Questions for Film America Takes Charge 1965-1967 from the PBS series Vietnam: A Television History

 

 

B́nh Định: coastal province in Central VN, bordered by Quảng Ngãi Province to the north and Phú Yên Province to the south.  The provincial capital is Quy Nhơn. Recently researchers in B́nh Định unearthed fifty tombs, dated between 200 BCE- AD 100 and believed to have belonged to the Sa Huynh, one of VN's earliest civilizations. (Source Viet Nam News, 7/24/03)

 

National Liberation Front (NLF): (Mặt Trận Giải Phóng Miền Nam Việt Nam) a loose alliance of anti-Diem organizations, secretly guided by Ha Noi and first established in the winter of 1960-61. When the alliance's military arm became involved in skirmishes with South Vietnamese government, Diem himself gave the groups the pejorative title Việt Cộng, or "Vietnamese Communists (Việt Nam Cộng Sản,)."

 

 

 

Bến Súc: a village in B́nh Dương Province to the north of Saigon that had become a strategic NLF stronghold at the beginning of the US conflict and site of the “Củ Chi Tunnels.” The village was an early target of Operation Cedar Falls

 

Leslie Gelb: Department of Defense official during the war, later NYT op-ed editor and currently the President of the Council on Foreign Relations. Gelb is the author of, among other works, The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked (1980),

 

Paul Warnke: Assistant Secretary of Defense under Johnson, who openly questioned the US policy in VN.

 

 

  1. What motivated early American combatants in VN?  What were some facets of their individual worldviews?  What were some of the gravest problems they faced when these soldiers first arrived in VN?

 

 

  1. What was the US military’s earliest strategy for winning the war?  How did Operation Cedar Falls mark a change in tactics?

 

 

  1. What was an American soldier’s daily routine like?  How would you describe relations between US combatants and the Vietnamese civilians that these soldiers encountered?

 

 

  1. What occurred when more US draftees arrived for military service in VN?  What problems developed in the chain of commend?