Archiv: Viet Nam / Vietnam / Vietnam War

12.04.2026 - 16:32 [ HistorySkills.com ]

The Gulf of Tonkin Incident: Did America lie to start a war?

In August 1964, as Cold War tension continued to fuel Washington’s obsession with the aim of stopping communist expansion in Southeast Asia, a brief naval encounter off the coast of North Vietnam rapidly triggered full-scale U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

Within days, President Lyndon B. Johnson received very broad congressional support to wage war, and officials justified this decision with reports of two unprovoked attacks on American destroyers that were operating in the Gulf of Tonkin.

Years later, as declassified evidence exposed errors and deliberate gaps in the reports, it became increasingly clear to many historians that the incident had not occurred exactly as described and that American leaders had, in significant ways, manipulated facts to justify the decision to send more forces to war.

12.04.2026 - 16:28 [ HistoryTools.org ]

The Gulf of Tonkin Incident: Deception, Escalation, and the March to War in Vietnam

(May 25, 2024)

The Gulf of Tonkin incident in August 1964 marked a pivotal turning point in the United States‘ involvement in Vietnam. What began as a limited, covert conflict rapidly escalated into a massive, decade-long war that would claim the lives of over 58,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese. At the heart of this transformation was a murky naval skirmish off the coast of North Vietnam that was shrouded in confusion, miscommunication, and outright deception.

The events of August 1964 in the Gulf of Tonkin have long been a source of controversy and debate among historians, policymakers, and the American public. The incident raises profound questions about the use and abuse of intelligence, the manipulation of public opinion, the accountability of political leaders, and the proper role of Congress in checking presidential war powers.

04.04.2026 - 07:36 [ Spencer Ackerman / Forever-Wars.com ]

So You Lost A War To Iran

(March 31, 2026)

Iran, despite the decapitation of its leadership, has dealt the United States a strategic defeat in the classical sense. It will end the war in a stronger position than when it came under attack. The United States will end the war in a weaker position than before it launched its war. The rest is details.

(…)

Welcome to strategic defeat—or, I should say, welcome back, considering the whole War on Terror and all, and the Vietnam War. Only this time the consequences of defeat for the Americans are set to be far more severe.

15.03.2026 - 22:30 [ Common Dreams ]

As US Attacks Iran, Daniel Ellsberg Speaks to Us Once More

(March 2, 2026)

“Don’t delegate conscience,” Daniel Ellsberg wrote.

“Most people conform and accept,” he noted. “A minority protest, withdraw. A tiny minority resist, take risks.”

“The temptation is strong to obey powerful men passively and unquestioningly,” Ellsberg observed in 1971, the year he turned himself in for giving the Pentagon Papers to the press and faced the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison.

He instantly became a pariah among colleagues who’d been his friends at the RAND Corporation, a think tank serving the US war machine. He’d been working there as a strategic analyst before and after a stint at the Defense Department.

“After I released the papers,” he vividly remembered, “some people were afraid to write to me . . . to shake hands with me . . . to receive a phone call from me.” Three years later, his takeaway was: “Accept the risks of freedom and commitment, instead of the risks of obedience and conformity.”

05.03.2026 - 14:56 [ NPR.org ]

A split Senate votes against measure to constrain Trump‘s authorities in Iran

The vote was 47-53, largely along party lines. If passed, the resolution would have blocked further U.S. military action in Iran without congressional approval under the 1973 War Powers Act. That legislation passed during the Vietnam War to give Congress a legal check on executive war authority. The 1973 act also requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of deploying U.S. forces into hostilities and to end the deployment within 60 days unless Congress authorizes or extends it.

16.10.2025 - 09:49 [ Reuters ]

Planning under way for international force in Gaza, say US advisers

Among the countries the U.S. is speaking to about contributing to the force are Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Qatar and Azerbaijan, said the adviser, speaking on condition of anonymity.
(…)
After Hamas killed seven men in Gaza City it accused of collaborating with Israel, the advisers said there were discussions to establish safe zones for civilians to prevent such incidents.

04.05.2025 - 20:45 [ Bill Astore / Bracing Views / Substack ]

U.S. Elites Learned Much from the Vietnam Defeat

So, what did they learn?

– They learned that wars can indeed last forever, but that Vietnam wasn’t the best “forever war” for the military-industrial complex because it became deeply unpopular and was disrupting cohesion within the military itself. The best forever wars are open-ended “wars” like the global war on terror. And perhaps a “new Cold War” with Russia and/or China. Wars that don’t involve the deployment of over half a million men (unless that “new” Cold War turns hot).

