Vietnam

Beginning in 1950, the United States had gradually ramped up its role in the Vietnamese conflict.

• President Harry S. Truman sent a small number of military advisors
• President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent money and equipment
• President John F. Kennedy sent 16,000 American troops as advisors
• President Lyndon B. Johnson, by the end of 1968, 550,000 Americans were fighting in Vietnam.

This was the situation Richard Nixon inherited when he took the Presidential oath of office on January 20, 1969. But Nixon was determined to achieve the "honorable peace" he pledged during the campaign.

He was ready to negotiate with the Communist North Vietnamese government and eventually settled on two conditions during the course of the negotiations.

1. Although he realized the United States supported a South Vietnamese government under Nguyen Van Thieu, an imperfect ally struggling with internal corruption, Nixon would not abandon Thieu by accepting Hanois demand for Thieu's removal.
2. Although Nixon initially insisted on mutual withdrawal by both U.S. and North Vietnamese forces from South Vietnam, he would eventually decide not to end the US military presence until all American prisoners of war had been returned.

• While the campaign was intended to be secret to spare Cambodia's Prince Sihanouk criticism for allowing bombing of foreign troops in his country as well as to prevent public and Congressional outrage, it was exposed after two months.

The revelation of the cover-up of the My Lai massacre added to the intensity of the protests. In March 1968, a company of U.S. soldiers had killed the majority of the population of the South Vietnamese hamlet. The story was not revealed until November 12, three days before the November protests. Demonstrations occurred across the country - and the world - with participants from a broad spectrum of the population.

On November 15, a second moratorium demonstration was held. Some quarter of a million people gathered in Washington, DC, to protest the country's involvement in Vietnam. The crowds were mostly peaceful. However, when a radical splinter group broke off and began to throw bottles and burn American flags, police responded with tear gas.

On Capitol Hill, strong bipartisan majorities in both Democratic-controlled houses of Congress affirmed their support. The President's approval rating rose sharply to 68 percent; by December a CBS poll reported that number had jumped to 81 percent.

Nixon's successful appeal to the "Silent Majority" was, however, followed by increased - and increasingly violent - protests from the anti-war movement.

His announcement 10 days later that he was sending U.S. ground forces into Cambodia to clean out communist sanctuaries shocked many and spurred a fresh round of protests.

On May 1, the protests at Kent State University in Ohio began peacefully, but that night they turned to violent clashes between protesters and police. Fearing escalation, the mayor of Kent declared a state of emergency and asked Ohio's governor to dispatch the Ohio National Guard. The next day, confrontations continued with arson and sabotage, tear gas, and arrests.

Another rally was called for Monday, May 4. An order to disperse was issued; the protesters, ignoring it, began throwing rocks at the Guardsmen.

In a moment that has crystallized in the national memory but has never been fully explained, some of the Guardsmen pointed their guns toward the crowd and fired. Four students were killed, and nine were injured. This tragic event fueled the sense of outrage over the Government's Vietnam policy.

By the Spring of 1971, a collection of anti-war groups decided to produce the largest demonstration yet and bring attention to their cause by shutting down the United States Government. On May 1. 1971, they blockaded bridges leading into Washington and obstructed major roads inside the capital city.

Unwilling to let the May Day protesters continue, the police made mass arrests of more than 7,000 protesters - sweeping people up in vans, and holding them in a makeshift detention center at a stadium on the outskirts of town. Although the city continued to function without disruption, some objected to the arrests, calling them examples of martial law.

The cease-fire would go into effect at midnight on January 27. Colonel William Nolde was killed in Vietnam just 11 hours before that cease-fire began. He was a decorated officer who had served in the Army in both the Korean and Vietnam Wars and the final soldier killed in the war. The final casualties from the other branches of the service were:

• U.S. Air Force
  TSgt James D. Farmer
  August 13, 1934 - January 16, 1973
  
• U.S. Marine Corps
  PFC Mark J. Miller
  April 1, 1952 - January 26, 1973
  
• U.S. Navy
  CDR Harley H. Hall
  December 23, 1937 - January 27, 1973
  

North Vietnam refused to follow the Geneva Conventions in its treatment of American POWs, claiming they were instead "war criminals" for their participation in a war of aggression by the United States. This, they maintained, gave them the right to subject the POWs to brutal, barbaric treatment. (Similarly, South Vietnam at times subjected captured North Vietnamese and members of the Viet Cong to brutal treatment as criminals.)

Among those on that first flight home was Navy Cmdr. Everett Alvarez Jr., the first American pilot to be shot down over North Vietnam. Commander Alvarez spent 8 and a half years in captivity, making him the 2nd longest-held POW when the war ended.

When the POWs returned home, they brought harrowing stories of their treatment in North Vietnam's POW camps. They were regularly subjected to torture, solitary confinement, and deprivation of food, medical treatment, and sanitary facilities.

Starting in 1969, President Nixon put increasing public and political pressure on the North Vietnamese to treat the POWs in accordance with the Geneva Convention. Later that year, North Vietnam issued an internal resolution to change its treatment of American prisoners accordingly.

Some protesters, who had clamored for the troops' return, now gathered at the airports to meet the soldiers with angry slogans. Service members were even encouraged to change out of their uniforms before they landed to avoid being confronted by the protesters. Once at home, they faced a new set of challenges simply in trying to reintegrate into their former lives - struggling to find a job and get necessary medical and psychological treatment.

Almost as bad as the abuse by the few was the indifference of the many. War-weary civilians didn't want to talk about Vietnam anymore; they wanted it to disappear, and the returning troops were a painful reminder of what President Nixon in his 1971 State of the Union had called "a long, dark night of the American spirit."

By 1974, North Vietnam had reignited the fighting in the South. In Washington, Congress dramatically reduced the President's request for funds to aid South Vietnam, and a combination of economic and political factors precluded further military aid. The South Vietnamese were unable to hold off the renewed communist offensive. In April 1975, nine months after President Nixon's resignation, South Vietnam's capital Saigon fell, ending the war with North Vietnam's victory.

The war left indelible scars on the American psyche and reputation as well as lingering wounds on the landscape, infrastructure, and people of Vietnam. Some two million Vietnamese - soldiers and civilians - had died in the war. As many as four million were wounded, and more than a million fled as refugees after the Communist victory.

1. That the U.S. not abandon, or worse overthrow, its ally South Vietnam - an action that would have a lasting effect on America's global standing and reputation
2. That the POWs be returned

Others had differing definitions for what constituted an honorable end - from immediate withdrawal to military defeat of North Vietnam. Some felt that Nixon's claim that his way was "peace with honor" painted those with different opinions and goals as dishonorable. Others felt that Nixon did not truly believe the agreement would hold, while still others held that Congress undercut any chance of success by cuts in funds to aid South Vietnam.

The cuts in aid funding to Vietnam after the war by Congress certainly affected the ability of the South Vietnamese to survive, contributing to their defeat in 1975. This conclusion to the war complicates the issue of the peace achieved by Nixon, and historians, scholars, and interested citizens continue to debate Nixon's record on the Vietnam War.