TV Recap - The Vietnam War: Episode 3, Part 1

By Mark Light

October 19, 2017

Vietnam War

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Less than two weeks later, the Vietcong struck an American helicopter base at Pleiku. Eight American advisors were killed and over 100 more were wounded. Johnson had a North Vietnamese army barracks bombed. On February 10, 1965, the Vietcong blew up a hotel in Qui Nhon, killing 23 Americans and 21 more were trapped beneath the rubble. Johnson ordered another airstrike.

This created tensions around the world. France, of all countries, called for an end to all foreign involvement in Vietnam. Even in private, members of Johnson's own political party opposed widening the war. Vice-President Hubert Humphrey sent Johnson a private memorandum warning him that escalation could undercut the Great Society, damage America's image, and ruin hopes of closer relations with the Soviet Union. Johnson didn't respond.

On March 2, 1965, the US began a systematic bombing of targets in North Vietnam called Operation Rolling Thunder. It intended to destroy morale in the North and bolster morale in the South. Then the plan went that the North Vietnamese would begin to negotiate a settlement. But a fallacy underlay that strategy. The North Vietnamese were not going to give up their ideal of reunification with the South.

The whole enterprise was to be kept secret from the American public, they were not to know that the government had switched from retaliatory bombing to systematic bombing. General Westmoreland called for two battalions of Marines, 3,500 soldiers, to protect the American airbase at Da Nang. General Taylor, who once wanted ground troops, now objected: "Once you put that first soldier ashore, you never know how many more are going to follow."




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Johnson felt he had no choice but to give Westmoreland his troops as he would be blamed for the further deaths of any more American advisors. In March, 1965, the US began to put ground troops in South Vietnam. The government of South Vietnam was not even consulted. Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton said that the US's goals were "70% to avoid humiliation, 20% to contain China, and 10% to help the Vietnamese."

On March 8th, 1965, three battalions of Marines landed in Da Nang. Sam Wilson, one of the film's interview subjects who was working in the US diplomatic corps in Saigon, pinpoints that day as the day we crossed the river Styx.

Part two will cover the second half of the episode leading us through December 1965.


Continued:       1       2       3       4       5

     


 
 

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