This keynote happened more towards the end of the year when students had learned to take information from my lectures rather than copying straight from very wordy slides. I use an outline instead of textual definitions.

1. INDOCHINA
VIETMINH

2. INDOCHINA MAP in 1, 2, 3

3. TERMS
Review
French Indochina War and Colonialism
Ho Chi Minh
+
Indochina Communist Party
+
Vietminh
Dien Bien Phu

4. DOMINO THEORY
The loss of even one country to communism will
cause all others in the region to fall
“like a row of dominoes.”

5. GENEVA ACCORDS
17th Parallel
NATIONAL
ELECTIONS

6. DIEM
ELECTIONS: CANCELLED
VIETCONG
(National Liberation Front)
Ho Chi Minh Trail

7. A CORRUPTED ALLY
JFK supports DIEM
16,000 US
vs.
Vietminh and Vietcong
Religious Oppression
November 1st, 1963

8. TONKIN GULF RESOLUTION
ESCALATION

9. ESCALATION
OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER
Robert McNamara
William Westmoreland
Dean Rusk
Army of the
Republic of Vietnam
(ARVN)

10. WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE
USA VIETMINH
Superior weaponry Home court advantage
VS.
Military personnel numbers Guerilla tactics
Disguise
“My clothes were filthy and Tunnels
ragged...With no boots, my socks were
barely recognizable...My conditions and Booby traps
predicament were so foreign to me, so Land mines
stifling, so overwhelming. I’d never been
so hungry, so grimy, and in such pain.”
- American Gerald Coffee Support from China and SU

11. WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE

12. How hard it was to
WIN THE PEOPLE
CIVIL WAR vs. CONTAINMENT
- Ideologies
- Peasants
SATURATION BOMBING
- Agent Orange
- Napalm
...prostate cancer, respiratory cancers, multiple myeloma, type II diabetes, Hodgkin’s disease, non-
Hodgkin's lymphoma, soft tissue sarcoma, chloracne, porphyria cutanea tarda, peripheral neuropathy,
chronic lymphocytic leukemia, and spina bifida in children of veterans exposed to Agent Orange.

13. Search and Destroy:
Kill Livestock
Burn Villages
Contaminate
Eliminate
the Enemy
“We had to destroy the town in order to save it”
- American soldier in Ben Tre

14. WAR AT HOME
AMERICAN ATTRITION
TELEVISION
CREDIBILITY GAP
DRAFT

15. THE NEW LEFT
SDS
(Students for a
Democratic Society)
Hawks vs. Doves

16. 1968
TET OFFENSIVE
JOHNSON
WITHDRAWS

17. CHICAGO
EUGENE McCARTHY
vs.
HUBERT HUMPHREY
YIPPIES
FALL OF THE DEMOCRATS

18. NIXON
SILENT MAJORITY
VIETNAMIZATION
HENRY KISSINGER

19. PROBLEMS at HOME
KENT STATE
PENTAGON PAPERS
WAR POWERS ACT

20. PROBLEMS ABROAD
MY LAI
SAIGON FALLS
CAMBODIA