Station 1: Operation Rolling Thunder

AMERICA LAUNCHES OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER 

Starting in the 1950s, the U.S. provided military equipment and advisors to help the government of South Vietnam resist a Communist takeover by North Vietnam and its South Vietnam-based allies, the Viet Cong guerilla fighters. In 1962, the American military initiated limited air operations within South Vietnam, in an effort to offer air support to South Vietnamese army forces, destroy suspected Viet Cong bases and spray defoliants to eliminate jungle cover.

DID YOU KNOW?

Unexploded ordnance left over from Operation Rolling Thunder and other bombing campaigns of the Vietnam War has killed or injured tens of thousands of Vietnamese, by some estimates, since the United States withdrew its combat troops in 1973.

President Lyndon Johnson (1908-73) expanded American air operations in August 1964, when he authorized retaliatory air strikes against North Vietnam following a reported attack on U.S. warships in the Gulf of Tonkin. Later that year, Johnson approved limited bombing raids on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a network of pathways that connected North Vietnam and South Vietnam by way of neighboring Laos and Cambodia. The president’s goal was to disrupt the flow of manpower and supplies from North Vietnam to its Viet Cong allies.

The Operation Rolling Thunder bombing campaign began on March 2, 1965, partly in response to a Viet Cong attack on a U.S. air base at Pleiku. The Johnson administration cited a number of reasons for shifting U.S. strategy to include systematic aerial assaults on North Vietnam. For example, administration officials believed that heavy and sustained bombing might encourage North Vietnamese leaders to accept the non-Communist government in South Vietnam. The administration also wanted to reduce North Vietnam’s ability to produce and transport supplies to aid the Viet Cong insurgency. Finally, the president and his advisors hoped to boost morale in South Vietnam while destroying the Communists’ will to fight.

OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER: U.S. INVOLVEMENT EXPANDS 

The Operation Rolling Thunder campaign gradually expanded in both range and intensity. At first, the air strikes were restricted to the southern portion of North Vietnam; however, U.S. leaders eventually moved the target area steadily northward to increase the pressure on the Communist government. By mid-1966, American planes were attacking military and industrial targets throughout North Vietnam. 

OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER FAILS TO ACHIEVE ITS GOALS 

Although North Vietnam did not have much of an air force, its leaders managed to mount an effective defense against the bombing raids. With assistance from China and the Soviet Union, the North Vietnamese constructed a sophisticated air-defense system. Using surface-to-air missiles and radar-controlled anti-aircraft artillery, the Communists shot down hundreds of American planes over the course of the bombing campaign. As a result, pilots and aircraft weapon systems operators accounted for the majority of the American prisoners of war who were captured and held by North Vietnam.

North Vietnamese leaders also took a number of other steps to reduce the impact of the American bombing raids. They constructed networks of bombproof tunnels and shelters, for instance, and also dispatched crews by night to rebuild the roads, bridges, communication systems and other facilities struck by bombs. Additionally, the Communists used the destructive air strikes for propaganda purposes to increase anti-American sentiment and patriotism among North Vietnamese citizens.

The sustained bombing of North Vietnam lasted for more than three years, with occasional brief interruptions. Johnson finally halted the campaign on October 31, 1968, in order to pursue a negotiated settlement with the Communists. Historians differ in their assessments of the strategic value of Operation Rolling Thunder. Some claim that the bombing campaign came close to crippling North Vietnam’s capacity to wage war. However, critics contend that the campaign’s effectiveness was limited. T

Despite the difficulties encountered by the Johnson administration during Operation Rolling Thunder, President Richard Nixon (1913-94), Johnson’s successor, resumed the bombing of North Vietnam shortly after taking office in 1969. In 1972, Nixon unleashed another massive bombing campaign against North Vietnam called Operation Linebacker. By the time the last American combat troops left Vietnam in 1973, the U.S. military had dropped some 4.6 million tons of bombs on Vietnam, destroying a large percentage of the nation’s towns and villages and killing an estimated 2 million Vietnamese.

