HIST 150 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Ngo Dinh Diem, William Westmoreland, Operation Ranch Hand
Document Summary
French indochina: vietnam was an old country, colonized by france, who actually ran the country were french educated and french speaking catholic converts, not the colonial rulers. Dien bien phu: aim was to get the french military to gain victory over the north vietnamese, failed. It was hugely unpopular because it went against sacred ground (they dug it up to create these compounds) Jfk comes in at this point and said they needed military advisors and special forces etc. Instead of neutralization, he still went ahead to save-face. It (cid:449)as (cid:272)lose to ele(cid:272)tio(cid:374) a(cid:374)d did(cid:374)(cid:859)t (cid:449)a(cid:374)t to pay the pri(cid:272)e for pulli(cid:374)g out: so, he escalated. In order to put military in another country, you need pretext to wage war (gulf of tonkin incident: he k(cid:374)e(cid:449) putti(cid:374)g a(cid:272)tual (cid:271)oots o(cid:374) the grou(cid:374)d (cid:449)ould (cid:271)e (cid:272)o(cid:374)tro(cid:448)ersial so does it after the (cid:859)64 election instead.
