The great African-American poet Langston Hughes (1902-1967) asked in a poem called “Harlem,”
Word for the Day
Vietnam
(1946-1975)
In 1964, the beacon of the Great Society shone brightly. Motivated by the memory of JFK and energized by the moral passion of Lyndon Johnson, the program of social reform, even more ambitious than the New Deal had been, seemed unstoppable.
Then, on August 2, 1964, the American destroyer Maddox, conducting electronic espionage in international waters, was attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats. Undamaged, Maddox was joined by a second destroyer, the C. Turner Joy. On August 4, both ships claimed to have been attacked. Although evidence of the second attack was thin (later it was discovered that the second attack had not occurred), President Johnson ordered retaliatory air, strikes and asked Congress for support. On August 7, the U.S. Senate passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution., giving LBJ almost unlimited authority to expand American involvement in a long-standing war in a part of the world few Americans knew or cared much about.
That war would wreck the Great Society, nearly tear the United States apart, spawn an idealistic albeit drug-oriented youth counterculture, and cost the lives of 58,000 young Americans.
Flashback
World War II left much of the world, including Southeast Asia, dangerously unstable. During the 19th century, France had colonized Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, and when France caved in to Germany in 1940, the Japanese allowed French colonial officials puppet authority in Southeast Asia until the Allied liberation of France in 1945. Japan then seized full control, purging the French police agencies and soldiery that had kept various nationalist groups in check. In Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969) led the most powerful of these independence- seeking groups, the Viet Minh. Aided by U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) personnel, Viet Minh fought a guerrilla war against the Japanese occupiers.
When the war in Europe ended, Allied forces were free to turn their attention to Vietnam (and the rest of Southeast Asia). Nationalist Chinese troops (under Chiang Kai-shek) occupied northern Vietnam. The British secured southern Vietnam for re-entry of the French, who ruthlessly suppressed supporters of Ho Chi Minh. A state of low-level guerrilla warfare developed, which escalated sharply when Chiang Kai-shek, hoping to checkmate communist ambitions in the region, withdrew from northern Vietnam and turned that region over to French control.
The March to Dien Bien Phu
Like Chiang Kai-shek, U.S. leaders feared communist incursions in Southeast Asia and began to supply the French with funding, military equipment, and-on August 3, 1950—the first contingent of U.S. military “advisors.” By 1953, the United States was funding 80 percent of the cost of France’s war effort.
France assigned General Henri Eugene Navarre to strike a decisive blow on the strategically located plain of Dien Bien Phu, near Laos. President Eisenhower stepped up military aid, but despite Navarre’s massing of troops, Dien Bien Phu fell to the forces of Ho Chi Minh on May 7, 1954. This disaster was followed by a string of Viet Minh victories, and, in a July peace conference, the French and the Viet Minh concluded a cease-fire and agreed to divide Vietnam along the 17th parallel.
Domino Theory
During the thick of the Dien Bien Phu campaign, on April 7, 1954, President Eisenhower presented reporters with his rationale for aiding the French—a foreign power-in their fight against communism in Vietnam—a remote country. “You have a row of dominoes set up,” he explained, “you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty it will go over very quickly.” This off-handed metaphor was immediately christened the domino theory, and it became the basis for an escalating U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
