"We should declare war on North Vietnam. . . .We could pave the whole country and put parking strips on it, and still be home by Christmas."
- Ronald Reagan, 1965

The Vietnam War was something that affected everyone in America. If you didn't get drafted, you knew someone who did, who probably got sent to 'Nam. Over two million Americans were involved in the war and many, almost 60,000, didn't return alive.

"Tell the Vietnamese they've got to draw in their horns or we're going to bomb them back into the Stone Age."
- Gen. Curtis LeMay, May 1964

The war started when we sent over "advisors" to help the South Vietnamese military fight the VietCong who were communist. In 1965 this escalated to sending in ground troops, and before you know it thousands of G.I.s were getting orders to go to Southeast Asia. Although it seemed at first our involvement would be limited, the boys at the Pentagon had other plans and soon we were involved in an intractable war we could not win.

US dropped Napalm on Vietnamese Children

"The draft is white people sending black people to fight yellow people to protect the country they stole from the red people."
- The musical 'Hair'

The U.S. was in no way threatened by the North Vietnamese. They didn't send terrorists to America. They just wanted to reunify their country, under communism of course. The U.S. countered with the "domino" theory which stated that if we let one more nation fall to communism, the rest of Asia would follow. They pointed out how the Soviets had occupied one eastern European country after another.

This military action (Congress never declared war) was not limited to Vietnam. Operations took place in Laos and Cambodia (many of them covert), and Thailand supported huge military bases and served as R&R central for the GIs.

Street Justice

The US tried to use its vast military superiority to destroy the Viet Cong who used guerilla tactics, blending into the jungle, with few established bases. The US tried carpet bombing the jungle, when that didn't work they dropped napalm on the Vietnamese countryside and people. On the ground, atrocities were committed by US forces including the massacre of a whole village, killing women and children.

"The imperialistic or capitalistic system occupies areas. It occupies Vietnam now. They occupy them by sending soldiers there, by sending policeman there. The policemen or soldiers are only a gun in the establishments hand. They make the racist secure in his racism. The gun in the establishment's hand makes the establishment secure in its exploitation. "
- Huey P. Newton

Buddhist Monk Immolates Self In War Protest

Meanwhile back in the States, support for this undeclared war waned as the black bags containing the bodies of young Americans started to pile up...

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