People's History of the United States_ 1492 to Present, A - Zinn, Howard [297]
The United States withdrew its forces, continuing to give aid to the Saigon government, but when the North Vietnamese launched attacks in early 1975 against the major cities in South Vietnam, the government collapsed. In late April 1975, North Vietnamese troops entered Saigon. The American embassy staff fled, along with many Vietnamese who feared Communist rule, and the long war in Vietnam was over. Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City, and both parts of Vietnam were unified as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
Traditional history portrays the end of wars as coming from the initiatives of leaders—negotiations in Paris or Brussels or Geneva or Versailles—just as it often finds the coming of war a response to the demand of “the people.” The Vietnam war gave clear evidence that at least for that war (making one wonder about the others) the political leaders were the last to take steps to end the war—“the people” were far ahead. The President was always far behind. The Supreme Court silently turned away from cases challenging the Constitutionality of the war. Congress was years behind public opinion.
In the spring of 1971, syndicated columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, two firm supporters of the war, wrote regretfully of a “sudden outbreak of anti-war emotionalism” in the House of Representatives, and said: “The anti-war animosities now suddenly so pervasive among House Democrats are viewed by Administration backers as less anti-Nixon than as a response to constituent pressures.”
It was only after the intervention in Cambodia ended, and only after the nationwide campus uproar over that invasion, that Congress passed a resolution declaring that American troops should not be sent into Cambodia without its approval. And it was not until late 1973, when American troops had finally been removed from Vietnam, that Congress passed a bill limiting the power of the President to make war without congressional consent; even there, in that “War Powers Resolution,” the President could make war for sixty days on his own without a congressional declaration.
The administration tried to persuade the American people that the war was ending because of its decision to negotiate a peace—not because it was losing the war, not because of the powerful antiwar movement in the United States. But the government’s own secret memoranda all through the war testify to its sensitivity at each stage about “public opinion” in the United States and abroad. The data is in the Pentagon Papers.
In June of 1964, top American military and State Department officials, including Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, met in Honolulu. “Rusk stated that public opinion on our SEA policy was badly divided and that, therefore, the President needed an affirmation of support.” Diem had been replaced by a general named Khanh. The Pentagon historians write: “Upon his return to Saigon on June 5 Ambassador Lodge went straight from the airport to call on General Khanh . . . the main thrust of his talk with Khanh was to hint that the United States Government would in the immediate future be preparing U.S. public opinion for actions against North Vietnam.” Two months later came the Gulf of Tonkin affair.
On April 2, 1965, a memo from CIA director John McCone suggested that the bombing of North Vietnam be increased because it was “not sufficiently severe” to change North Vietnam’s policy. “On the other hand . .