– They learned to control the narrative. No more journalists traveling freely in war zones as in the 1960s in Vietnam. Journalists are now most often embedded in U.S. military units. Embedded reporters, dependent on the military for access and protection, know what they can and can’t say, even as they tend to sympathize with the troops they’re with. ….

27.04.2025 - 16:02 [ Daniel Neun / Radio Utopie ]

WAR ON PALESTINE: Why Hamas is not resistance

To end the onslaught in Gaza and the West Bank by the Israeli occupation forces and their colonists („settlers“), the Palestinian People have to realize that the „Islamic Resistance Movement“ (Hamas) is not a resistance and not on their side. Two simple examples should be sufficent to explain this.

16.04.2025 - 05:02 [ My Lai Memorial Exhibit ]

FREE FIRE ZONES

From a psychological-warfare leaflet dropped on villages:
“THE U.S. MARINES WILL NOT HESITATE TO DESTROY, IMMEDIATELY, ANY VILLAGE OR HAMLET HARBORING THE VIETCONG. WE WILL NOT HESITATE TO DESTROY, IMMEDIATELY, ANY VILLAGE OR HAMLET USED AS A VIETCONG STRONGHOLD TO FIRE AT OUR TROOPS OR AIRCRAFT.”

13.04.2025 - 00:42 [ Seymour Hersh / TKP.at ]

Nur ein weiterer amerikanischer Präsident

Dementsprechend erließ Westmoreland 1966 eine neue Strategie, die Kommandeure anwies, weiterhin Such- und Zerstörungsmissionen in den Bergen durchzuführen, aber einen neuen Feind in die Truppenaufstellung und Einsatzregeln aufzunehmen: die „Infrastruktur“ der Vietcong. Damit waren sogenannte Basisdörfer gemeint, die angeblich von Vietcong-Unterstützern „verseucht“ waren, die Kämpfer beherbergten, versorgten und unterstützten.

(…)

Ein CIA-Analyst wie Adams bemerkte, dass die Zahlen nicht stimmten. Während Westmorelands Leichenzählung wuchs, blieb Adams’ Zählung der tatsächlich bewaffneten Kämpfer in lokalen und Haupteinheiten nahezu konstant. Er berichtete, dass die Armee offenbar Unbeteiligte tötete und als Vietcong deklarierte. „Menschen wurden nun danach angegriffen, wo sie lebten“, sagte mir Sams Kollege.

13.04.2025 - 00:41 [ Seymour Hersh ]

JUST ANOTHER AMERICAN PRESIDENT

Cooper was the quiet man at many of the most significant events in the postwar era, including the vastly misunderstood 1954 Geneva Conference, but the crucial story in his book is his inside account of Johnson’s refusal to respond to many offers for peace talks with Hanoi. Simply put, there were far more serious than publicly known offers of talks put forth by North Vietnam in the later Johnson years when bombing by US B-52s was at its peak.

Hanoi’s only condition, Cooper explains, was that America halt its bombing before the talks began, but Johnson believed any cessation would be a sign of weakness.

06.02.2025 - 22:24 [ University of Washington ]

New Left and Antiwar Movement History and Geography

Antiwar and countercultural activism by millions of young people of every backgound turned campuses and cities into both battle grounds and zones of social and cultural innovation while helping to bring down two presidents and rearranging both the Democratic and Republican Parties. The impact of these movements registered widely: in the military which had to be redesigned to operate without conscription; in mass media which scrambled to recapture a generation that had discovered underground newspapers; and especially in the new ways that many Americans would from then on view their nation‘s institutions and role in the world.

06.02.2025 - 22:15 [ Monthly Review ]

Vietnam and the Soldiers’ Revolt: The Politics of a Forgotten History

(June 1, 2016)

All sides have attempted to define the collective memory of the Vietnam War in ways that advance their current visions for global and domestic politics and superimpose them on the past. Think, for example, of the persistence of the “spit upon” or “baby killer” myths, or the claim that the antiwar movement “stabbed” soldiers “in the back” (even many of my students, born decades later, say these are the first things they think about when they hear “Vietnam War”).1 The continued influence of these myths has helped prop up consent for militarism at home and abroad. The story of GI protest during the war is an important counter to the conventional story, for it hits at the heart of some of the most emotive symbols in these political battles: the soldiers. It offers grounding for an alternative politics from the antiwar left. It is history worth knowing.

