I’m Mr. Beat Oh. It’s ok, you can come a little
closer. Too close. Too close. That’s better. Anyway, when I was 18 years
old, I had to register for the draft. If you don’t know what I’m talking about,
“the draft,” aka military conscription, is the process in which all male American
citizens have to be ready to become soldiers and fight in a war, whether they want to
or not. Indeederoo, all American males, aged 18 to 25, must register with the
Selective Service System in case the country goes to war and runs out of voluntary
soldiers. The last time there was a draft? 1973. My dad missed the draft by three
years. I missed it by 26 years. But my dad VOLUNTEERED to become a soldier,
serving in the Army. In my opinion, he timed it pretty well, joining the Army about one year after
a particularly horrendous war ended that killed as many as 3.8 million people, including 58,220
Americans. It was a proxy war, or war in which two major powers use two much smaller powers to fight
against each other in order to avoid fighting each other directly. It was a war that not only divided
a country, but divided the world. It was so controversial that it was the first war to cause a
significant number of Americans to literally stop trusting their own government. It almost
single handedly destroyed the reputation of this guy. It was the first war
the United States clearly LOST. Here’s the story of the Vietnam War, arguably
the most controversial war in American history. Once upon a time, there was a group of
people called the Vietnamese who lived here, in mainland Southeast Asia…an area commonly
referred to as “Indochina.” Eventually the Chinese began to influence and straight up take
over much of the area. Flash forward to the 1800s, and France had conquered the area and
maintained full control of it until World War Two…most people don’t know that
the Vietnam War was actually three separate wars that began right after World War
Two ended…but I’m a bit ahead of myself By the 1930s, several Vietnamese were
just sick and tired of French rule, and various revolutionary groups organized
to plan to overthrow French rule. One such group was the Việt Minh, who not only pushed
for Vietnamese independence from the French, but also the Japanese who were now
all up in Southeast Asia’s business. -War in Vietnam (1945-1946)- Ah yes, the Việt Minh, a group of communists
led by a dude named Hồ Chí Minh. He had been exiled from mainland Southeast Asia for most
of his life, but now was back trying to lead a revolution inspired, at least partially, by
the United States. Throughout World War Two, the Việt Minh had got aid from the United States,
as well as the Soviet Union and China. American president Franklin Roosevelt was a
big supporter of Vietnamese resistance and argued Vietnam should be given
independence after the war was over. Well, FDR died, and after the war ended, the
French did NOT grant Vietnam independence, and this led to uh…yeah…another war. Hồ Chí
Minh and his Việt Minh forces went underground to fight it. Quite literally, actually.
Because they didn’t have the same advanced weapons the French had, they dug tunnels
underground as part of their broader strategy of conducting guerrilla warfare, or a
war fought by unconventional means. They often hid in the jungle and launched ambushes, or
surprise attacks from concealed positions. By early 1946, French, Japanese, and British
forces all teamed up to defeat the Việt Minh. -First Indochina War- But after the Japanese and British left, the
Việt Minh started rebelling again. Not only that, they were RECRUITING, and their numbers were
dramatically growing. Though the French were eventually able to regain control of Indochina,
for several years the whole area was unstable, and HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE DIED. Not
only that, both sides committed a bunch of war crimes.This period came to be known as The First
Indochina War, aka the Anti-French Resistance War. Meanwhile, after it became clear that the
Việt Minh were straight up communists, the United States was like, “uh,
I guess we have to fight against you,” and started secretly aiding
the French. In the spring of 1954, the Việt Minh had a decisive victory over the
French in what became known as the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. It was a huge morale booster for
the Việt Minh and a major blow to the French. By then, the United States was freaking out about
communism spreading all around the world and many in the American government thought that they
should send not only troops but even nukes to France so that they could defeat the Việt
Minh. Ever since Harry Truman was president, the U.S. had a foreign policy of “containment.”
