1 00:00:14,470 --> 00:00:17,180 Let us never negotiate out of fear 2 00:00:17,850 --> 00:00:20,470 but let us never fear to negotiate 3 00:00:20,680 --> 00:00:22,560 East Germans escape by the tens of thousands 4 00:00:22,980 --> 00:00:25,060 until the communists threw up their wall of hate 5 00:00:26,150 --> 00:00:29,230 The assault has begun on the dictatorship of Fidel Castro 6 00:00:39,700 --> 00:00:44,620 This generation of americans has already had enough, more than enough 7 00:00:45,290 --> 00:00:48,460 of war, and hate, and oppression. 8 00:00:52,170 --> 00:00:56,470 As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men 9 00:00:57,430 --> 00:01:01,270 I have told them that molotov cocktails and rifles 10 00:01:01,930 --> 00:01:04,230 would not solve their problems. 11 00:01:04,980 --> 00:01:09,230 But they asked -and rightly so- what about Vietnam? 12 00:01:10,110 --> 00:01:12,860 If America's soul becomes totally poisoned 13 00:01:14,150 --> 00:01:17,240 part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. 14 00:01:18,120 --> 00:01:21,290 A nation that continues year after year 15 00:01:21,950 --> 00:01:27,830 to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift 16 00:01:28,500 --> 00:01:30,590 is approaching spiritual death. 17 00:01:31,210 --> 00:01:35,170 This need to maintain social stability for our investments 18 00:01:35,590 --> 00:01:40,180 accounts for the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. 19 00:01:40,970 --> 00:01:45,770 It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia 20 00:01:46,640 --> 00:01:51,020 and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active 21 00:01:51,480 --> 00:01:53,440 against rebels in Peru 22 00:01:54,860 --> 00:02:00,450 They ask if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to 23 00:02:01,200 --> 00:02:06,250 solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. 24 00:02:07,120 --> 00:02:10,920 Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again 25 00:02:11,590 --> 00:02:15,960 raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos 26 00:02:16,630 --> 00:02:21,090 without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence 27 00:02:21,680 --> 00:02:22,970 in the world today: 28 00:02:24,720 --> 00:02:27,140 my own government. 29 00:02:33,980 --> 00:02:37,940 Two days into office, on the sunday, the day before John Kennedy 30 00:02:38,360 --> 00:02:42,200 was buried, Lyndon Johnson met with his military advisors 31 00:02:42,740 --> 00:02:45,240 and said he was not going to lose Vietnam. 32 00:02:46,450 --> 00:02:48,540 He never agreed with Kennedy's memorandum 33 00:02:49,210 --> 00:02:52,250 to withdraw and 2 days later he issued a new memo 34 00:02:52,790 --> 00:02:56,300 signaling the US would be taking a more hands-on approach. 35 00:03:01,430 --> 00:03:05,600 His foreign policy thinking was profound in a primitive way: 36 00:03:06,470 --> 00:03:08,560 There are 3 billion people in the world, and we only 37 00:03:09,100 --> 00:03:11,730 have 200 million of them. We're outnumbered 15 to 1. 38 00:03:12,400 --> 00:03:13,480 If might did make right 39 00:03:14,230 --> 00:03:16,860 they'd sweep over the United States and take what we have. 40 00:03:17,530 --> 00:03:18,820 We have what they want. 41 00:03:20,900 --> 00:03:23,410 Who is they? His analogies may have been coarse 42 00:03:23,990 --> 00:03:28,120 but, stated in other words, the struggle was not really about communism 43 00:03:29,000 --> 00:03:32,960 but was between the 1st world and the 3rd world. 