Station 4: My Lai Massacre

MASSACRE AT MY LAI 

The My Lai hamlet, part of the village of Son My...was a frequent target of U.S. and South Vietnamese bombing attacks. In March 1968, the...11th Infantry Brigade received word that VC guerrillas had taken control of Son My. Led by Lieutenant William L. Calley, the unit was sent to the village on a search-and-destroy mission on March 16. 

Army commanders had advised the soldiers...that all who were found in Son My could be considered VC or active VC sympathizers, and ordered them to destroy the village. When they arrived, the soldiers found no Viet Cong, but rounded up and murdered hundreds of civilians–mostly women, children and old men–in an extremely brutal fashion, including rape and torture. Calley was reported to have dragged dozens of people, including young children, into a ditch before executing them with a machine gun. Not a single shot was fired against the men...

COVER-UP OF THE MY LAI MASSACRE 

The My Lai massacre reportedly ended only after Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, an Army helicopter pilot on a reconnaissance mission, landed his aircraft between the soldiers and the retreating villagers and threatened to open fire if they continued their attacks. Knowing news of the massacre would cause a scandal, officers higher up in command of...the 11th Brigade immediately made efforts to downplay the bloodshed. The coverup continued until Ron Ridenhour, a soldier in the 11th Brigade who had heard reports of the massacre but had not participated, began a campaign to bring the events to light. After writing letters to President Richard Nixon, the Pentagon, State Department, Joint Chiefs of Staff and several congressmen, with no response, Ridenhour finally gave an interview to the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who broke the story in November 1969.

Amid the international uproar that followed Ridenhour’s revelations, the U.S. Army ordered a special investigation into the My Lai massacre and subsequent efforts to cover it up. The inquiry, headed by Lieutenant General William Peers, released its report in March 1970 and recommended that no fewer than 28 officers be charged for their involvement in covering up the massacre. The Army would later charge only 14, including Calley, Captain Ernest Medina and Colonel Oran Henderson, with crimes related to the events at My Lai; all were acquitted except for Calley, who was found guilty of premeditated murder for ordering the shootings, despite his contention that he was only following orders from his commanding officer, Captain Medina. In March 1971, Calley was given a life sentence for his role in directing the killings at My Lai. Many saw Calley as a scapegoat, and his sentence was reduced upon appeal to 20 years and later to 10; he was paroled in 1974.

IMPACT OF MY LAI 

By the early 1970s, the American war effort in Vietnam was winding down, as the administration of Richard Nixon continued policies of “Vietnamization” of the war, including the withdrawal of troops and the transfer of control over ground operations to the South Vietnamese. Among the American troops still in Vietnam, morale was low, and anger and frustration were high. Drug use increased among soldiers, and an official report in 1971 estimated that one-third or more of U.S. troops were addicted.

The revelations of the My Lai massacre caused morale to plummet even further, as GIs wondered what other atrocities their superiors were concealing. On the home front in the United States, the brutality of the My Lai massacre and the efforts made by higher-ranking officers to conceal it exacerbated antiwar sentiment and increased the bitter divide among the population regarding the continuing U.S. presence in Vietnam

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Station 2: Search and Destroy Strategy

Flaws

Despite the advantages of superior fire-power and technology, Search and Destroy (S&D) strategy had many flaws.

...U.S patrols were required to search South Vietnamese homes for the Viet Cong – Charlie, which exposed themselves to ambush. That, as a consequence, led to many atrocities such as zippo raids to burn villages or unprovoked massacres such as the infamous My Lai in 1968. Those made the jobs of wining hearts & minds of local people become harder and harder if not impossible.

As a result, Viet Cong was able to gain more control in many Southern areas as well as receive more unconditional support from South Vietnamese peasants who could provide them personnel, food and hiding places.