It basically assumed that the Soviet Union would always be trying to expand its influence, and
so the United States and other “democratic” countries had to do whatever they could
to CONTAIN this influence. In other words, democracy good, communism bad…stop communism
and spread democracy whenever possible. This thinking is ultimately what led to the U.S.
fighting in the Korean War. It was a devastating war that ended in a stalemate…actually that
stalemate is still in place today. Regardless, the U.S. had prevented South Korea from becoming
communist. Likely inspired by holding back the spread of communism on the Korean peninsula,
the next American president, Dwight Eisenhower, warned that once one country “fell” to
communism, that country’s neighbor surely would “fall” to it next. There was even a name
for that theory. The domino theory. That said, Eisenhower didn’t want to make the mistake again
of sending in American troops on the ground to fight in proxy wars against the Soviet Union…ya
know…like Truman did in Korea? Nah, man. So while communism spreading across Indochina did freak out
Eisenhower, he wasn’t about to send troops there. However, after the Battle of Dien Bien Phu,
the French were now looking for a way out. At the 1954 Geneva Conference, not to be confused
with the Geneva Conventions…that’s something entirely different…diplomats from France, the Việt
Minh, the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom, and the United States all agreed to TEMPORARILY
divide up Indochina. Ah there ya go. There’s a map of it. They created the country of Laos…ah
they made it landlocked, how lovely. They created Cambodia. Hi Cambodia! And finally, they
created two Vietnams, divided at the 17th parallel. Up here, the Democratic Republic
of Vietnam, aka North Vietnam…and down here the State of Vietnam, which eventually morphed
into the REPUBLIC of Vietnam, aka South Vietnam. There were supposed to be elections held in 1956
to create a unified Vietnamese government. Those elections never happened, and a big reason why
they never happened was because of this dude- John Foster Dulles, the U.S. Secretary of State.
He objected to elections probably because he knew that any election would likely put communists
in charge of all of Vietnam. Dulles' brother, Allen Dulles, who was in charge of the CIA
at the time, then engaged in some straight up PsyOp. He spread propaganda that said the
Việt Minh were persecuting Roman Catholics, saying stuff like they buried a priest
alive. In response, hundreds of thousands of Catholics in North Vietnam fled to the
south. The United States helped them flee. Hey speaking of Catholics, Ngo Dinh
Diem, a Catholic who hated communists, proclaimed himself the first
president of South Vietnam … Ok ok. Diem held a referendum to see if he
would be president. And would you look at that, he got 98.2% of the vote! Impressive. Heck,
he even got 133% of the vote in Saigon. I didn’t know that was mathematically
possible, but great job, Diem! Uh yeah, he would rule the country with
an iron fist. Soon after taking power, he started a “Denounce the Communists”
campaign, a campaign in which anyone who even slightly became associated with being
communist or anti-Diem was arrested, tortured, or even executed. Yep, you could get the
death penalty for just being a communist. And despite being a corrupt dictator
who basically persecuted anyone in South Vietnam who wasn’t Catholic, the American
government stood by him for several years. Meanwhile, in North Vietnam, Ho Chi
Minh, as well as other politicians, also often got…well would you look at that…99%
of the vote. While the United States viewed Ho Chi Minh as a brutal dictator, to many
Vietnamese he at least looked like a better dude than Diem. Still, the North
Vietnamese government was oppressive, often seizing farmland also and executing at
least thousands of those who went against them. -Increasing American Involvement- By the end of the 1950s, there was a new, rising
movement against the South Vietnamese government, much of it WITHIN South Vietnam, but it
also grew in nearby Laos and Cambodia. It was called the Liberation Army of South
Vietnam, but newspapers called them the “Viet Cong,” which is shortened from “Việt
Nam cộng sản,” which translates to Vietnamese communist. The Viet Cong got support from North
Vietnam, especially after North Vietnam invaded Laos to help communists there. How did that
support get down to the Viet Cong? Well, a network of roads and trails running through
both Laos and Cambodia down to South Vietnam, simply referred to as the Ho Chi Minh Trail,
made the Viet Cong stronger than ever. In 1960, a dude named Lê Duẩn led North Vietnam, and he’d be more aggressive to South
Vietnam than Hồ Chí Minh ever was. Despite not wanting to send troops, President
Eisenhower did send some military “advisors,” weapons, and money to South Vietnam. But not
much, and by the time he left office it appeared that the United States may not stick around
South Vietnam after all. But then this dude, wait where is he at? Oh there he is. But then THIS
dude, John F. Kennedy, took over as president. Kennedy sent more and more military advisors,
weapons, and money to South Vietnam, despite the French general Charles
de Gaulle warning him that a war in Vietnam would lead the United States into a
“bottomless military and political swamp.” Still, Kennedy thought it’d look really
bad if South Vietnam fell to communism. On May 8, 1963, more than 3,000 Buddhists
gathered in Huế to protest a government ban on flying the Buddhist flag on the Buddha Day.