44 00:03:33,920 --> 00:03:36,210 Abandoning Kennedy's attempts at reform, 45 00:03:36,750 --> 00:03:38,710 Johnson made it clear in the new 46 00:03:39,460 --> 00:03:41,430 Mann doctrine that all Latin american 47 00:03:42,090 --> 00:03:43,970 countries would be judged on how they 48 00:03:44,090 --> 00:03:47,470 protected the $9 billion in US investments, 49 00:03:48,010 --> 00:03:49,770 not on the interests of their own people. 50 00:03:50,430 --> 00:03:53,520 The US would no longer discriminate against right-wing dictatorships 51 00:03:53,940 --> 00:03:57,320 and regarded military aid as a wiser investment than 52 00:03:57,650 --> 00:03:59,320 Kennedy's economic aid. 53 00:04:00,490 --> 00:04:02,150 The 5th largest country in the world, 54 00:04:03,030 --> 00:04:06,530 resource-rich Brazil, would be the first to suffer. 55 00:04:08,490 --> 00:04:13,080 in 1964 new democratically elected president Joao Goulart 56 00:04:13,420 --> 00:04:15,170 implemented land reform and 57 00:04:15,710 --> 00:04:17,250 sought controls on foreign capital. 58 00:04:17,790 --> 00:04:21,090 Recognizing Cuba was the last nail in his coffin. 59 00:04:21,630 --> 00:04:23,930 Castro's example could not be emulated. 60 00:04:24,550 --> 00:04:26,430 Johnson sharply reduced US aid. 61 00:04:26,970 --> 00:04:28,180 Inflation sky-rocketed. 62 00:04:28,930 --> 00:04:34,310 The CIA financed large anti-government rallies and the US administration prodded 63 00:04:34,730 --> 00:04:36,810 right-wing officers to overthrow the government. 64 00:04:37,480 --> 00:04:41,280 Within a month, the new regime arrested 50,000 people. 65 00:04:41,860 --> 00:04:42,940 Torture was instituent. 66 00:04:43,490 --> 00:04:46,990 In the next 6 years, $2 billion in US aid flowed into Brazil 67 00:04:47,620 --> 00:04:49,790 and an even more repressive military regime 68 00:04:50,330 --> 00:04:52,410 ruled for the next 20 years, worsening 69 00:04:53,080 --> 00:04:56,670 an already large gap between rich and poor. 70 00:04:57,130 --> 00:04:59,750 The dominoes, in this case the democracies, began falling 71 00:05:00,130 --> 00:05:02,170 once again across south america. 72 00:05:04,260 --> 00:05:09,100 in 1965, Johnson sent 23,000 troops into the Dominican Republic to 73 00:05:09,220 --> 00:05:12,520 crush a popular uprising, seeking to restore 74 00:05:13,480 --> 00:05:16,020 constitutional order after a military coup. 75 00:05:16,560 --> 00:05:17,850 Johnson told his lawyer: 76 00:05:18,480 --> 00:05:20,770 There ain't no doubt about this being Castro now 77 00:05:21,320 --> 00:05:23,190 him moving other places in the hemisphere 78 00:05:23,740 --> 00:05:27,360 might be part of a whole communistic pattern tied in with Vietnam 79 00:05:29,450 --> 00:05:33,040 in Greece, the birthplace of democracy where the cold war 80 00:05:33,580 --> 00:05:37,830 had taken its baby steps and the US had supported a right-wing government 81 00:05:38,290 --> 00:05:41,460 for many years, a new yearning for democracy appeared certain to 82 00:05:42,210 --> 00:05:44,710 bring the veteran liberal George Papandreu 83 00:05:45,380 --> 00:05:46,680 back as prime minister. 84 00:05:53,720 --> 00:05:56,980 Johnson called in the Greek ambassador and actually said: 85 00:05:57,440 --> 00:06:01,820 Listen to me mr. ambassador, fuck your parliament and your constitution 86 00:06:02,770 --> 00:06:07,070 America is an elephant. Cyprus is a flea. Greece is a flea. 87 00:06:07,820 --> 00:06:10,240 If those two fleas continue itching the elephant 88 00:06:10,870 --> 00:06:12,620 they may just get whacked by the elephant's trunk. 