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Chapter 21 - Vietnam
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369 Chapter 21 Vietnam The Vietnam War had already been lost when Ford became President and inherited that tragic conflict begotten by his predecessors’ serial misjudgments. Truman made the first mistake. After U.S. and Allied forces liberated Southeast Asia from Japanese occupation at the end of World War II, Truman reinstated France as the colonial master of Indochina, which included Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. When the French were losing their colony to nationalist Vietnamese forces led by Communists, Eisenhower rejected proposals that U.S forces come to France’s aid and get entangled in a land war in Asia. He considered it wrong military strategy, and doubted that the American people would support such a venture. Nevertheless, he committed $100 million in aid to South Vietnam and sent 200 Army mechanics as technical advisers to help the French hold on to their Asian colony. Kennedy, determined to show Khrushchev that America had the will, and would use its power to oppose Communism, sent more than 15,000 military advisers, helicopter teams, and Green Berets to lead and instruct South Vietnamese troops in defending their land. Johnson, after declaring in the 1964 Presidential campaign that he sought no wider war, fabricated a casus belli in the Tonkin Gulf to make Vietnam an American war, and dispatched some 540,000 U.S. troops to Vietnam. Nixon bombed North Vietnam to the negotiating table. At Nixon’s direction, Kissinger negotiated a peace treaty in Paris with North Vietnam’s chief negotiator, Le Duc Tho, but the Communists had no intention of honoring that treaty. And they did not. Under the terms, Nixon withdrew the last U.S. combat troops from Vietnam and won release of American prisoners in Hanoi. By the time 370 gerald r. ford Nixon left office, Vietnam had cost the United States more than $150 billion and more than 55,000 young lives. No greater, but no less, was the wound to the national spirit: the United States had become a house divided on Vietnam, and for the first time in modern history the United States had been defeated in war. Long before he became President, Ford had made up his mind about Vietnam. In his early years in the House he had become convinced that American intervention in Vietnam was not merely justified, but imperative . “I always believed we were right to go into Vietnam originally,” he said. “In the immediate post- World War II period, the United States committed to a monumental worldwide foreign aid program to rebuild Western Europe, to make their economies viable and strengthen them to be reliable and effective allies. Through our global economic and military aid programs we helped scores of other nations. These massive programs were an integral part of American foreign policy and national defense strategy. The basic thrust was anti- Communism and containment of aggression by Communist forces. Our initial commitments to Vietnam were economic aid, military advisers, and war materiel. At the outset, our programs in Vietnam were not different from U.S. programs in other nations. After World War II, U.S. policy was containment, exemplified by the Korean War. It was right to follow the same pattern in Vietnam.” Moreover, Ford believed that the United States— once American troops were engaged— could have won in Vietnam with an all- out effort . As Republican Leader in the House, he had gone to the Oval Office in a spirit of bipartisanship to urge President Johnson to commit the overwhelming forces— ground, sea, and air— that would bring victory. “You cannot fight the war piecemeal,” Ford told Johnson. “You have to use whatever weapons you have, short of nuclear weapons. Senator Dick Russell was there and he agreed with me.” Ten years later, by the time Ford became President, his optimism had faded. “When I came in I knew the situation was lousy,” he said. “The North Vietnamese had violated the accords they had signed in Paris in January of 1973. I knew those agreements; I had flown over with a bunch of Congressmen and Senators. The Communists had committed to withdraw their regular forces from South Vietnam, about 150,000 as I recall. They did not. They promised to give us full information on [18.191.211.66] Project MUSE (2024-04-18 00:53 GMT) Vietnam 371 prisoners of war and MIA’s. They gave us none. They did not live up to a single thing they had agreed to.” During Ford’s first months as President...