Tuesday, April 07, 2009

Period 1- Tuesday, April 7 Notes

• Changing United States Role in Vietnam

-Militarily, the TET offensive was a defeat for North Vietnam and the National Liberation Front, however suffered heavily with casualties and no significant territorial gains

-Was also a serious psychological defeat for the US

-Americans began arguing that the Vietnamese should take on more of the burden

• Johnson decides not to run for president/ Nixon goes for Vietnamization

-Vietnamization- Nixons policy to withdraw US from Vietnam (take troops out but still help), it in turn put more effort to South Vietnam

-Nixon wins the election of 1968 because of his promise of the Vietnamization policy

• Nixon Doctrine

-July 1969- Nixon Doctrine pledged US support of anit-communist governments in Asia, but would leave it to them to provide their own military forces

• New Military Offensives

-At the same time as Vietnamizations, Nixon and Kissinger accelerated both ground and air war in South Vietnam by launching new offensives

-April 1970- US forces drove into Cambodia to destroy NLF and North Vietnam supply depots

-Cambodia was ostensibly a nuetral country (but North Vietnam had hospitals, etc in Cambodia)

-US set off more demonstrations at home--> police kill 2 students at Jackson State COllege in Mississippi; National Guard Troops (not well trained in crowd control) accidentally fire on students at Kent State killing 4

-American public learned US tropps massacred 200-300 woman and children in a hamlet named My Lai

• Secret Bombings

-US bombardments in S Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos were largely secret

-Spring 1972-North Vietnam offensive approach near South Vietnam capital Saigon

-Nixon responded by resuming bombing of North Vietnam and bombing Haiphong Harbor (thus outside supplies to N Vietnam were blocked)

-Christmas 1972-heaviet bombardment in history occured at North Vietnam

• Vietnamization

-Jan 1973- N Vietnam and US signed peace accords in Paris in which US withdraw

-S Vietnam troops were weakened and tried to hang on but by 1975 spring, fell to N Vietnam army

-Vietnam was unified under a communist government

• Economic Problems 1970s

-Johnson tried to carry on war in Vietnam without cutting great society programs, and left Nixon with a deteriorating trade balance and rising inflation

-Nixon hoped to check inflation by reducing government expenditures but disagreeement with congress resulted on spending for domestic programs increasing

-Stagflation resulted- a rare case in which both unemployment and inflation were rising (usually when unemployment increases, inflation decreases)

• Wage and Price Freeze

-1971- US ran trade deficit (purchase); Nixon tried to fight back with a new economic policy that mandated a 90 day freeze on any increases in wages or prices, to be followed by close government monitoring

• Warren Supreme Court

-Earl Warren issued number of important decisions related to citizen individual rights

-Miranda V. Arizona--> a man was arrested and confessed to a crime, but was not told that he had the right to remain silent

• Consumer Safety and environment

-Ralph Nader wrote "Unsafe at Any Speed" which brought up the idea of seat belts

-Carson wrote "Silent Spring" which discussed the idea that the birds were going silent due to carcinogen pesticides that were poisonous

-There was raised concerns about work place safety, consumer safety, and a healthy environment

-Led to passage of Occupational Safety Act of 1973

• National Organization for Woman (NOW)

-NOW backed an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution

-The proposed ERA passed congress and was send to states for ratification

-In the ratification process, ERA became controversial and does not get ratified

-Conservative anti-ERA group led by Phyllis Schlafly protested to stop ERA because it would undermine traditional family values which placed men at the head of the households