Gulf Resolution 416-0 (House) 88-2 (Senate)
85. On Kawara, Title ©1965
86. Catherine Leroy, ©1968 (Battle of Hue)
87. Tet Offensive January, 1968
88. Tet Offensive January, 1968
89. Tet Offensive Catherine Leroy, ©1968 (Battle of Hue)
90. My Lai: March 16, 1968
91. My Lai: March 16, 1968
92. “We huddled them up. We made them squat down…I poured about 4 clips into the group….The mothers was hugging their children….Well, we kept right on firing. They was waving their arms and begging….I still dream about it.” Pvt. Paul Meadlo, father of two
94. Above and Beyond © 2016
95. “I feel like a hitchhiker caught in a hailstorm on a Texas highway. I can’t run, I can’t hide, and I can’t make it stop.”
97. Nixon
98. Kent State: May 4, 1970
99. “Vietnamization”
100. The Consensus Unravels
101. “The United States’ involvement in Vietnam was not primarily the result of errors of judgment of the personality quirks of the policymakers, although these things existed in abundance.
102. “It was the logical, if not inevitable, outgrowth of a world view and a policy; the policy of containment which Americans in and out of government accepted without serious question for more than two decades.”
103. George C. Herring May, 1979
104. We must act to stop Communism and we have the right to do this, everywhere.
105. DEFEAT April 29, 1975
106. We have faith in our leaders and our [superior] political institutions.
107. End of the Great Society
108. America can solve or is already solving all of its problems.
109. Vietnamese “boat people”
111. “The earliest architects of America’s containment doctrine…had always predicted a Soviet implosion. If we had believed our own rhetoric…we would not have thought it necessary to fight…every battle. [W]hich is why…those of us who make the annual pilgrimage are always reduced to tears.” — Joseph Ellis