South Vietnamese security forces fired guns and threw grenades at the protestors, ultimately
killing nine unarmed Buddhist civilians. This led to mass protests against Diem by Buddhists
across the country. They asked Diem to give them the right to practice their religion freely,
but Diem refused. Things got tense in Saigon, South Vietnam’s capital, in June, when Buddhist
monks began burning themselves alive. Here, in a photograph by Malcolm Browne, is the
most famous example. A monk named Thích Quảng Đức burned himself alive at a busy Saigon
intersection. Many of you might recognize the picture from an album cover by Rage Against
the Machine. President Kennedy later said that no photograph “in history has generated
so much emotion around the world as that one.” Speaking of Kennedy, he was about
done with South Vietnam and Diem, in particular. South Vietnamese generals told the
Kennedy administration they’d be staging a coup, or an illegal overthrow of a government, of the
Diem regime. The Kennedy administration said they wouldn’t stop them if they tried. On November
1, 1963, they arrested Diem and assassinated him the next day. South Vietnam would have
political instability for years afterward, led by a series of generals in and out of power.
There is substantial evidence that Kennedy was ready to get Americans out of Vietnam after this,
but uh…yeah… this didn’t actually happen. Maybe it would have happened, but we’ll never know as
Kennedy was assassinated on November 22nd. I have an entire video about that crazy assassination,
which I’m sure most of you know about already…but hey watch it maybe? But yeah, this led to
Kennedy’s Vice President, Lyndon Johnson, being sworn in as the next president. Johnson
had little foreign policy experience. While he wasn’t a big fan of American involvement in
Vietnam, like Kennedy, he also thought it’d look really bad if South Vietnam fell to communism.
While he was cool with the U.S. government continuing to carry out more covert operations
there, he was against sending ground forces. At least, he didn’t want
to send ground forces…YET. -The War Expands- 1964 was an election year, and Lyndon Johnson
didn’t want to appear weak on foreign policy, especially when his main
opponent, Barry Goldwater, was talking trash he was too weak
against communism. So he put the pressure on North Vietnam by putting
American ships all up in their business. On August 2, an American destroyer named the
USS Maddox was hanging out off the coast of North Vietnam in the Gulf of Tonkin when it
spotted North Vietnamese torpedo boats. It fired a warning shot and the torpedo boats
fired shots back at them. Two days later, North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked the USS
Maddox again. Just kidding. That never happened. But here’s the thing, the sailors on the USS
Maddox THOUGHT they were being attacked…but nope they weren’t being attacked at all.
Regardless, based on this made-up attack, President Johnson ordered an air
attack on North Vietnamese naval bases and asked Congress to grant him
the power to take any action necessary to fight back against North Vietnamese
aggression and defend South Vietnam. Congress passed what’s known as the
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on August 7, 1964. The House passed it 416 to 0. The Senate
passed it 88 to 2. The only two U.S. Senators voting against it were Wayne Morse and Ernest
Gruening, who said he didn’t like “sending our American boys into combat in a war in which
we have no business, which is not our war, into which we have been misguidedly drawn, which
is steadily being escalated.” Johnson said the resolution was like “grandma’s nightshirt” because
it “covered everything.” He considered it a blank check to commit American forces to Vietnam. And
boy oh boy did he send American forces to Vietnam. Under the advice of the U.S. Secretary of Defense
Robert McNamara, who also served under JFK, Johnson increased the number of military
advisors in Vietnam to 23,000. And yet, Johnson, or LBJ as many call him today,
assured Americans he wasn’t going to send troops on the ground shortly before
the election of 1964. Well that all changed after the election was over. LBJ
easily won the election. Well, that’s an understatement. It was the most lopsided
presidential election in American history in terms of the popular vote. And shortly
afterward, things began to quickly escalate. After the Viet Cong attacked an American
air base at Pleiku, killing eight Americans, Johnson ordered Operation Rolling
Thunder, a sustained bombing campaign of North Vietnam. Operation Rolling Thunder
would continue for three years. During that time, the United States dropped around 800 tons of
bombs a day on North Vietnam. And yet, it didn’t seem to faze North Vietnam. They continued to
aid the Viet Cong via the Ho Chi Minh Trail. In order to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh Trail supply