89 00:06:13,160 --> 00:06:14,290 Whacked good. 90 00:06:17,660 --> 00:06:20,380 We pay a lot of good American dollars to the Greeks, mr. ambassador 91 00:06:20,960 --> 00:06:24,000 If your Prime Minister gives me talk about democracy, 92 00:06:24,880 --> 00:06:29,800 he, his parliament and his constitution may not last very long. 93 00:06:31,010 --> 00:06:32,220 In fact, it didn't. 94 00:06:32,640 --> 00:06:36,390 The military junta seized power in 1967, banning 95 00:06:37,020 --> 00:06:39,100 mini skirts, long hair and foreign newspapers 96 00:06:39,770 --> 00:06:42,480 making church attendence compulsory while engaging in 97 00:06:42,940 --> 00:06:46,530 numerous incidents of sexually oriented torture and cruelty. 98 00:06:46,650 --> 00:06:48,610 Its new prime minister, who had been a captain 99 00:06:49,150 --> 00:06:51,490 in a Nazi security battalion tracking down 100 00:06:51,910 --> 00:06:55,080 Greek resistance fighters, became the first CIA agent 101 00:06:55,950 --> 00:06:59,040 to become the premier of a European country. 102 00:06:59,870 --> 00:07:04,130 But it was Asia that posed the greatest resistance to US goals 103 00:07:04,710 --> 00:07:08,760 Aside from Japan which was becoming a prosperous client state 104 00:07:09,380 --> 00:07:13,970 red China exploded its first atomic bomb in Oct. of '64 105 00:07:14,640 --> 00:07:16,510 catching Washington totally off-guard. 106 00:07:19,350 --> 00:07:24,270 in Indonesia, sitting astride southeast Asia's principal sea lanes, where 107 00:07:25,020 --> 00:07:29,740 more than 3 million members made its communist party the 3rd largest 108 00:07:30,200 --> 00:07:34,780 in the world behind the Soviets and Chinese, Sukarno having 109 00:07:35,200 --> 00:07:39,910 survived repeated US attempts to remove him further irritated the US 110 00:07:40,460 --> 00:07:43,210 by declaring he would test an atomic bomb 111 00:07:43,750 --> 00:07:45,920 but, he was denied help from China 112 00:07:46,590 --> 00:07:50,090 and when he recognized north Vietnam and then expropriated 113 00:07:50,420 --> 00:07:54,260 US rubber plantations and threatened to nationalize US oil companies 114 00:07:54,890 --> 00:07:57,310 Lyndon Johnson struck hard. 115 00:07:58,060 --> 00:08:01,140 Almost half the officer corps had received some US training 116 00:08:01,560 --> 00:08:04,270 and in Oct '65 with CIA support 117 00:08:04,940 --> 00:08:07,230 general Suharto led the army in 118 00:08:07,770 --> 00:08:09,650 crushing Sukarno's supporters. 119 00:08:10,110 --> 00:08:14,610 In the following months, Suharto's militias and civilian mobs went from 120 00:08:15,030 --> 00:08:18,740 house to house killing a half million to a million suspected 121 00:08:19,080 --> 00:08:20,500 communists and their families. 122 00:08:20,830 --> 00:08:24,330 US, british and australian intell. provided thousands of names of 123 00:08:24,750 --> 00:08:26,840 suspected communists to the army. 124 00:08:27,920 --> 00:08:32,300 Sukarno was forced out finally in 1967 and replaced by 125 00:08:32,970 --> 00:08:36,890 gen. Suharto who enriched himself, his family, cronies, 126 00:08:37,350 --> 00:08:42,810 the Indonesian military and US corp.s for decades until he was overthrown 127 00:08:43,480 --> 00:08:47,060 by the people led by student activists in 1998. 128 00:08:47,730 --> 00:08:52,320 In 1968, the CIA acknowledged the Indonesian massacre ranked 129 00:08:52,350 --> 00:08:55,820 as one of worst mass murders in the 20th century. 130 00:08:56,780 --> 00:09:00,540 President Kennedy's national security advisor McGeorge Bundy 131 00:09:01,080 --> 00:09:04,580 in later crticizing our Vietnam war policy wrote that 132 00:09:04,790 --> 00:09:07,880 Indonesia was the true breaking point in Asia, 133 00:09:08,420 --> 00:09:12,920 far more important to our goals than Vietnam which was, he said, unnecessary. 