Now American got stuck in a vicious circle where the more aggressive they became, the more Vietnamese people turned against them and the less effective their missions were. The Viet Cong might be pushed out of certain territories initially, but as soon as American patrols left the areas, they would return with even more reinforcements and weapons.

Last but not least, U.S Generals & war planners had made an erroneous assumption of North Vietnamese people’s determination at the first place. General Westmoreland believed that attrition warfare would conquer the Viet Cong & North Vietnamese army. However, Hanoi once again taught Americans the lesson they had taught the French more than a decade ago that North Vietnamese would fight to the final victory even if they had to suffer more than ten times the enemy’s loss as in Ho Chi Minh’s words. Immense numbers of Viet Cong and NVA troops would be killed or captured, but they were soon replaced and even grown faster. 

Ineffectiveness

The effectiveness of the Search and Destroy missions were also dubious. “Body count” was used as a measuring tool to determine the success of each search & destroy mission as well as the whole strategy in general. 1,106 North Vietnamese soldiers were reported killed in the very first search and destroy operation – Operation Attleboro while Operation Cedar Fall – a major assault on the Iron Triangle, resulted in 720-enemy killed and 213 captured.

However, those figures were usually obtained and gathered through indirect means such as sightings of secondary explosions, sensor readings, extrapolation, inference or reports of POWs. Hence they usually flattered to deceive. In fact, it created a general over-optimism among U.S commanders and policy makers & often times used as a propaganda to convince their people of their success in Vietnam who eventually turned against them after the surprising Tet Offensive.

Besides, even in its largest airborne operation in the war – Operation Junction City, American forces also failed to destroy Vietcong’s head-quarter nor capture any high-ranking NFL officers although they did inflict heavy casualties on the enemy. It therefore had little impact on Hanoi’s insurgency plan in South Vietnam.

Defense Department officials believed that these body count figures need to be deflated by 30 percent as roughly one-third of the reported enemy killed might have been civilians.

Conclusion

“Search and Destroy” strategy could be seen as ineffective as it made a low impact on undercutting the guerrilla tactics successfully utilized by the Viet Cong. 

Station 3: Napalm and Agent Orange

Napalm

Napalm is a gel, which in its original form contained naphthenic and palmitic acid plus petroleum as fuel.  The modern version, Napalm B, contains plastic polystyrene, hydrocarbon benzene, and gasoline.  It burns at temperatures of 800 to 1,200 °C (1,500 - 2,200 °F).

When napalm falls on people, the gel sticks to their skin, hair, and clothing, causing unimaginable pain, severe burns, unconsciousness, asphyxiation, and often death. Even those who do not get hit directly with napalm can die from its effects, since it burns at such high temperatures that it can create firestorms that use up much of the oxygen in the air.  Bystanders also can suffer heat stroke, smoke exposure, and carbon monoxide poisoning.

The US first used napalm during World War II in both the European and Pacific theaters, and also deployed it during the Korean War.  However, those instances are dwarfed by American use of napalm in the Vietnam War, where the US dropped almost 400,000 tons of napalm bombs in the decade between 1963 and 1973.  Of the Vietnamese people who were on the receiving end, 60% suffered fifth degree burns, meaning that the burn went down to the bone.

Horrifying as napalm is, its effects at least are time-limited.  That is not the case with the other major chemical weapon the US used against Vietnam - Agent Orange.

Agent Orange

Agent Orange is a liquid mixture containing the 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T herbicides.  The compound is toxic for only about a week before it breaks down, but unfortunately, one of its daughter products is the persistent toxin dioxin.  Dioxin lingers in soil, water, and human bodies.

During the Vietnam War, the US sprayed Agent Orange on the jungles and fields of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.  The Americans sought to defoliate the trees and bushes, so that enemy soldiers would be exposed.  They also wanted to kill off the agricultural crops that fed the Viet Cong (as well as local civilians).

The US spread 43 million liters (11.4 million gallons) of Agent Orange on Vietnam, covering 24% of south Vietnam with the poison.  Over 3,000 villages were in the spray zone.  In those areas, dioxin leached into people's bodies, their food, and worst of all, the groundwater.  In an underground aquifer, the toxin can remain stable for at least 100 years.

