Transcript
Created Equal
September 2, 1945
Hà Nội September 2, 1945
That morning, Japan had surrendered in Tokyo Bay. Now hundreds of thousands waited for a thin man in a khaki tunic and rubber sandals.
Hồ Chí Minh Tất cả mọi người đều sinh ra có quyền bình đẳng.
Hồ Chí Minh Tạo hóa cho họ những quyền không ai có thể xâm phạm được; trong những quyền ấy, có quyền được sống, quyền tự do và quyền mưu cầu hạnh phúc.
You know those words. He told the crowd where they came from: the American Declaration of Independence, 1776.
In the crowd stood a few American officers. That summer, American agents had trained Ho's guerrillas to fight Japan. A week earlier, a Vietnamese army band had played 'The Star-Spangled Banner' at their door.
Over the next months, Ho wrote to President Truman and the State Department at least eight times. There's no record of an answer.
Thirty years later, the last Americans left Vietnam by helicopter from a rooftop in Saigon. Why did the United States fight there for so long? And why did so many Americans stop believing their own government?
Advisers
1954–1963
The Geneva Accords split Vietnam at the 17th parallel. The line was “provisional.” Elections in 1956 were meant to reunite the country.
About 900,000 northerners, most of them Catholic, left for the South. U.S. Navy ships carried over 300,000 of them.
In the South, Washington backed Ngo Dinh Diem, a Catholic anti-Communist in a mostly Buddhist country.
In a 1955 vote to remove the former emperor, Diem claimed 98.2 percent. Saigon cast more than 600,000 votes. It had 450,000 registered voters.
Diem refused to hold the 1956 election, and Washington backed him.
Eisenhower later wrote that in a vote during the French war, possibly 80 percent would have picked Ho.
Kennedy sent thousands more Americans. By the end of 1963, about 16,000 advisers and support troops were in Vietnam.
Colin L. Powell I was in one of the early groups of advisors that President Kennedy sent to Vietnam
Colin L. Powell to help them fight the evil of Communism, as we saw it.
They trained Diem’s army against the Viet Cong, Communist guerrillas backed by Hanoi.
June 11, 1963 Saigon
On June 11, 1963, a Buddhist monk named Thich Quang Duc burned himself to death in Saigon. He was protesting Diem’s treatment of Buddhists.
The car that carried him is kept at this pagoda in Hue.
After the Buddhist crisis, Washington let Diem’s generals know it wouldn’t stand in their way. On November 2, they killed him.
November 22, 1963 Dallas
Twenty days later, Kennedy was dead too. Vietnam was Johnson’s now.
Contacts
1964
Johnson taped his phone calls. In May 1964, he told his national security adviser what he really thought.
Lyndon B. Johnson I don't think it's worth fighting for, and I don't think we can get out. And it's just the biggest damn mess I ever saw.
That summer, South Vietnamese commandos, directed by Americans, raided North Vietnam's coast. Offshore, the destroyer Maddox was listening in on North Vietnamese radio.
On August 2, three North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked the Maddox. American jets drove them off. The Maddox's damage: one bullet hole.
August 4, 1964 Gulf of Tonkin
Two nights later, the Maddox was back with a second destroyer, the Turner Joy.
In darkness and thunderstorms, their radar and sonar began reporting an attack.
Capt. John J. Herrick Review of action makes many reported contacts and torpedoes fired appear doubtful.
Capt. John J. Herrick Freak weather effects on radar and overeager sonarmen may have accounted for many reports.
Capt. John J. Herrick No actual visual sightings by Maddox. Suggest complete evaluation before any further action taken.
In the Pentagon, Herrick's message was handed to a new assistant on his first full day: Daniel Ellsberg.
Washington trusted radio intercepts instead, and Johnson ordered air strikes.
11:36 p.m. Washington · August 4, 1964
Lyndon B. Johnson …renewed hostile actions against United States ships on the high seas in the Gulf of Tonkin have today required me to order the military forces of the United States to take action in reply.
On August 7, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, backing “all necessary measures.” House, 416 to 0. Senate, 88 to 2. Critics would call it a blank check.
Sen. Wayne Morse I believe that history will record that we have made a great mistake in subverting and circumventing the Constitution…
Two days before that vote, American planes bombed North Vietnam for the first time. Pilot Richard Sather was killed. Everett Alvarez was captured, and held for eight and a half years.
Campaigning in Akron that October, Johnson promised: …we are not about to send American boys 9 or 10,000 miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.
Tet
November 1967 – March 1968
In November 1967, General Westmoreland told reporters in Washington:
Gen. William C. Westmoreland We have reached an important point when the end begins to come into view.
Ten weeks later, during the truce for Tet, the lunar new year, Communist forces attacked. They hit thirty-six of South Vietnam's forty-four provincial capitals.
