VIETNAM WAR (a.k.a Second Indochina War, Resistance War Against America)
☆policies in south Vietnam cause widespread discontent among Vietnamese, specifically returning land to exploitative landlords, the favoring of Catholic citizens, violence and discrimination against Buddhist citizens, and forced resettlement of peasants by South Vietnamese and US forces
☆instability caused by communist insurgencies and resistance in the south culminates with the 1963 coup of South Vietnamese President Diem by South Vietnamese Generals with consent of CIA
☆ series of coups in South destablizes region, leads to view in the north that they are US puppet states
☆Gulf of Tonkin incident: Contested claims that the North Vietnamese might have attacked us warships , causing minor damages. The US responds with massive scale bombing campaigns of Vietnamese naval and air bases, military installations, and cities.
☆ US send "military advisers" to south ☆1965: the first US troops land in Vietnam
☆1967: Tet offensive results in many US, Viet Cong, civilian casualties. Beginning of shift of public opinion on war
☆High casualty rates, Viet Cong guerilla tactics, and horrible conditions for soldiers lead to a collapse of US morale and increasing desertion
☆1970 My Lai massacre takes place, a mass murder of South Vietnamese unarmed civilans by US soldiers. Publication of this drastically increased public resistance to the war and questioning of widespread US tactics of killing civilians
☆1970 Nixon begins operation Menu, which began the carpet bombing of Cambodia, which had declared itself neutral but supported the Viet Cong. This went against Nixon's promise to deescalate the war
☆1972 US troops are formally removed from Vietnam and peace accords were signed in Paris, but fighting between the north and south continued
☆1975: The Viet Cong launches a large offense and finally captures Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam.
