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Americas role in Vietnam
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In 1969 Nixon shifted his rhetoric, after taking office, and attacked the issue of making a war plan head on, this is especially evident during a speech in November of that year. In this speech, he outlines the plan and the action that has been taken to remove the US from Vietnam. He reiterates proposals made in a speech to the UN and all of which were denied by the leader, “We have offered our complete withdrawal of all outside forces within 1 year, we have proposed a cease-fire under international supervision, we have offered free elections under international supervision with the Communists participating in the organization and conduct of the elections as an organized political force. And the Saigon Government has pledged to accept the result …show more content…
After setting forth this doctrine he describes the plan for the future of American intervention, “Let me now turn to our program for the future. We have adopted a plan which we have worked out in cooperation with the South Vietnamese for the complete withdrawal of all U.S. combat ground forces, and their replacement by South Vietnamese forces on an orderly scheduled timetable. This withdrawal will be made from strength and not from weakness. As South Vietnamese forces become stronger, the rate of American withdrawal can become greater.” This was reiterating his campaign promise but it also set forth a concrete plan to be followed for the future and helped reinforce that he was making good on his …show more content…
Nixon knew both actions would garner more protests and backlash from abroad so he kept them a secret until the film and documents pertaining to them surfaced which led to him outing himself. The Christmas bombing mission would go onto ruin months of negotiations made by Kissinger, and lead to the need for a complete withdrawal of troops. The administration added to the dissent with their use of back room deals and secret meetings to influence the outcome of the
In 1971, John Kerry stood in front of the Senate and spoke about his experiences in Vietnam as a soldier. There would be many that would agree with his position, some that would disagree and ultimately some that had no strong opinion at all. John Kerry knew that although he was speaking to the senate he was also speaking to the American people and through his intentional way of speaking he used this to his advantage. In John Kerry’s speech, strongly opposing the Vietnam War, Kerry successfully uses his persona as one who experienced the war head on, to reveal the lack of morality in Vietnam and paint the war as barbaric acts with no true purpose behind them.
Mark Atwood Lawrence’s The Vietnam War: A Concise International History shows readers an international affair involving many nations and how the conflict progressed throughout its rather large existence. Lawrence starts his book in a time before America was involved in the war. It starts out with the French trying to colonize the nation of Vietnam. Soon the United States gets involved and struggles to get its point across in the jungles of Indo-China. Much of the book focuses on the American participation in helping South Vietnam vie for freedom to combine the country as a whole not under Communist rule. Without seeing many results, the war drug on for quite some time with neither side giving up. This resulted in problems in Vietnam and the U.S.
On Thursday, April 30, 1970, President Richard Nixon told the American people that we were sending troops into Cambodia. This upset many Americans because Nixon was brought into office due to his promise to end the war. In his first year of presidency it looked like the end of the war was near, but with this announcement the end of the war was not evident. This pro-war decision by Nixon upset many people and led to riots all over the country. How could the President make the decision to continue war when he promised to end it?
On January 20, 1969 our 37th president, Richard Milhous Nixon, was sworn into Presidency. His main focus as president was to pull forces out of Vietnam in order to end the War that began in 1961. Nixon began this process by pulling 75,000 troops out of Vietnam in the first year he was president. Nixon also worked to improve US relations with China as well as with the Soviet Union. He was the first president to visit China. He also imposed a wage price freeze to combat inflation that was replaced by a system of wage price controls, to be later removed. Nixon?s term as President will forever be remembered due to his resignation from presidency over the Watergate scandal.
Nixon’s approach to the war was Birchesque. He campaigned for president in 1968 as a peace candidate by pointing out that he had been raised as a Quaker and promising to bring the troops home. His path to peace, however, entailed an escalated war. After his election as president, he unleashed a ferocious air assault on the Vietnamese and extended the ground war into Laos and Cambodia. When the anti-war movement criticized these measures, Nixon did what any Bircher would do: he decried the anti-war movement as a communist conspiracy that was prolonging the war and that deserved to be treated as an internal security threat.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the most controversial war the United States had ever been involved in during its rich two-hundred year history would engulf the country, ultimately leading to the collapse of a president, and the division of a nation. The Vietnam War was a military struggle fought in Vietnam and neighboring countries from 1959-1975 involving the North Vietnamese and NLF (National Liberation Front) versus the United States and the South Vietnamese ("The Vietnam..."). In 1969, newly elected President Richard M. Nixon, aiming to achieve "peace with honor" in Vietnam, began to put his "Vietnamization" policy into place -- removing the number of American military personnel in the country and transferring combat roles to the South Vietnamese ("Speeches..."). But at the same time, Nixon resumed the secret bombing of North Vietnam and launched B-52 bombing raids over Cambodia, intending to wipe out NLF and North Vietnamese base camps along the border. The intensive secret bombing, codenamed Operation Menu, lasted for four years and was intentionally concealed from the American public; meanwhile, Nixon ordered the invasion of Cambodia by United States troops, arguing that it was necessary to protect the security of American units. This invasion into an allegedly neutral country was cause for much protest in the States, especially on college campuses such as Kent State University, where students rioted and held walk-outs. Ultimately, the secret bombing of neutral Cambodia was deliberately conducted without the consent of Congress, violating the articles outlined in the United States Constitution, and would have been grounds for impeachment had Nixon not resigned under the cloud of the Watergate scandal in August of 1974 ("Richard M....