As a result, even decades later, the dioxin continues to cause health problems and birth defects for Vietnamese people in the sprayed area. The Vietnamese governments estimates that about 400,000 people have died from Agent Orange poisoning, and about half a million children have been born with birth defects.  US and allied veterans who were exposed during the period of heaviest usage and their children may have elevated rates of various cancers, including soft tissue sarcoma, Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, Hodgkin disease, and lymphocytic leukemia.

Victims' groups from Vietnam, Korea, and other places where napalm and Agent Orange were used have sued the primary manufacturers of these chemical weapons, Monsanto and Dow Chemical, on several occasions.  In 2006, the companies were ordered to pay $63 million US in damages to South Korean veterans who fought in Vietnam.

NATO, Marshall Plan, UN

History of Nato

More History of NATO

UN Charter: Purposes and Principles

UN and the Cold War

Mutually Assured Destruction

“Mutual Deterrence” Speech (Modified)

         No sane citizen, political leader or nation wants thermonuclear war. But merely not wanting it is not enough. We must understand the differences among actions which increase its risks, those which reduce them and those which, while costly, have little influence one way or another….

         The cornerstone of our strategic policy continues to be to deter nuclear attack upon the United States or its allies. We do this by maintaining an….ability to inflict unacceptable damage upon any single aggressor or combination of aggressors at any time during the course of a strategic nuclear exchange, even after absorbing a surprise first strike. This can be defined as our assured-destruction capability.

         …we must be able to absorb the total weight of nuclear attack on our country -- on our retaliatory forces, on our command and control apparatus, on our industrial capacity, on our cities, and on our population -- and still be capable of damaging the aggressor to the point that his society would be simply no longer viable in twentieth-century terms. That is what deterrence of nuclear aggression means. It means the certainty of suicide to the aggressor, not merely to his military forces, but to his society as a whole.

         Let us consider another term: first-strike capability…it could mean simply the ability of one nation to attack another nation with nuclear forces first. But as it is normally used, it connotes much more: the elimination of the attacked nation's retaliatory second-strike forces. This is the sense in which it should be understood.

         The United States must not and will not permit itself ever to get into a position in which another nation, or combination of nations, would possess a first-strike capability against it. Such a position not only would constitute an intolerable threat to our security, but it obviously would remove our ability to deter nuclear aggression…

        

         Now what about the Soviet Union?...Does it possess a first-strike capability against the United States? The answer is that it does not. It cannot because…we will never permit our own assured-destruction capability to drop to a point at which a Soviet first-strike capability is even remotely feasible.

Source: Robert McNamara was the Secretary of Defense from 1961-1969. He gave this speech in 1967 to describe the policy of the United States concerning nuclear weapons.

Korean War

Document A: Memo from George Kennan to Secretary of State

Dean Acheson, August 23, 1950 (Modified)

The course we are moving upon today is…so little promising and so fraught (filled) with danger that I could not honestly urge you to continue to take responsibility for it. These are the main reasons why I feel this way:

We have not achieved a clear and realistic…view of our objectives in Korea and…the public are indulging themselves in emotional, moralistic attitudes toward Korea which, unless corrected, can easily carry us toward real conflict with the Russians…

So far as Korea is concerned...While It was not tolerable to us that communist control should be extended to South Korea… Nevertheless, it is not essential to us to see an anti-Soviet Korean regime extended to all of Korea for all time

Source: George Kennan was the author of the “Long Telegram” which introduced the concept of containment.

Document B: Excerpts from National Security Council Report

September 9, 1950

The political objective of the United Nations in Korea is to bring about the complete independence and unity of Korea....