In Saigon, nineteen Viet Cong fighters blasted into the American embassy compound. They never got into the building. But the pictures went home.
The fight for Hue lasted about twenty-five days and wrecked the old city. Communist forces executed thousands of civilians there.
As a military attack, Tet failed. Politically, it worked. Americans didn't need secret papers to see the gap. They had Tet.
Opinion was already turning. By August 1968, after Tet, a majority called the war a mistake.
February 27, 1968. In Levittown, a family watches Walter Cronkite, just back from Vietnam. Their son was born the year they moved in. He's eighteen now.
Walter Cronkite To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion.
People quote Johnson: “If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America.” He was at a birthday dinner in Austin while it aired. He probably never said it.
March 12, 1968 New Hampshire primary
In New Hampshire's March 12 primary, antiwar senator Eugene McCarthy won about forty-two percent. Johnson, a write-in, won about forty-nine.
On March 31, Johnson limited the bombing and offered talks. Then:
Lyndon B. Johnson I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.
Peace with Honor
1968–1970
In 1968, the war's deadliest year for Americans, Richard Nixon won the presidency.
Nixon's plan was Vietnamization: South Vietnam's army would fight alone, and Americans would go home. Troops fell from about 543,000 to 24,000.
Richard Nixon And so tonight—to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans—I ask for your support.
He also widened the war in secret. For fourteen months, B-52s bombed Cambodia. The official reports listed the targets as South Vietnam.
March 16, 1968 My Lai · Quảng Ngãi Province
In November 1969, Americans learned what had happened at My Lai.
American soldiers had killed hundreds of unarmed villagers, most of them women, children and old men.
Pilot Hugh Thompson landed his helicopter between the soldiers and the villagers. His crew saved some.
On April 30, 1970, Nixon announced that American troops were entering Cambodia.
Campuses erupted. Guardsmen killed four students at Kent State. Police killed two young men at Jackson State.
Congress began taking its power back. In June 1970, the Senate voted 81 to 10 to repeal the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.
Nixon's administration had already said it had not relied on the resolution.
Top Secret
1967–1971
In June 1967, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara ordered a secret history of American decisions in Vietnam. The study ran to forty-seven volumes and about seven thousand pages.
Daniel Ellsberg, who had read Herrick's message in 1964, helped write part of the study. By 1969, he had turned against the war.
On October 1, 1969, Ellsberg and his friend Anthony Russo began copying the study at night. The place was a small advertising office on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles.
Ellsberg's thirteen-year-old son ran the Xerox machine.
On another night, his ten-year-old daughter cut "Top Secret" off the pages.
On June 13, 1971, the New York Times began printing the study.
The study ended before Nixon took office, but his chief of staff saw the danger anyway.
H. R. Haldeman …out of the gobbledygook, comes a very clear thing: … you can't trust the government; you can't believe what they say; and you can't rely on their judgment…
A federal judge ordered the Times to stop printing. It was the first time a newspaper was barred in advance on grounds of national security.
On June 30, the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 for the newspapers.
Justice Hugo L. Black Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.
The White House formed its own team to stop leaks: the Plumbers. You'll meet them at the Watergate.
Peace Is at Hand
1972–1973
Twelve days before the 1972 election, Henry Kissinger said:
Henry Kissinger We believe that peace is at hand.
The talks broke down. Nixon sent B-52s over Hanoi and Haiphong for eleven days around Christmas. North Vietnam counted about 1,600 civilians dead.
On January 27, 1973, four sides signed the Paris Peace Accords. The last American troops left on March 29.
Everett Alvarez, shot down the day after Tonkin, came home on February 12. He had been gone 3,113 days.
That fall, the Nobel Peace Prize went to Kissinger and North Vietnam's Le Duc Tho. Le Duc Tho turned it down. The fighting between North and South never stopped.
August 15, 1973 The last day Congress would pay for U.S. combat in Indochina
Congress had already set a deadline. After August 15, no money could pay for combat in Indochina.
Congress wrote a new rule. Send troops into combat, and report to Congress within 48 hours. Bring them home within 60 days, unless Congress approves.
Nixon vetoed it as unconstitutional and dangerous. On November 7, Congress overrode him. In 1964, Congress gave Johnson a blank check. In 1973, it wrote a limit.
Dominoes
1975–1979
Eisenhower's first domino did fall: South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, all in 1975. Burma, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia stayed standing.
In December 1978, Communist Vietnam invaded Communist Cambodia.
In February 1979, Communist China invaded Vietnam. The dominoes fell into each other.
More than 58,000 Americans died in the war.
Estimates of Vietnamese dead, soldiers and civilians on both sides, run from about one million to more than three million.
In 1995, Robert McNamara wrote: …we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why.
Continuity or change? Both. Containment went on. What changed was who Americans believed, and who gets to decide on war.