06.02.2025 - 22:05 [ WagingPeaceinVietnam.com ]

Waging Peace in Vietnam: A Timeline of the Movement

August 1964

False claims of North Vietnamese attacks in the Gulf of Tonkin lead to U.S. airstrikes and an escalating air war over the coming years that becomes the heaviest bombing campaign in the history of warfare, with more than 7 million tons of bombs and ordnance used against Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

1965

Major escalation of U.S. ground troops begins.

January 1965

Lt. Richard Steinke becomes the first U.S. serviceman to refuse to fight after arriving in Vietnam. In November that year, Lt. Henry Howe of Ft. Bliss, Texas, attends antiwar protest in El Paso and is sentenced to two years hard labor.

June, 1966

Privates James Johnson, Dennis Mora and David Samis—the Ft. Hood Three—publicly refuse orders to Vietnam.

October, 1966

Capt. Howard Levy, MD, refuses orders to train Green Beret combatants at Ft. Jackson, South Carolina.

December 1967

Andy Stapp and others at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, form the American Servicemen’s Union and organize chapters at dozens of military installations and ships.

Late 1967

Vietnam GI , one of the first known GI antiwar newspapers, begins publication. Hundreds of other GI papers appear throughout the military over the next five years. …….

10.11.2024 - 13:35 [ New York Times ]

When Did Liberals Become So Comfortable With War?

First, history has shown that governments and bureaucracies tend to become addicted to a war footing, with failure sucking them in further — think of America’s war on terror, or Vietnam. War encourages a perverse cycle of escalation in which huge financial and political gains accrue for governments and the military-industrial complex while the costs tend to be borne by weaker parties — before they start to come home in some shape or form.

We’ve called this bipartisan pattern “wreckonomics” and have found it especially present in wars or conflicts with costs that Western politicians can largely outsource — from fighting terrorism, drugs and smugglers to quasi-colonial interventions during the Cold War.

03.05.2024 - 06:00 [ Common Dreams ]

Biden Condemned for Ahistorical and ‚Politically Suicidal‘ Attack on Campus Protests

„Biden‘s claim that ‚dissent must never lead to disorder‘ defies American history, from the Boston Tea Party to the tactics that civil rights activists, Vietnam War protesters, and anti-apartheid activists used to confront injustice.“

29.04.2024 - 22:35 [ theConversation.com ]

College administrators are falling into a tried and true trap laid by the right

For now, Trump has called the recent protests “antisemitic” and “far worse” than the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville. Biden has similarly condemned “the antisemitic protests” and “those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.” (…)

Like their association of civil rights and peace demonstrators with communism throughout the Cold War, politicians on both sides of the aisle are now broadly hurling claims of antisemitism against anyone protesting Israel’s war in Gaza, many of whom are Jewish.

The purpose then, as it is now, is to intimidate administrators into a false political choice: Will they protect students’ right to demonstrate or be seen as acquiescent to antisemitism?

27.04.2024 - 12:00 [ New York Times ]

The Ghost of the 1968 Antiwar Movement Has Returned

Those young demonstrators had come of age seeing continual — and effective — protests during the civil rights movement and national mourning after the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. A year earlier King staked out his opposition to the war, saying that while he wasn’t attempting “to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue,” he wanted to underscore his belief “that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money, like some demonic, destructive suction tube.” He said he was “compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and attack it as such.”

27.04.2024 - 05:20 [ LA Times ]

Column: The crackdown on student protesters shows exactly why we need them

After all, the division over the war in Gaza is by no means confined to students. As has happened with so many rifts in our country’s history, students have simply used their activism to become a prism reflecting the wider world. Which is why they need to be taken seriously, for all of our sakes.

If they do nothing else, the growing demonstrations are forcing us to confront who we are, what we believe and why.

What is happening in Gaza is not a war “over there.” It’s right here, right now, among our own children. And we all need to figure out where we stand.

27.04.2024 - 05:00 [ The Rational National / Youtube ]

Campus Protests: Beautiful Moments Vs. Trampling Of Speech

Going over some of the news, good and bad, coming out of the campus protests. Including what happened to Emory University‘s professor of economics Caroline Fohlin, but also a beautiful speech given by an 88-year-old activist.

