Presidents+During+the+Vietnam+War

Presidents During the Vietnam War Lyndon B. Johnson (1965-1968) LBJ started his domestic policies in 1965. His accomplishments included obtaining congressional passage of the landmark Voting Rights Act and numerous great society programs including Medicare. Decisions about Vietnam were not highly publicized at that time. There were several decisions made in 1965 that would eventually lead to the commitment of U.S. troops in Vietnam. One such event was the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. This gave President Johnson all time military powers in Vietnam.

After a Viet Cong attack on American barracks in Pleiku, Johnson ordered retaliation bombings of North Vietnam on February 6, 1965. This was later expanded, on February 21st, into a program of continued bombing called Rolling Thunder. In March, the decision to take to the ground war was reached. In April, a battalion of U.S. marines landed at Da Nang. in May, the Johnson gave an emergency approval request to Congress to fund the U.S. effort in Vietnam. In June, LBJ gave General William Westmoreland the authority to commit American troops to ground combat operations in Vietnam.

Johnson then quickly began escalating the numbers of troops in Vietnam. From 16,000 troops at the end of the Kennedy Administration, the U.S. commitment grew to 184,000 troops by the end of 1965 and reached a peak of 537,000 in the last year (1968) of the Johnson Administration.

The protests focused upon American policy in Vietnam, the military draft, and Lyndon Johnson himself. The mention of "gaps" became commonplace in political discussions. Lyndon Johnson was said to suffer from a "credibility gap" owing to his campaign as "peace candidate" in 1964. There was a so-called "communications gap" between supporters and opponents of the war. Finally, there was increasing mention of a "generation gap" that divided those who came of age during World War II and those coming of age in the Vietnam era.

Criticism of the Johnson Administration grew strongly because of the number of Americans killed in Vietnam. The number of Americans killed in action rose from a monthly average of 172 during 1965 to an average of 770 in 1967. From January 1965 through the end of December in 1968 the mounting casualties, along with political disputes had a most cutting impact on the president's support. . His support decreased immensely during the Vietnam war. Richard M. Nixon (1968-1974) Nixon  committed himself to "Vietnamization," which implied reducing American ground forces to the vanishing point. This limited him to bombing and mining, which could not bring North Vietnam to give up its ultimate aim—the conquest of South Vietnam and unification of the country. The Americans had long accustomed South Vietnam to depend on them, but he had to take away this crutch before they had learned to walk by themselves. Nixon ran for office in   1968 promising a quick end to the war in Vietnam. By the spring of 1972, Nixon had brought home a half-million American troops, but he had yet to achieve a peace agreement between North and South Vietnam. President Richard M. Nixon orders   more bombing in Cambodia. "I want them to hit everything. I want them to use the big planes, the small planes, everything they can that will help out there[...] Right now there is a chance to win this goddamn war, and that's probably what we are going to have to do because we are not going to do anything at the conference table .    College students overwhelmingly opposed the war. Nixon ignored massive antiwar rallies in Washington and elsewhere in 1969, but after the deaths of students at Kent State University and other colleges in 1970 during clashes with authorities, he sought to broaden his ties with the academic community. As the war came to a close, radical movements declined.

American ground combat forces in Vietnam fell steadily from 540,000 when Nixon took office to none in 1973 when the military draft was ended.

Nixon's Vietnam policy was and   remains controversial. Some say that he sold out the South Vietnamese government. Others argue that his attempt to negotiate conditions beneficial to U.S.objectives just prolonged the war.