route, the United States also bombed Laos, which itself was going through a civil
war. Curtis LeMay, the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force, wrote, “we’re going
to bomb them back into the Stone Age.” But all this bombing didn’t seem to have much
of an effect as most of the bombs failed to hit their targets, instead falling into empty
jungles. Not only that, Viet Cong guerrilla fighters just kept going underground anyway,
building elaborate tunnels to shelter from the bombs. And so, President Johnson did what once
was unthinkable- he sent ground troops. Like, A LOT of ground troops. By the end of 1965, more
than 184,000 American troops were now in Vietnam. By the end of 1966, more than 385,000. By the end
of 1967, more than 485,000. By the end of 1968, more than 536,000. Holy dang. And in case you were
wondering where these soldiers were coming from, many of them did NOT volunteer to
go to fight in Vietnam. They were drafted. Nearly 1.9 million men would
be drafted to serve in the Vietnam War. Most of those drafted were poor. Rich people
often found ways to get out of the draft. Ya know, they made up stories about medical conditions
or went to college when they didn’t have to. The American soldiers were originally
supposed to train South Vietnamese troops, but uh…yeah that was a disaster. The
South Vietnamese soon were becoming more like SPECTATORS in their own war, as
Americans did more and more of the fighting. The leading commander of the American forces
in Vietnam was General William Westmoreland, who hoped to take out both North Vietnam and
the Viet Cong through a war of attrition, or a military strategy of attempting to simply
wear down the enemy until the enemy loses their will to fight. But…yeah…North Vietnam and the
Viet Cong weren’t about to lose their will to fight. In fact, as more Americans came,
the Viet Cong recruitment numbers went UP. Soldiers on both sides fought in some
pretty miserable conditions. It was often rainy. When it wasn’t rainy, it
was humid. There were poisonous snakes. Swarms of weaver ants with stinging bites.
Giant centipedes. Crocodiles. Tigers. Oh my! The Viet Cong didn’t have the military
technology of the United States, but they made their own bombs, set up
booby traps, and hid in the jungle waiting for American soldiers to fall in their
traps. The dense jungle foliage made it easy for the Viet Cong to camouflage not
just themselves, but also their bases. They’d launch ambushes on American soldiers,
then quickly retreat back into the jungle. To counter the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese,
General Westmoreland conducted search-and-destroy missions in villages, especially along the
Ho Chi Minh Trail. Americans in low-flying helicopters would spray machine gun bullets
over an area and then ground troops would move in quickly to search out and kill the
enemy. Sometimes these missions took out Viet Cong bases. Other times these missions
just destroyed villages and killed civilians who had nothing to do with the Viet Cong.
This led to more and more villagers to stop trusting Americans. Not only that, to deal with
the thick jungles that concealed the Viet Cong, the U.S. Air Force began spraying herbicides
like Agent Orange to kill all the vegetation. Sure, the herbicides cleared the jungles,
but they also ended up later causing all kinds of health problems for people exposed to
them. During the war, the Air Force ultimately sprayed at least 19 million gallons of herbicides
in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Even today, both veterans and regular folks in these countries are
still suffering from the effects of herbicides. In particular, Agent Orange has put millions
of people at a higher risk of getting cancer. By 1966, many South Vietnamese soldiers
had deserted the fight. To put it mildly, things were not going so
well for the United States. Many around the world began to question why the
heck the Americans were even IN Vietnam anymore. Some of the biggest protests were actually back
home in the United States. Beginning in 1966, huge protests erupted on college campuses across
the country. By 1967, these protests seemed to be everywhere. Some protestors were upset that
the United States was bombing the crap out of an underdeveloped country. Some protestors called
it a war of imperialism. Many protestors said the war was simply not winnable. Other protestors
just thought the draft was wrong. It became common to see young people burning their draft
cards in protest. They particularly talked trash about the fact that rich and powerful people
voted FOR the war while poor people actually FOUGHT it. A big reason why many Americans
turned against the war was because they saw what the war looked like in real-time
on TV. And it looked like a nightmare. While the Johnson administration would give press
conferences pretending everything was all gravy, news coverage on TV routinely showed children
