What was the americans reaction to the vietnam war

A coup by some of his own generals succeeded in toppling and killing Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, in November , three weeks before Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Congress soon passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution , which gave Johnson broad war-making powers, and U.

The bombing campaign was meant to disrupt the flow of supplies across the Ho Chi Minh trail into Vietnam and to prevent the rise of the Pathet Lao, or Lao communist forces. The U. In March , Johnson made the decision—with solid support from the American public—to send U. By June, 82, combat troops were stationed in Vietnam, and military leaders were calling for , more by the end of to shore up the struggling South Vietnamese army.

Despite the concerns of some of his advisers about this escalation, and about the entire war effort amid a growing anti-war movement , Johnson authorized the immediate dispatch of , troops at the end of July and another , in In contrast to the air attacks on North Vietnam, the U. Westmoreland pursued a policy of attrition, aiming to kill as many enemy troops as possible rather than trying to secure territory.

Heavy bombing by B aircraft or shelling made these zones uninhabitable, as refugees poured into camps in designated safe areas near Saigon and other cities. Even as the enemy body count at times exaggerated by U. Additionally, supported by aid from China and the Soviet Union, North Vietnam strengthened its air defenses.

By November , the number of American troops in Vietnam was approaching ,, and U. The later years of the war saw increased physical and psychological deterioration among American soldiers—both volunteers and draftees—including drug use , post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD , mutinies and attacks by soldiers against officers and noncommissioned officers.

Between July and December , more than , U. Bombarded by horrific images of the war on their televisions, Americans on the home front turned against the war as well: In October , some 35, demonstrators staged a massive Vietnam War protest outside the Pentagon. Opponents of the war argued that civilians, not enemy combatants, were the primary victims and that the United States was supporting a corrupt dictatorship in Saigon.

On January 31, , some 70, DRV forces under General Vo Nguyen Giap launched the Tet Offensive named for the lunar new year , a coordinated series of fierce attacks on more than cities and towns in South Vietnam. Taken by surprise, U. Reports of the Tet Offensive stunned the U. With his approval ratings dropping in an election year, Johnson called a halt to bombing in much of North Vietnam though bombings continued in the south and promised to dedicate the rest of his term to seeking peace rather than reelection.

Despite the later inclusion of the South Vietnamese and the NLF, the dialogue soon reached an impasse, and after a bitter election season marred by violence, Republican Richard M. Nixon won the presidency. In an attempt to limit the volume of American casualties, he announced a program called Vietnamization : withdrawing U.

In addition to this Vietnamization policy, Nixon continued public peace talks in Paris, adding higher-level secret talks conducted by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger beginning in the spring of Nixon as president of the United States and a spacecraft circling the moon as American astronauts invoked Scripture. It all began with a series of surprise attacks across the nation of South Vietnam to be remembered with the one, now-freighted Vietnamese name: Tet.

He now travels the world, watches wonks push policy in Washington's multitude of think tanks and writes occasional dispatches on what those scholars and wannabe secretaries of state have in mind for Europe, Asia and Latin America.

Support Provided By: Learn more. Thursday, Nov The Latest. World Agents for Change. Health Long-Term Care. For Teachers. NewsHour Shop. About Feedback Funders Support Jobs. Close Menu. Email Address Subscribe. What do you think? Leave a respectful comment. Close Comment Window. But I had been exposed to it very thoroughly.

Do the students in your classes come with any knowledge of the Vietnam War? Very little. But remember how long ago it was. It ended in For me, it would be the equivalent of a war happening in , so I spend a lot of time trying to set up particularly a sense of what America was like before we completely messed up and humiliated ourselves in Vietnam.

What were some of the mistakes that the United States made? As far as I can tell, we had no good intelligence about the enemy, or even about Vietnam itself.

There was no sense of urgency that before we did anything, we should really find out a lot about the country and about the combatants. We should know the names of all the North Vietnamese leaders, and have some idea of what their political views are, what kinds of internal fights they were having. Also, the failure to understand strategy transformed the nature of the war. Is there one president you think deserves more blame than the others for mismanaging the war?

What were some of his missteps or mistakes? It portrays us as being more powerful and better than we really are. It makes us almost take on a mission of sort of saving the world. It conveys a degree of pride and confidence that is way out of line, that only a god could have, and so, therefore, it raised the expectations of the American people to a level which could not possibly be satisfied.

Was there a member of his administration who you think gave him bad advice? In the Vietnam War, really the worst influence on our strategy was Averell Harriman [assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs]. He was ambassador to Russia in the [Franklin] Roosevelt administration, he was at the Yalta talks, he was governor of New York.

Harriman was the one who messed up the Kennedy policy. Marshals protecting the building, hundreds of demonstrators were arrested. Also in , the anti-war movement got a big boost when the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

The Vietnam War protest inspired many popular songs that became an anthem for their generation. Joining the anti-war demonstrations by this time were members of the organization Vietnam Veterans Against the War, many of whom were in wheelchairs and on crutches. The sight of these men on television throwing away the medals they had won during the war did much to win people over to the anti-war cause.

After many New Hampshire primary voters rallied behind the anti-war Democrat Eugene McCarthy , Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection. Vice President Hubert Humphrey accepted the Democratic nomination in August in Chicago , and 10, anti-war demonstrators showed up outside the convention building, clashing with security forces assembled by Mayor Richard Daley.

Humphrey lost the presidential election to Richard M. Tensions ran higher than ever, spurred on by mass demonstrations and incidents of official violence such those at Kent State in May , when National Guard troops shot into a group of protesters demonstrating against the U.

In response to a strong anti-war mandate, Nixon announced the effective end to U. The Paris Peace Agreement was signed on January 27, But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present.