134 00:09:13,670 --> 00:09:18,680 Yet now in history, even Indonesia's blood bath pales in comparison to 135 00:09:19,350 --> 00:09:21,640 what the US inflicted on Vietnam. 136 00:09:23,850 --> 00:09:27,600 Johnson and his advisors understood very little about Vietnam's history 137 00:09:28,480 --> 00:09:32,480 and its strong resistance to Chinese and French invasions over the centuries. 138 00:09:33,070 --> 00:09:36,570 They totally underestimated the nationalist aspect of Ho Chi Minh's 139 00:09:37,200 --> 00:09:39,950 movement and assumed that if they wreaked enough havoc and 140 00:09:40,490 --> 00:09:42,450 killed enough people the Vietnamese would submit. 141 00:09:42,990 --> 00:09:47,620 Within 2 months of JFK's death in Jan. of '64 Johnson and McNamara 142 00:09:48,250 --> 00:09:51,420 escalated covert military activities against north Vietnam. 143 00:09:52,210 --> 00:09:54,170 Dropping intelligence and commando teams 144 00:09:55,130 --> 00:09:57,550 to destroy bridges, railways and costal installations 145 00:09:58,430 --> 00:10:01,600 kidnapping north Vietnamese and bombing border villages. 146 00:10:02,680 --> 00:10:05,310 Johnson was pathological in his ability to lie. 147 00:10:05,980 --> 00:10:10,150 As with the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in 2003, 148 00:10:10,560 --> 00:10:16,030 it would take years for the american people to discover the false origins of the Vietnam war. 149 00:10:16,820 --> 00:10:20,740 In august '64 Johnson and McNamara used a fabricated incident in 150 00:10:21,280 --> 00:10:25,450 north Vietnam's Gulf of Tonkin as an excuse to further escalate the war. 151 00:10:26,200 --> 00:10:29,920 Johnson rushed the congress to authorize direct US military action. 152 00:10:30,460 --> 00:10:33,420 The media echoed the line that a US ship had been attacked 153 00:10:34,210 --> 00:10:38,470 and the House after 40 min.s of debate passed a war resolution 154 00:10:41,300 --> 00:10:43,180 in the Senate, it was 88-2 155 00:10:43,810 --> 00:10:46,430 A few days later Johnson told his undersecretary of State 156 00:10:46,890 --> 00:10:50,810 Hell, those dumb, stupid sailors were just shooting at flying fish! 157 00:10:51,480 --> 00:10:54,860 ... and people remember what this resolution really is, 158 00:10:55,610 --> 00:10:57,690 it's a resolution which seeks to give 159 00:10:58,570 --> 00:11:01,200 the president in US the power to make war 160 00:11:02,070 --> 00:11:03,740 without a declaration of war. 161 00:11:07,660 --> 00:11:09,750 In the election of 1964, Johnson 162 00:11:10,620 --> 00:11:12,920 crushed Arizona senator Barry Goldwater 163 00:11:13,670 --> 00:11:16,210 who threatened to use nuclear weapons in Vietnam. 164 00:11:22,760 --> 00:11:24,300 These are the stakes. 165 00:11:25,050 --> 00:11:28,520 We must either love each other, or we must die. 166 00:11:32,230 --> 00:11:34,730 The stakes are too high for you to stay home. 167 00:11:35,270 --> 00:11:37,230 It was built as a landslide for peace. 168 00:11:38,360 --> 00:11:42,280 But following the election Johnson began a steady process of escalation 169 00:11:43,160 --> 00:11:45,870 sharply expanding the free firezones in which 170 00:11:46,660 --> 00:11:48,290 anything that moved was considered 171 00:11:49,080 --> 00:11:50,500 a legitimate target. 172 00:11:54,750 --> 00:11:59,130 The US arsenal of accepted weapons grew to include napalm, cluster bombs and 173 00:11:59,550 --> 00:12:02,970 white phosphorus which burned from the skins right through to the bone 174 00:12:03,380 --> 00:12:04,800 causing horrific deaths. 