killed by American bombs and dying American soldiers. People weren’t falling for what
their government was telling them anymore. Ya know, it’s kinda like the government telling
you there’s no war crimes…and then you get on TikTok and you see the war crimes…and then
the government bans TikTok. Problem solved! Anyway, it’s important to recognize that
MANY Americans still defended and supported the war effort. Those who became known as
“hawks” wanted total victory in Vietnam, while those who wanted to stop the war and bring
the troops home became known as “doves.” It was arguably the first time the country was so divided
on one particular issue going back all the way to the American Civil War. Tragically, many of the
Vietnam War veterans who DID survive and came back home got no love. Many of these veterans
had dads who returned home from World War Two greeted as heroes. Vietnam War veterans were often
not greeted AT ALL when they got home. Anti-war protestors sometimes harassed them. They didn’t
spit on them, though. Apparently that’s a myth. By the end of 1967, despite his impressive
domestic accomplishments regarding civil rights and social welfare programs, President
Johnson was not that popular anymore. (they said hey hey LBJ how many kids did you kill
today?”) Yes, they uh, they really shouted that. And yet, he insisted on finishing the job, even as others around him now had
doubts. One of those who had BIG doubts? Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Once a
big SUPPORTER of the war, he ended up resigning in protest of it, and spent the rest of his
life saying the Vietnam War was a mistake. Still, the war dragged on, with no clear victory
in sight. And then, suddenly, on January 31, 1968, which was the first day of Tet, the Vietnamese
New Year, both North Vietnam and Viet Cong forces launched a huge coordinated attack on more than
100 South Vietnamese cities and towns. All at once. It later became known as the Tet Offensive,
and it ended up being one of the biggest military campaigns of the war. The Tet Offensive was a
rare time when the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong went on…ya know…on offense, and it
caught many Americans and South Vietnamese by surprise. In Huế, the same city where the
Buddhist uprisings had taken place five years prior, intense fighting took place that
destroyed most of the buildings there. While the United States and South Vietnam were
eventually able to defeat North Vietnam and the Viet Cong during the Tet Offensive,
it caused more people around the world to turn against the war. One poll showed
that now just 26% of the public approved of how President Johnson was handling it.
Based mostly on how badly the war was going, he decided to not commit more troops , even
though General Westmoreland had requested an additional 206,000 troops. Johnson
also chose not to run for re-election. I shall not seek and I will
not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president Two notable anti-war candidates ran to take his
place for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination- Eugene McCarthy, a U.S. Senator
representing Minnesota and Robert Kennedy, the brother of John F. Kennedy and now U.S.
Senator representing New York. After Kennedy was assassinated on June 5, (yeah, he got
assassinated, too!) some of his supporters switched to support McCarthy. Despite McCarthy
winning more votes than any other Democratic presidential candidate, the party elites went
with Johnson’s Vice President, Hubert Humphrey, instead. This led to a bunch of anti-war
Democrats getting pretty angry, as Humphrey had supported continuing the war effort. Outside
the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, there were even violent confrontations
between anti-war protesters and the police. Meanwhile, the Republican Party nominated Richard
Nixon for president, the former Vice President who once aggressively called for sending more troops
to Vietnam and criticized Democrats for being too soft on Vietnam, but uh…now was like, hey I’ve
got a “secret plan” to end the Vietnam War. Nixon also campaigned to end the draft. You could argue
that this is one reason why he won the election of 1968. That said, after he took office, he
didn’t seem to be much in a hurry to end the war. Besides, by that time peace talks between
North Vietnam and the United States had already begun in Paris, anyway. After
Nixon took over, he introduced a new strategy called “Vietnamization,” which
basically meant gradually turning the war back over to South Vietnam. I mean,
that was gonna be hard. At the time, 1 out of every 12 South Vietnamese living
in a refugee camp, for crying out loud. In 1969, it had become increasingly clear that
the American government was covering up bad stuff its military had been doing in Southeast Asia.
Most infamously, what became known as the My Lai Massacre. It had occurred back in March 1968.