25.04.2024 - 06:43 [ Washington Post ]

How Americans felt about campus protests against the Vietnam War

There is no guarantee that history will eventually vindicate the positions of protesters. But it does seem safe to assume that the positions, not the protests, are what will be remembered.

24.04.2024 - 04:40 [ New York Post ]

12 suspended Columbia students reinstated just days after anti-Israel protest, as lawyer vows to take ‘fascist’ school to NY Supreme Court

“Speech, no matter how unpopular it may be, is the essence of academia. Protest against Zionism in Israel is pure protected speech. … If Jewish students are made uncomfortable by it, f— them!” Cohen, who was raised in an Orthodox Jewish home, told the Village Sun.

“Speech is supposed to make you uncomfortable. This is not lighting candles and kumbaya. … All speech is protected unless the imminent intent is to commit violence — like shouting ‘Fire!’ in a crowded movie theater,” he added. (…)

“I got f—ing suspended from Columbia 50 years ago. I got thrown out of Columbia after a week for anti-war protesting,” he lamented.

“Columbia is fascist,” he said.

26.02.2024 - 22:00 [ Al Jazeera ]

Suicide vs genocide: Rest in power, Aaron Bushnell

In the aftermath of Bushnell’s self-immolation, the New York Times announced: “Man Dies After Setting Himself on Fire Outside Israeli Embassy in Washington, Police Say” – a rather strong contender, perhaps, for the most diluted and decontextualised headline ever. One wonders what folks would have said in 1965 had the US newspaper of record run headlines like: “Octogenarian Detroit Woman Dies After Setting Herself on Fire, Police Say – An Event Having Nothing Potentially To Do With Said Woman’s Opposition To The Vietnam War Or Anything Like That”.

07.02.2024 - 17:22 [ Tandfonline.com ]

The Pol Pot regime’s simultaneous war against Vietnam and genocide of Cambodia’s ethnic Vietnamese minority

This article examines the international context of and empirical evidence for the genocide of Cambodia’s domestic ethnic Vietnamese minority in the years 1977 and 1978. It sets out the basis for the scholarly consensus that the state of Democratic Kampuchea (DK), ruled by the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK, or “Khmer Rouge”), launched a war against neighboring Vietnam beginning in early 1977 with a series of cross-border attacks. The article then examines the evidence for the simultaneous CPK campaign of near-total mass murder of the approximately 20,000 members of the domestic ethnic Vietnamese community remaining in the country after the killings and forcible expulsions under both the previous regime and the CPK from 1970 to 1976. The article then surveys the CPK’s ethnic policies towards the country’s Vietnamese, Cham, and Chinese minorities, and demonstrates how racist policies often merely masqueraded as class analysis. It concludes with a description of the international legal concepts of both genocide and the crime against humanity of extermination, showing how each applies to crimes the DK regime perpetrated against Cambodia’s ethnic Vietnamese minority.

07.02.2024 - 16:55 [ Daniel Neun / Radio Utopie ]

BBC-Filmreihe “The Trap” (III): Die Freiheit von Berlin oder Der “Kampf der Zivilisationen”

(18. November 2012)

1965 begannen die U.S.A. während des Krieges gegen Nordvietnam ein ebenso mörderisches, wie geheimes Bombardement gegen das neutrale Kambodscha, was bis 1954 Kolonie Frankreichs gewesen war. 2,7 Millionen Tonnen Bomben zwischen 1965 bis 1973 beförderten Kambodscha “zurück in die Steinzeit” und töteten 200.000 Menschen. Den U.S.-Bomberpiloten wurde vom Pentagon sogar verboten, die eigenen Vorgesetzten zu informieren. Die angeblichen Militärstützpunkte Nordvietnams in Kambodscha, wegen denen die Bombardements vermeintlich durchgeführt wurden, existierten nicht.

Was die Tat von Wahnsinnigen war, wurde nachher als “Wahnsinnigen-Theorie” (“Madman-Theory”) verkauft: die U.S.-Regierung unter Präsident Richard Nixon und Außenminister Henry Kissinger (der später den Friedensnobelpreis bekam) behauptete, sie habe sich wahnsinnig benommen, um der Sowjetunion Angst vor einem Atomkrieg zu machen, damit diese Druck auf Nordvietnam ausübe, damit das den Krieg gegen die U.S.A. beende, den die U.S.A. selbst begonnen hatten.

