1040 ★ CHAPTER 26 The Triumph of Conservatism
The same social changes sweeping the home front were evident among
troops in Vietnam. Soldiers experimented with drugs, openly wore peace and
black- power symbols, refused orders, and even assaulted unpopular officers.
In 1971, thousands deserted the army, while at home Vietnam veterans held
antiwar demonstrations. The decline of discipline within the army convinced
increasing numbers of high- ranking officers that the United States must extri-
cate itself from Vietnam.
Public support for the war was rapidly waning. In 1969, the New York
Times published details of the My Lai massacre of 1968, in which a company
of American troops killed some 350 South Vietnamese civilians. After a mil-
itary investigation, one soldier, Lieutenant William Calley, was found guilty
of directing the atrocity. (The courts released him from prison in 1974.) While
hardly typical of the behavior of most servicemen, My Lai further undermined
public support for the war.
In 1971, the Times began publishing the Pentagon Papers, a classified
report prepared by the Defense Department that traced American involve-
ment in Vietnam back to World War II and revealed how successive presidents
had misled the American people about it. In a landmark freedom- of- the- press
decision, the Supreme Court rejected Nixon’s request for an injunction to halt
publication. In 1973, Congress passed the War Powers Act. The most vigorous
assertion of congressional control over foreign policy in the nation’s history, it
required the president to seek congressional approval for the commitment of
American troops overseas.
The End of the Vietnam War
Early in 1973, Nixon achieved what had eluded his predecessors— a negotiated
settlement in Vietnam. The Paris peace agreement, the result of five years of
talks, made possible the final withdrawal of American troops. The compromise
left in place the government of South Vietnam, but it also left North Vietnam-
ese and Viet Cong soldiers in control of parts of the South. American bombing
ceased, and the military draft came to an end. Henceforth, volunteers would
make up the armed forces. But the agreement did not solve the basic issue of
the war— whether Vietnam would be one country or two. That question was
answered in the spring of 1975, when the North Vietnamese launched a final
military offensive. The government of South Vietnam collapsed; the United
States did not intervene except to evacuate the American embassy, and Viet-
nam was reunified under communist rule.
The only war the United States has ever lost, Vietnam was a military, politi-
cal, and social disaster. By the time it ended, 58,000 Americans had been killed,
along with 3 million to 4 million Vietnamese. The war cost the United States