175 00:12:09,180 --> 00:12:10,390 Do you smell that? What? 176 00:12:11,810 --> 00:12:15,520 Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. 177 00:12:20,900 --> 00:12:22,650 I love the smell of napalm in the morning. 178 00:12:24,610 --> 00:12:27,120 Johnson's lies about his plans snowballed 179 00:12:27,990 --> 00:12:33,460 and by july of '65 he'd sent in 75,000 combat troops to Vietnam 180 00:12:34,250 --> 00:12:36,750 more than half a million by the end of '67 181 00:12:37,420 --> 00:12:43,510 The monthly draft reached 35,000 men as the US set out to find Vietnam's breaking point. 182 00:12:44,180 --> 00:12:48,890 Yet, when his Joint Chiefs of Staff at a meeting asked for more fire power or 183 00:12:49,640 --> 00:12:54,690 an all-out war, a witness recalled Johnson started screaming obscenities: 184 00:12:55,350 --> 00:12:59,070 Image that you're me, that you're the president of the US 185 00:12:59,610 --> 00:13:04,320 and five incompetents come into your office and try to talk you into starting WW3. 186 00:13:04,860 --> 00:13:06,160 The risk is just too high. 187 00:13:06,740 --> 00:13:09,450 How can you fucking assholes ignore what China might do? 188 00:13:09,990 --> 00:13:12,830 You just contaminated my office, you filthy shitheads! 189 00:13:13,370 --> 00:13:15,370 Get the hell out of here right now! 190 00:13:16,040 --> 00:13:17,130 The generals got out. 191 00:13:17,750 --> 00:13:22,260 And after a pause, Johnson steadily increased the bombing of north Vietnam 192 00:13:23,130 --> 00:13:26,180 In his inimitable way he explained his strategy: 193 00:13:27,050 --> 00:13:29,350 I'm going up her leg an inch at a time. 194 00:13:30,140 --> 00:13:32,640 I'll get to the snatch before they know what's happening. 195 00:13:33,180 --> 00:13:39,860 The US dropped 3 times as many bombs on tiny Vietnam as it did in all of WW2. 196 00:13:40,940 --> 00:13:45,990 On the ground in a policy sanctioned by Kennedy millions of peasants, some say 5 197 00:13:46,860 --> 00:13:51,450 some 7, were forced out of villages and resettled in barbwired camps. 198 00:13:52,540 --> 00:13:56,500 Tens of thousands of supposed communists were assasinated as 199 00:13:56,910 --> 00:14:01,170 part of a Phoenix program, but it did little to slow the resistance movement. 200 00:14:02,500 --> 00:14:07,550 The murder of civilians became commonplace as the US military leadership exaggerated 201 00:14:08,090 --> 00:14:12,010 body counts to tell the public that the communists were on their last legs 202 00:14:12,560 --> 00:14:14,770 while still asking for more and more troops. 203 00:14:15,850 --> 00:14:18,730 Five south Vietnamese governments came and went, the last 204 00:14:19,270 --> 00:14:21,610 clinging to power through massive corruption. 205 00:14:27,150 --> 00:14:30,870 Anti-war demonstrators protest US involvement in the Vietnam war 206 00:14:31,410 --> 00:14:33,620 in mass marches, rallies and demonstrations. 207 00:14:34,160 --> 00:14:37,870 America's college campuses began to buzz with activists. 208 00:14:38,410 --> 00:14:42,790 In oct. '67 one of the first violent confrontations took place at the 209 00:14:43,250 --> 00:14:45,000 university of Wisconsin in Madison. 210 00:14:46,960 --> 00:14:50,010 Johnson, convinced the communists were behind the anti-war movement, 211 00:14:50,890 --> 00:14:54,390 ordered the CIA to uncover proof with massive surveillence and 212 00:14:55,060 --> 00:14:56,810 other information gathering efforts. 