| |
N0KFQ > TODAY 29.03.08 13:00l 81 Lines 4076 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 16059_N0KFQ
Read: GUEST
Subj: Today in History - Mar 29
Path: IZ3LSV<IW2OHX<IK2QCA<I4UKI<IR2UBX<IK2XDE<ON4HU<F4BWT<I0TVL<CX2SA<
KD4GCA<N2BQF<N9PMO<N0KFQ
Sent: 080328/1559Z @:N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA #:16059 [Branson] FBB7.00i $:16059_N
From: N0KFQ@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
To : TODAY@ALLUS
March 29, 1973
U.S. withdraws from Vietnam
Two months after the signing of the Vietnam peace agreement, the
last U.S. combat troops leave South Vietnam as Hanoi frees the
remaining American prisoners of war held in North Vietnam.
America's direct eight-year intervention in the Vietnam War was
at an end. In Saigon, some 7,000 U.S. Department of Defense
civilian employees remained behind to aid South Vietnam in
conducting what looked to be a fierce and ongoing war with
communist North Vietnam.
In 1961, after two decades of indirect military aid, U.S.
President John F. Kennedy sent the first large force of U.S.
military personnel to Vietnam to bolster the ineffectual
autocratic regime of South Vietnam against the communist North.
Three years later, with the South Vietnamese government
crumbling, President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered limited bombing
raids on North Vietnam, and Congress authorized the use of U.S.
troops. By 1965, North Vietnamese offensives left President
Johnson with two choices: escalate U.S. involvement or withdraw.
Johnson ordered the former, and troop levels soon jumped to more
than 300,000 as U.S. air forces commenced the largest bombing
campaign in history.
During the next few years, the extended length of the war, the
high number of U.S. casualties, and the exposure of U.S.
involvement in war crimes, such as the massacre at My Lai, helped
turn many in the United States against the Vietnam War. The
communists' Tet Offensive of 1968 crushed U.S. hopes of an
imminent end to the conflict and galvanized U.S. opposition to
the war. In response, Johnson announced in March 1968 that he
would not seek reelection, citing what he perceived to be his
responsibility in creating a perilous national division over
Vietnam. He also authorized the beginning of peace talks.
In the spring of 1969, as protests against the war escalated in
the United States, U.S. troop strength in the war-torn country
reached its peak at nearly 550,000 men. Richard Nixon, the new
U.S. president, began U.S. troop withdrawal and "Vietnamization"
of the war effort that year, but he intensified bombing. Large
U.S. troop withdrawals continued in the early 1970s as President
Nixon expanded air and ground operations into Cambodia and Laos
in attempts to block enemy supply routes along Vietnam's borders.
This expansion of the war, which accomplished few positive
results, led to new waves of protests in the United States and
elsewhere.
Finally, in January 1973, representatives of the United States,
North and South Vietnam, and the Vietcong signed a peace
agreement in Paris, ending the direct U.S. military involvement
in the Vietnam War. Its key provisions included a cease-fire
throughout Vietnam, the withdrawal of U.S. forces, the release of
prisoners of war, and the reunification of North and South
Vietnam through peaceful means. The South Vietnamese government
was to remain in place until new elections were held, and North
Vietnamese forces in the South were not to advance further nor be
reinforced.
In reality, however, the agreement was little more than a
face-saving gesture by the U.S. government. Even before the last
American troops departed on March 29, the communists violated the
cease-fire, and by early 1974 full-scale war had resumed. At the
end of 1974, South Vietnamese authorities reported that 80,000 of
their soldiers and civilians had been killed in fighting during
the year, making it the most costly of the Vietnam War.
On April 30, 1975, the last few Americans still in South Vietnam
were airlifted out of the country as Saigon fell to communist
forces. North Vietnamese Colonel Bui Tin, accepting the surrender
of South Vietnam later in the day, remarked, "You have nothing to
fear; between Vietnamese there are no victors and no vanquished.
Only the Americans have been defeated." The Vietnam War was the
longest and most unpopular foreign war in U.S. history and cost
58,000 American lives. As many as two million Vietnamese soldiers
and civilians were killed.
Read previous mail | Read next mail
| |