American troops led by Lieutenant William Calley entered a small village called My Lai trying to
find Viet Cong. Well, they didn’t find any Viet Cong, but instead they sexually assaulted several
women and rounded up around 500 unarmed civilians, including mostly women, children, elderly men, and
even babies- and brutally murdered them. And then, the U.S. Army covered it up. It was until
November 1969 that word got out about it. Around that same time, Daniel Ellsberg
published the Pentagon Papers, which revealed that the American military
had secretly expanded military operations in Vietnam without telling the public or
even Congress. Even though President Nixon wasn’t mentioned in the Pentagon Papers,
he viewed its release as an attack on his handling of the war. He made it a mission to
take Ellsberg down, but ultimately most viewed Ellsberg as a heroic whistleblower and long
story short…he wouldn’t see any prison time. While Nixon did begin bringing the troops home,
protests continued as many Americans thought the process wasn’t happening quickly enough. Plus,
anti-war protestors got angry all over again after Nixon ordered American forces to invade Cambodia,
an officially neutral country, on April 29, 1970. Nixon had NOT consulted Congress. At one
of the protests on the campus of Kent State University in Kent, Ohio on May 4, National Guard
members fired shots into a rowdy student crowd, killing four and wounding nine. Today the horrific
event is known as the Kent State Shootings, and yes I made a video about it, and yes it got
demonetized, just like this video demonetized, because…ya know…I’m teaching you about
bad stuff that happened in history. Despite growing pressure to end the war
immediately, Nixon insisted on “peace with honor.” He sent his National Security Advisor,
Henry Kissinger to secretly negotiate with the North Vietnamese government. Of utmost
importance? Getting the American prisoners of war released. By 1972, only around 24,000
American troops were still in Vietnam. Still, North Vietnam stayed aggressive, dropping a
series of bombs on South Vietnam in what became known as the Easter Offensive. In response,
Nixon ordered more bombings on North Vietnam. Regardless, Nixon easily won re-election in a
landslide victory in November. On January 27, 1973, in what became known as the
Paris Peace Accords, North Vietnam, South Vietnam, and the United States finally
negotiated an agreement calling for American troops to leave South Vietnam in exchange for
the release of American prisoners of war. But this “peace agreement” smelled much more like an
American retreat. Meanwhile, Nixon had continued bombing Cambodia without getting approval from
Congress. This ultimately was a big reason why Congress passed the War Powers Resolution,
a law passed over Nixon’s veto that required the president to report to Congress within 48
hours after committing troops to a military action or “substantially” increasing the size of
American combat units. The law also said troops couldn’t stay in combat somewhere for more than
60 days without further Congressional approval. And then, on March 15, 1973, Nixon was like
“look North Vietnam, if you attack South Vietnam again the United States might just go to
war with you again heh heh heh.” Oh boy. Well, goodness. Anyway, by then most
Americans were out of South Vietnam. By the end of 1974, North Vietnam was
planning an attack on South Vietnam to completely take it over, yep in direct
violation of the Paris Peace Accords. North Vietnamese troops moved
into South Vietnam in March 1975, and captured Saigon on April 30, 1975. The
Fall of Saigon, as it came to be known, marked not only the end of the Vietnam War,
but the end of South Vietnam as a country. The communists had taken over all of Vietnam and
uh…yeah was it all worth it? Well many say no. -Legacy of The Vietnam War- The Vietnam War was the longest war
in American history up to that point, only surpassed by the War in Afghanistan in 2021
lasting six months longer. The war dramatically hurt the reputation of the United States. It
hurt…uh…the UNITED STATES quite a bit, too. Today, the Vietnam War is seen as
pointless. A big freaking mistake, based on lies, that led to millions of innocent
people dying. It was a civil war that many say the United States had no business being a
part of. Unlike the Korean War, the United Nations wanted nothing to do with it. Most of the
world refused to help the United States at all. It left more than 58,000 American soldiers
dead, and another more than 153,000 wounded. Many of those veterans who survived suffered from
post-traumatic stress disorder. These vets often came home ignored….sometimes even despised.
The war was also an environmental disaster. It devastated the forests of Southeast Asia. So
many 18, 19, and 20 year olds died fighting the war that Congress ratified the 26th Amendment,
which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18. It was only during the 1990s when
relations got better between the United States and Vietnam. Today, the two
countries are just fine with each other, despite Vietnam still being
“communist.” Go figure, huh? Look, the United States wasn’t used to losing
wars. A smaller and way less powerful country defeating a great superpower such as the U.S.
was shocking. It was so demoralizing that the United States avoided getting involved in foreign
wars afterward, mostly because the American public demanded they not get involved. There’s even
a term for it. Vietnam syndrome. Only after 9/11 did that finally change, and even
then the American government at least attempted to avoid sending ground troops.
Oh, and it didn’t reinstate the draft! Needless to say, I didn’t join the military after
high school. Only recently did I realize that a big reason why I didn’t volunteer is because of
my obsession with The Vietnam War when I was 18. I blame all those Vietnam War movies I used to
watch. I didn’t want to get stuck in a jungle somewhere constantly afraid of being ambushed. I
didn’t want to shoot and kill random villagers. I think it’s safe to say if I graduated high
school in 1960 instead of 2000, I would be MUCH more likely to join and serve. But in 2000,
I suppose I had Vietnam syndrome. I’m sorry dad. Folks, breaking news. I’ve
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see me in real life at some upcoming real life events find out more details at my
website iamrbeat.com and thanks for watching