213 00:14:57,680 --> 00:15:04,020 Codenamed Chaos, the CIA's illegal domestic operations lasted almost 7 years 214 00:15:04,900 --> 00:15:09,740 compiling a computer index of 300,000 citizens and organizations 215 00:15:10,150 --> 00:15:13,200 and extensive files on more than 7,000 individuals, 216 00:15:14,080 --> 00:15:16,910 but failed to prove communist involvement. 217 00:15:17,580 --> 00:15:21,290 Among the FBI's principal targets was the Nobel peace prize winner 218 00:15:21,750 --> 00:15:24,040 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 219 00:15:24,460 --> 00:15:25,460 Welcome in Mr. King 220 00:15:26,670 --> 00:15:28,840 I'm here to find out why you've been 221 00:15:29,170 --> 00:15:30,380 tapping my telephones 222 00:15:30,690 --> 00:15:33,190 About a year ago you were told some of your advisors 223 00:15:33,210 --> 00:15:34,000 had communist connection, 224 00:15:34,350 --> 00:15:35,360 but you wouldn't break with them. 225 00:15:35,610 --> 00:15:40,400 Would that ... your planting microphones in hotel rooms I occupied during my travels? 226 00:15:41,520 --> 00:15:45,690 the same procedure on 14 others the panthers, the muslims, the clan 227 00:15:46,770 --> 00:15:50,610 the damage is done mr. Hoover but I might be worthwhile for 228 00:15:50,950 --> 00:15:54,570 the people to know how America's number 1 blackmailer operates 229 00:15:54,990 --> 00:15:56,660 don't give me all the credit. 230 00:15:57,620 --> 00:16:00,790 Black America was in a state of near rebellion. 231 00:16:01,790 --> 00:16:07,670 The summer of '67 surpassed all previous ones with 75 major riots 232 00:16:08,460 --> 00:16:12,930 many lasting 2 days or more. National guard troops were called in 233 00:16:13,590 --> 00:16:17,430 and, with police, killed 26 blacks in Newark and 43 in Detroit. 234 00:16:25,060 --> 00:16:31,940 A Ramparts magazine march 1967 exposé revealed that the CIA had been funding 235 00:16:32,740 --> 00:16:34,280 the National Student Association. 236 00:16:34,820 --> 00:16:39,410 Other liberal groups were exposed as agency fronts with CIA money going 237 00:16:40,290 --> 00:16:44,750 to anti-communist professors, journalists, aid workers, missionaries, labor leaders 238 00:16:45,630 --> 00:16:49,050 and civil rights activists who did the agency's dirty work. 239 00:16:50,210 --> 00:16:55,930 Among the discredited were the Ford foundation, RadioFreeEurope, RadioLiberty 240 00:16:56,680 --> 00:16:58,430 and Congress for Cultural Freedom. 241 00:16:59,100 --> 00:17:03,350 even McNamara with his characteristic rationality was having doubts. 242 00:17:05,560 --> 00:17:09,480 In oct. of '67 100,000 people rallied in Washingtion. 243 00:17:10,230 --> 00:17:11,980 Half marched to the Pentagon. 244 00:17:12,780 --> 00:17:14,950 Armed infantry prevented them from reaching it. 245 00:17:15,530 --> 00:17:19,240 McNamara watched alone from a command post on the roof 246 00:17:19,700 --> 00:17:24,290 listening to chants of "Hey, hey, LBJ how many kids did you kill today?" 247 00:17:25,040 --> 00:17:28,420 Now isolated within the establishment McNamara despaired. 248 00:17:29,210 --> 00:17:31,840 Rumors of a possible mental collapse reached Johnson: 249 00:17:33,010 --> 00:17:35,090 We can't afford to have another forestall 250 00:17:36,090 --> 00:17:38,180 When McNamara argued that more bombing would not work 251 00:17:38,800 --> 00:17:42,970 Johnson was livid, he demanded loyalty, saying of another aide: 252 00:17:43,720 --> 00:17:49,310 I don’t want loyalty. I want loyalty! I want him to kiss my ass in Macy’s window 253 00:17:50,190 --> 00:17:52,280 in high noon and tell me it smells like roses. 254 00:17:52,940 --> 00:17:54,780 I want his pecker in my pocket. 