hey there and welcome back to heimlich history now we've been going through unit eight of the ap us history curriculum and talking all about the u.s involvement in the cold war both in its domestic and international implications and in this video we're gonna keep a ride on going with that by talking about the vietnam war so if you're ready to get them brain cows milked tonkin resolution style then let's get to it now i'm a simple man and this is a simple video all we're trying to do is explain the causes and effects of the vietnam war now in the last video i left off talking about u.s involvement in vietnam by introducing its geographic reality namely that it was divided into north and south after being decolonized they also talked about its political reality namely that the north was communist under the leadership of ho chi minh and the southwest democratic with strong ties to the united states additionally recall eisenhower's domino theory which said that u.s support of south vietnam was critical because if it fell to the communists then it would be like a domino knocking over the rest of the nations in the region which would soon be a giant communist block party in the pacific and remember u.s foreign policy during the cold war was largely devoted to the containment of communism so eisenhower left office and john f kennedy came in to replace him and he agreed with the communist domino theory therefore kennedy sent no small amount of what he called military advisers into south vietnam and kennedy claimed that they weren't there to fight they were just there to support the southern government oh we hate the northern communists so glad you sent 16 000 people over here to help us fight them off oh no no no no we're not here to fight we're here to support so tell me how does the northern vietnamese aggression make you feel uh what anyway you can see where this is going in 1963 kennedy went ahead and got himself assassinated and as vice president lyndon b johnson becomes president just as the situation in vietnam was degenerating and that is when things got bad in the gulf of tonkin incident the story goes like this the north vietnamese fired on a u.s battleship in the gulf of tonkin which remember was only there to get a sense of how the vietnamese were feeling why else would you have a battleship in the gulf of tonkin but even that aggression is disputed we're not sure whether the north vietnamese actually fired upon the u.s ship but that didn't matter because johnson used this incident as a justification for u.s military involvement in the region and to that end johnson asked congress to pass the gulf of tonkin resolution which essentially gave the president a blank check to exercise whatever powers were necessary to protect american interests in the region now to be clear this was not a declaration of war because only congress can declare war this was just authority given to the commander-in-chief of the military to do what needed to be done to defend american interests in the region but it did lead to some military engagements and that fact led to a huge debate back in america like had the executive branch abused its power by conducting foreign policy with military action apart from congressional approval and the answer to that is yes that's what happened but also kind of no because congress did give approval for the military intervention so yeah it's complicated the point is with the gulf of tonkin resolution in play the u.s military got heavily involved in the region now the real problem is how long it would take to deploy enough military personnel from the united states to make a difference over there nope good thing we already had 16 000 military advisors over there okay i think i'm ready to talk about my feelings now man stuff your feelings it's time for some few people well by 1963 the north vietnamese had sent 40 000 soldiers to fight in south vietnam and baby now it was on now johnson's strategy was step by step escalation the idea was that the north vietnamese were backwards and primitive and if the mighty united states just applied a little more pressure than they would bring them to their knees well a little pressure didn't work so let's just crank that knob again hmm still didn't work let's crank it a little more still didn't work let's crank it a little more then all of a sudden by 1965 nearly 200 000 american troops were fighting in vietnam and two years later it was more than double that number and this north vietnamese enemy turned out to be far more adept at fighting than the americans had predicted and so american troops were dying by the thousands for a cause that seemed at best vague to them i mean in world war ii the enemy was clear it was like fascism totalitarianism in vietnam we're sending our sons into the meat grinder year after year so that we can stop the spread of communism and all in a war that was never officially declared by congress so as you can imagine the vietnam war was fiercely opposed and debated back home as americans continued to die the nation at home seemed to be coming apart at the scene not only was the civil rights movement in full force but intense anti-war protests were also erupting and part of this was due to the johnson administration's campaigns of disinformation on the war johnson never stopped believing that just a little more escalation would win the war and so to keep americans from opposing it the johnson administration painted a very rosy picture of what was happening across the sea but the problem was that this war became america's first truly televised war and now that the television was a staple of most american households reporters in the field of battle in vietnam sent back reels of the actual situation on the ground which was that it was a bloodbath that america was certainly not winning and may have even been losing and so with these two different versions of reality flooding the consciousness of the average american a new term is coined credibility gap the president is lying to us about the progress of the war and we can see it for ourselves right here on television anyway the event that broke johnson's ability to continue the escalation was the tet offensive this was a massive surprise attack carried out by the north vietnamese which inflicted heavy casualties on u.s troops however the u.s did counter-attack and inflicted even heavier losses on the vietcong and in response to this johnson and his staff requested 200 000 more troops to be sent to vietnam and it was at this that johnson's advisers turned against him and said no you cannot do that and so johnson ended the escalation there after johnson's term was over richard nixon was elected president and his goal was to reduce u.s involvement in vietnam without looking like we had conceded defeat the chief program he proposed was known as vietnamization the program basically provided for the removal of american troops from vietnam while still lending financial aid and munitions to carry out the war for themselves and it was nixon who effectively ended the vietnam war okay if you need more help on unit eight then here's the playlist right here if you need even more help then you can click right here in review packet which will give you what you need to get an a in your class and a five on your exam in may try it and i think you'll find that there is no credibility gap in what i am saying and finally if you want me to make more content like this and subscribe and i shall keep making it heimler out