As U.N. forces succeed in stabilizing the front, driving back the North Korean forces, and approaching the 38th parallel…

It is possible that the Soviet Union, although this would increase the chance of general war, may endeavor (attempt) to persuade the Chinese Communists to enter the Korean campaign with the purpose of avoiding the defeat of the North Korean forces…

 [...] It is difficult to appraise (evaluate) the risk at this time, and our action in moving major forces north of the 38th parallel would create a situation to which the Soviet Union would be almost certain to react in some manner…the possibility of Soviet or Chinese Communist intervention would not be precluded....

Document C: Excerpts from a CIA Report, September 27, 1950

Despite statements by the Chinese Premier and troop movements in Manchuria...there are no convincing indications of an actual Chinese Communist intention to resort to full-scale intervention in Korea.... From a military standpoint the most favorable time for intervention in Korea has passed....

While full-scale Chinese Communist intervention in Korea must be regarded as continuing possibility, a consideration of all known factors leads to the conclusion that barring a Soviet decision for global war, such action is not probable in 1950. During this period, intervention will probably be confined to continued covert assistance to the North Koreans.

The consensus of the US top military is that the Russians are not ready for global war while China is not militarily capable of unilateral intervention - specifically, there will be no Soviet or Chinese communist intervention in Korea.

Document D: “The U.S. war crime North Korea won’t forget” (Modified)

March 20, 2015. Blaine Harden, a former Post reporter, is the author of the book “The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot.”

North Korea cheered this month when a man with a knife and a history of violent behavior slashed the face of Mark Lippert, the U.S. ambassador to South Korea. The attack in Seoul was “a knife shower of justice,” North Korea said, praising it as “deserved punishment for warmonger United States.”

The hate, though, is not all manufactured. It is rooted in a fact-based narrative, one that North Korea obsessively remembers and the United States blithely forgets. The story dates to the early 1950s, when the U.S. Air Force, in response to the North Korean invasion that started the Korean War, bombed and napalmed cities, towns and villages across the North.

It was mostly easy pickings for the Air Force, whose B-29s faced little or no opposition on many missions. The bombing was long, leisurely and merciless, even by the assessment of America’s own leaders. “Over a period of three years or so, we killed off — what — 20 percent of the population,” Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, told the New Yorker in 1995. Dean Rusk, a supporter of the war and later secretary of state, said the United States bombed “everything that moved in North Korea, every brick standing on top of another.” After running low on urban targets, U.S. bombers destroyed hydroelectric and irrigation dams in the later stages of the war, flooding farmland and destroying crops.

Although the ferocity of the bombing was criticized as racist and unjustified elsewhere in the world, it was never a big story back home. U.S. press coverage of the air war focused, instead, on “MiG alley,” a narrow patch of North Korea near the Chinese border. There, in the world’s first jet-powered aerial war, American fighter pilots competed against each other to shoot down five or more Soviet-made fighters and become “aces.” War reporters rarely mentioned civilian casualties from U.S. carpet-bombing. It is perhaps the most forgotten part of a forgotten war.

Containment

Article by George Kennan, 1947

[George F. Kennan (1904-2005) graduated from Princeton University in 1925 and soon thereafter went to work for the U.S. State Department as an expert on Russia…In May 1944 he was

appointed deputy chief of the U.S. mission in Moscow.]

....[I]t is clear that the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies…

It is clear that the United States cannot expect in the foreseeable future to enjoy political intimacy with the Soviet regime. It must continue to regard the Soviet Union as a rival, not a partner, in the political arena. It must continue to expect that Soviet policies will reflect no abstract love of peace and stability, no real faith in the possibility of a permanent happy coexistence of the Socialist and capitalist worlds, but rather a cautious, persistent pressure toward the disruption and, weakening of all rival influence and rival power.

Balanced against this are the facts that Russia…is still by far the weaker party…and that Soviet society may…contain deficiencies which will eventually weaken its own total potential. This would of itself warrant the United States entering with reasonable confidence upon a policy of firm containment, designed to confront the Russians with unalterable counter-force at every point where they show signs of encroaching upon the interests of a peaceful and stable world.