255 00:17:55,440 --> 00:17:59,070 Johnson arranged for McNamara's ouster to become president of the 256 00:17:59,700 --> 00:18:01,030 World Bank. 257 00:18:01,660 --> 00:18:05,960 In his last cabinet meeting an aide reported that McNamara finally broke down: 258 00:18:07,040 --> 00:18:10,330 the goddamn bombing campaign, it's done nothing. They've dropped 259 00:18:10,750 --> 00:18:14,460 more bombs in all of Europe in all of WW2 and it hasn't done 260 00:18:14,800 --> 00:18:16,010 a fucking thing. 261 00:18:16,880 --> 00:18:20,390 1968 was an extraordinary year of change. 262 00:18:20,930 --> 00:18:23,430 In jan. on the same day north vietnamese 263 00:18:23,890 --> 00:18:26,520 and vietkong forces unleashed a shock attack 264 00:18:26,930 --> 00:18:30,230 on most of Vietnam's major cities and provincial capitals. 265 00:18:30,900 --> 00:18:34,610 The attacks were ultimately repelled with great losses to the Vietnamese 266 00:18:35,280 --> 00:18:37,570 but the mood in Washington was despair. 267 00:18:38,320 --> 00:18:41,700 A bipartisan group of elder statesmen reassessed the situation: 268 00:18:42,580 --> 00:18:44,330 It was time to get out. 269 00:18:45,660 --> 00:18:49,710 Lyndon Johnson, his enormous ego deeply wounded by the doubts of 270 00:18:50,250 --> 00:18:54,500 his leadership, besieged by enemies internal and external, his popularity 271 00:18:55,050 --> 00:19:00,640 plummeting, announced shockingly in march '68 that he would not run 272 00:19:01,300 --> 00:19:02,600 for a second term. 273 00:19:03,260 --> 00:19:10,600 I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party for 274 00:19:11,020 --> 00:19:12,650 another term as your president. 275 00:19:13,110 --> 00:19:15,610 The country was stunned. The leader of their war effort was 276 00:19:15,940 --> 00:19:19,990 giving up. To those against the war this was a great victory. But to 277 00:19:20,660 --> 00:19:25,120 many americans as well as neutral countries and allies alike the US now 278 00:19:25,700 --> 00:19:30,040 appeared as a rudderless, immoral country, an emperor without clause 279 00:19:30,830 --> 00:19:33,330 the Chinese said "a paper tiger". 280 00:19:34,670 --> 00:19:39,340 Wrecked by inner demons, Johnson allowed his heart-felt dream of being a great social 281 00:19:39,670 --> 00:19:43,180 reformer to be buried in the killing flelds of Vietnam. 282 00:19:44,300 --> 00:19:47,100 He lamented later in the decade to a historian: 283 00:19:47,680 --> 00:19:51,730 Losing the great society was a terrible thought, but not so terrible 284 00:19:52,350 --> 00:19:57,860 as the thought of being responsible for America's losing a war to the communists. 285 00:19:58,400 --> 00:20:00,570 Nothing could possibly be worse than that. 286 00:20:01,240 --> 00:20:06,910 He was a man, a potential giant, who in denying his compassion suffered from 287 00:20:07,450 --> 00:20:10,510 a truly American obsession: the fear of weakness. 288 00:20:13,580 --> 00:20:18,090 Hoover's FBI was doing everything it could to disrupt the anti-war movement 289 00:20:18,500 --> 00:20:21,880 as it had done for years to the civil rights movement. 290 00:20:22,630 --> 00:20:26,260 Hundreds of agents infiltrated new left organizations. 291 00:20:27,010 --> 00:20:32,940 FBI and CIA news flaks went to great lengths to marginilize the war's critics 292 00:20:33,600 --> 00:20:35,230 and impune their patriotism. 293 00:20:35,690 --> 00:20:39,610 Hoover was especially worried the antiwar protest would merge with 294 00:20:40,070 --> 00:20:41,820 the black liberation struggle, 295 00:20:42,360 --> 00:20:47,160 as a disproportionate number of black soldiers died on front lines. 