The Vietnam War

America’s involvement in Vietnam actually began in the Truman years. Believing that a victory by the nationalist (and pro-Communist) forces of Ho Chi Minh would lead to an expansion of world Communism, Truman backed France’s attempt to reassert its colonial control over Vietnam. Despite U.S. aid, however, the French were defeated in 1954 and Vietnam divided into two countries. The U.S. then transferred its support to the non-Communist government in the South; when the Communist Vietcong in that country launched a full-scale campaign of political terrorism in the early 1960s to topple the government, the Kennedy Administration responded by dramatically increasing both the number of military advisers stationed in the country and its financial aid to the government.

Then in 1964, North Vietnamese boats attacked two American ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. Congress reacted by passing the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution to take whatever steps he deemed necessary to prevent further aggression against the U.S. When a Vietcong attack at Pleiku the following February resulted in the deaths of seven Americans, Johnson used the Congressional authorization to launch a continuous aerial bombing of North Vietnam. The nest month, the President also began a massive troop buildup which would peak in 1968, when some 541,000 U.S. soldiers were stationed in Vietnam.

From the first landing of troops, U.S. involvement had come under strong criticism at home. Although Johnson was able to maintain the support of most Americans by repeatedly assuring them that the enemy was being steadily defeated, a huge offensive by the Communists in January 111968 forced a major re-evaluation of the U.S. war effort. The President, now politically disabled, announced in March the immediate cessation of bombing and called on Hanoi to begin peace talks.

In 1969, Nixon came to the White House already pledged to ending the war. Soon after taking office, he announced his plan of Vietnamization: to gradually replace U.S. troops with South Vietnamese soldiers. Despite American troop reductions, however, protest at home continued; when the President used U.S. air and ground forces to support South Vietnamese drives against enemy bases in Cambodia and Laos the action was loudly denounced as an enlargement of the war. The revelation, late in 1969, that U.S. troops had massacred over a hundred civilians at My Lai, and then the publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971, proving blatant deception on the part of U.S. administrations, further fueled anti-war sentiment. Under mounting pressure, the Nixon Administration finally signed an agreement on January 27, 1973, providing for the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops.

The conflict took the lives of some 57,000 young Americans and seriously injured many more thousands. The U.S. also had to admit the killing of thousands of civilians in the routine bombing of the North as well as the untold massacres in the South.

The Hostage Crisis

On November 4, 1979, some 500 Iranian students stormed the American embassy in Teheran, capturing 90 diplomatic personnel, including 66 Americans. The students then demanded that the U.S. turn over the former Shah of Iran, Muhammed Reza Pahlavi, who had been overthrown in a revolution late in 1978 and was now temporarily in the U.S. undergoing surgery for the removal of a gall stone. The Iranian government soon appeared secretly to back the students. On November 18 the leader of the Iranian government, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, announced that some of the embassy personnel might be tried as spies.

In response to the takeover, President Carter froze all Iranian assets in American banks, cut off oil imports from that country and called for the deportation of Iranian students in the U.S. illegally. The U.S. also pressured the international community to take steps against the Mideast country. On December 4, the UN unanimously approved a resolution calling for the release of the hostages, and in February it sent a fact-finding mission to the country to listen to Iranian grievances. The on May 24, 1980 the International Court of Justice demanded the immediate surrender of the hostages and ruled that Iran would be liable for reparations claims arising from the takeover.

Meanwhile, on April 1 the Iranian government announced that it would assume control over the remaining 53 American hostages (6 of them had been earlier smuggled by Canada and all the others, including 13 American women and blacks had been released by the students late in November). At home president Carter, who was in the middle of the campaign for the Democratic nomination, was coming under increasing criticism for his handling of the situation. During April he stepped up the pressure on Iran. On April 7, he severed diplomatic relations and 10 days later barred all travel to that country and prohibited imports from Iran. The on April 24, frustrated by the diplomatic stalemate, the President ordered a rescue attempt to recover the hostages. The mission, however, was aborted when one helicopter developed a fuel leak and two others failed to arrive at the rendezvous point.

With the Shah’s death of cancer in July (in Egypt), one important issue obstructing the negotiations was removed. In November Iran presented a series of new demands which ultimately served as the basis for the final agreement. With Algeria acting an intermediary during the last two months of negotiations, the U.S. finally agreed, on January 19, 1981, to unfreeze Iranian asserts, locate and freeze the late Shah’s wealth, lift all trade restrictions between the two countries and refrain from interfering in Iran’s internal affairs. The next day, the hostages were released after 444 days in captivity.