1970 stürzten die U.S.A. die Monarchie unter “Prinz” Sihanouk, installierten ein Proxy-Regime und marschierten in Kambodscha ein. Sihanouk, einst 1941 im Alter von achtzehn Jahren vom französischen Vichy-Regime unter deutscher Besatzung zum neuen König der damaligen französischen Kolonie Kambodscha ernannt, floh ins China Mao Tse Tungs und formierte dort eine kambodschanische “Freiheitsbewegung”. Deren Teil: die Roten Khmer.

1972 besuchte Richard Nixon als erster U.S.-Präsident China und Mao Tse Tung, im Versuch gegen das mit der Sowjetunion verbündete Nordvietnam einen Verbündeten zu finden und die Rivalitäten sowohl zwischen China und Vietnam, als auch zwischen China und der Sowjetunion zu schüren.

Als 1975 in Vietnam die Truppen des Vietkong und Nordvietnams in Saigon einmarschierten und den Krieg gegen die U.S.A. gewannen, marschierten in Kambodscha die Truppen der Roten Khmer – von China unterstützt und traditionell verfeindet mit den vietnamesischen Kommunisten – plötzlich in der Haupstadt Phnom Penh ein. Und setzten Prinz Sihanouk als offizielles Staatsoberhaupt ein.

Von der Schreckensherrschaft Pol Pots, auf dessen Killing Fields Millionen Leichen lagen und dessen Verbündeter Prinz Sihanouk nach wie vor im Land lebte, befreite Kambodscha 1979 nicht etwa die “negative Freiheit” der U.S.A., von Frankreich, oder der U.N.O., sondern die einrückenden Truppen des kommunistischen Vietnams.

Die Mörder der Roten Khmer, die gerade einen Genozid begangen hatten, flohen in Dschungel und begannen dort einen neuen Guerillakrieg – mit Unterstützung der U.S.A. und anderer ehrenwerter westlicher Länder. 1982 formierten die Massenmörder unter Führung Sihanouks eine Exilregierung, die von den U.S.A., der U.N.O und unwichtigen Ländereien Westeuropas anerkannt wurde.

Vizepräsident dieser kambodschanischen Exilregierung: das “Staatsoberhaupt” des Pol Pot Regimes von 1976-1979, Khieu Samphan. Er lebt heute noch. Er sagt, er hätte nichts gewusst.

Pol Pot wurde nie verfolgt. Dafür sorgten die U.S.A..

Neues altes Staatsoberhaupt Kambodschas wurde 1991 Sihanouk, nach dem Abzug der vietnamesischen Truppen. Er starb erst vor wenigen Tagen, am 15. Oktober 2012, in Peking.

07.02.2024 - 16:34 [ Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia - eccc.gov.kh ]

Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia: TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS – “DUCH” TRIAL PUBLIC

(6 April 2009, 0910H)

Q. Still in the political context — of course, we will go back to your detention, speak about your detention a bit later, but you also spoke about the coup d‘etat of 1970, so a coup d‘etat through which Sihanouk was deposed and a republican regime that was set up by Lon Nol was installed.

Can you tell us, you were — can you tell us how this was perceived? In particular, how the declaration of March 1970 was perceived through which Prince Sihanouk asked the Cambodian people to rise up? I‘d like to understand how the CPK, Communist Party of Kampuchea, experienced this period and was there a real union? What happened, in fact?

[10:19:40]

A. Judge Lavergne, I would like to respond to your question based on my political view. Samdech Norodom Sihanouk was the Head of State of Cambodia. His position was the populist to preserve his throne. It was not Norodom Sihanouk. Lon Nol was

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affiliated with the United States, and when he grasped or controlled the Assembly in 1966, he managed to — he really caused the dispute and the uprising in Samlaut at the Sihanoukist side, and the other side is the Communist side which are affiliated with Marxist and Leninist, and these things were mixed up.

I think through my understanding, if Richard Nixon did not be quick to allow Lon Nol to start the coup d‘etat and allowing Khmer Rouge to cooperate with Sihanouk, I think Khmer Rouge would be demolished or otherwise they would never be able to stand up again. But Mr. Kissinger and Richard Nixon weren‘t quick and the Khmer Rouge noted the golden opportunity and King Sihanouk declare from China that all Cambodian people go through the Marxist jungle and then the Khmer Rouge troop will build up from 1970 to 1975.

I think this is the political context and people tried to gain — to have political gain. Lon Nol tried to benefit from politics and then Sihanouk also tried to gain benefit for his side.

Nachrichtenagentur Radio Utopie