President Dwight Eisenhower conditionally pledged to support South Vietnam’s new nation in 1955. In the time period between 1955-1961 the United States pumped seven billion dollars in aid so that Vietnam would not “go over quickly” like a “row of dominoes” (McNamara 31). In the next 6 years Vietnam would cost America billions of dollars, thousands of lives, and the disaffection of much of the United States public. Yet in the end, South Vietnam would fall to the North less than 2 years after the United States military involvement ceased.
The decision to aid Vietnam was a difficult one that all five Presidents struggled with but it was in 1961 when Kennedy sent a team to Vietnam to report on conditions in the South and to assess future American aid requirements (Rorak, 1,065). The problem was that this decision was like a snowball roiling down a hill, gaining size and momentum as it tore a path down the hill. While I agree with President Kennedy’s analysis that “this is their war and that they are the ones who have to win it or lose it” it does not spport the fact that the war lasted for MMM years. President Kennedy further states that, ”We can help them, we can give them equipment, we can send our men out there as advisers, but t...
He was also a Gulf War veteran who commanded an armored cavalry. His desire in writing this book was to examine, through the recently declassified documents, manuscript collections, and the Joint Chief of Staff official histories, where the responsibility for the Vietnam foreign policy disaster lay, but also examine the decisions made that involved the United States in a war they could not win. This book details the discussion of government policy in the stages of the Vietnam crisis from 1961-July 1965. It examines the main characters of President Lyndon B. Johnson, Robert McNamara, in addition to the military, which included the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It began in the Kennedy era amidst the Bay of Pigs incident and how that led to mistrust of the military planning by advisors and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
It is understandable that some Americans strongly opposed the United States getting involved in the Vietnam War. It had not been a long time since the end of World War II and simply put, most Americans were tired of fighting. Mark Atwood Lawrence is one of the people who opposed our involvement in the Vietnam War. In his essay, “Vietnam: A Mistake of Western Alliance”, Lawrence argues that the Vietnam War was unnecessary and that it went against our democratic policies, but that there were a lot of things that influenced our involvement.
At first, he was a strong supporter of the Vietnam War but then became a strong opponent. The Department of Defense continued to lie to the people about the hype about the war. The government continued to say that the war was under control. The Pentagon Papers already have statistics on the Vietnam War. As soon as Nixon saw the paper, he went to his Attorney General right away to stop the printing of the New York Times newspaper. Daniel Ellsberg knew that he would get arrested for making copies of the papers.
i. Difficulties faced by soldiers due to the nature of fighting in the Vietnam War - Personnel had difficulties with transportation supplied with adapted vehicles back seat faced rear to provide additional fire power (Source A) – It appears as if the government didn't worry enough to supply men with safe and capable equipment - Threat of traps led to fear as vehicles had to be parked on street at night (Source A) o Check for traps each morning became a daily ritual particularly in fuel tanks (Source A) o A request for a locking fuel cap was denied because weren’t entitled to one” (Source A) • What circumstances would have needed to arise for them to be entitled to one? The Offensive full guard was set up (24hrs a day), personnel got no sleep and were constantly on alert (Source A) – How significant would this have been in the personnel’s mental frame of mind?
In Kirby Dick’s influential documentary “The Invisible War,” filmmaker Kirby Dick uses pathos, ethos and logos to gain information and supplementary details to make his point that there is an epidemic of rape in throughout the DOD (Department of Defense) and the fact that military sexual trauma (MST) in the United States military goes unheard, mostly unpunished and needs to be addressed at a higher level.
While Nixon was in office, he used the war to his benefit, helping him win another term in office. Nixon’s plan was to use “Vietnamization,” a process in which American soldiers would train South Vietnamese to fight for themselves and eventually drawing American troops out of the war (Vietnamization). At first, General WestPoint was in charge, raiding Vietcong bases and trying to eliminate them. The original plan was to use the body count to discourage any more NVA troops from fighting, but this strategy backfired because both Vietnamese and American troops had high body counts. General Abraham was appointed as commander and began the “Vietnamization” strategy, which only seemed to work in the public’s eyes. Nixon made a treaty with South Vietnamese President, to have a ceasefire to withdraw American troops and release American POWs while South Vietnam took over the war (The). Nixon planned to use this strategy to withdraw all American troops, however it was “worse, Nixon would leave North Vietnamese troops occupying and controlling much of the South, while withdrawing all remaining American ground forces (Hughes).” Nixon’s use of Vietnamization helped to further his political resolve. He “sacrificed the lives of American soldiers to further his electoral ends (Hughes).” The ...
On the fourth of April in 1967, Michael King Jr, also known as Martin Luther King Jr, spoke to the American public in the speech titled Beyond Vietnam—A Time to Break Silence. Throughout this speech, King addressed a conflict that occurred during the late 1960’s which was extremely controversial; the Vietnam War. In the speech King detailed his position on the war and particularly discussed why he was against fighting in Vietnam. King utilized many rhetorical devices in order to explain the reasons why he was against this armed conflict. The rhetorical devices that are utilized the most in the speech is specifically logos and anecdotes. Through the use of rhetorical devices, King thrived in convincing his audience into believing that entering the war was a tragic mistake. In the speech, King used many anecdotes and logos to strengthen the persuasiveness of his argument in order to lead the audience into believing the reasons of why the war was negative.