296 00:20:48,160 --> 00:20:51,540 Forever convinced that communists were behind the civil rights movement 297 00:20:52,290 --> 00:20:54,920 Hoover pursued Martin Luther King with a vengeance 298 00:20:55,460 --> 00:20:57,000 doing nothing to protect him, 299 00:20:57,460 --> 00:20:59,840 even encouraging him to commit suicide 300 00:21:00,500 --> 00:21:03,010 in one notorious anonymous hatefilled letter 301 00:21:03,590 --> 00:21:07,510 until the moment King himself was shot and killed by another 302 00:21:08,260 --> 00:21:12,980 supposedly lone nut assasin in April of '68. 303 00:21:13,640 --> 00:21:16,230 Rage riots once more erupted across America. 304 00:21:18,440 --> 00:21:20,190 The Berrigan brothers who were priests 305 00:21:20,860 --> 00:21:22,820 went to jail for burning draft files. 306 00:21:23,150 --> 00:21:25,860 Benjamin Spock, the world's most prominent pediatrician 307 00:21:26,660 --> 00:21:30,030 W. Sloane Coffin, a Yale university chaplin 308 00:21:30,580 --> 00:21:32,790 Jane Fonda, a young movie star 309 00:21:33,330 --> 00:21:35,830 and heavy weight boxing idol Muhammed Ali 310 00:21:36,370 --> 00:21:37,580 were all speaking up: 311 00:21:37,920 --> 00:21:41,420 I ain't going no 10,000 miles to help murder and kill other poor people 312 00:21:42,170 --> 00:21:44,920 if I'm gonna die I'll die right now right here fighting you 313 00:21:45,340 --> 00:21:48,640 you my enemy, not no chinese no vietkong no japanese, 314 00:21:49,050 --> 00:21:52,770 you my opposer when I want freedom you my opposer when I want justice 315 00:21:53,100 --> 00:21:56,060 you my opposer when I want equality you want me to go somewhere and 316 00:21:56,520 --> 00:21:58,810 fight for you, you won't even stand up for me right here in America 317 00:21:59,440 --> 00:22:04,690 I'm announcing today my candidancy for the presidency of the US 318 00:22:05,030 --> 00:22:09,740 Throughout America in 1968 a newly charismatic Robert Kennedy 319 00:22:10,280 --> 00:22:13,790 captured the imagination of young and old tired of the war. 320 00:22:14,410 --> 00:22:18,710 Finishing his brother's legacy, he was calling for a new America, 321 00:22:19,120 --> 00:22:23,090 white, black, brown, it didn't matter his eyes had ... 322 00:22:23,840 --> 00:22:27,760 once more the fire of change and reform was afoot: 323 00:22:28,300 --> 00:22:30,180 The country wants to move in a different direction. 324 00:22:30,590 --> 00:22:32,810 We want to deal with our own problems within our own country 325 00:22:33,140 --> 00:22:35,100 and we want peace in Vietnam. 326 00:22:35,520 --> 00:22:40,690 Johnson, secretly hoping to be a last minute choice for president if called, 327 00:22:41,230 --> 00:22:43,270 feared him as much as any man. 328 00:22:44,070 --> 00:22:48,570 But the fates were cruel beyond imagining to the Kennedy brothers, as on this 329 00:22:49,200 --> 00:22:54,030 hot june night of his victory in the california primary he was brutally 330 00:22:54,450 --> 00:22:58,290 gunned down in another strange hard to believe set of circumstances 331 00:22:58,710 --> 00:23:02,670 by a supposedly deranged young Palestinian. 332 00:23:06,260 --> 00:23:10,630 This was a serious and devastating blow to the heart of the reform movement. 333 00:23:11,090 --> 00:23:16,100 Post-war baby boomers had begun flooding college campuses in 1964 334 00:23:16,770 --> 00:23:21,480 imbued with idealism, dismissive of cold war ideology, upset with 335 00:23:22,020 --> 00:23:26,480 their parents' conformist values and fears, their protests spread worldwide. 336 00:23:27,150 --> 00:23:30,110 Students and workers convulsed industrial nations. 337 00:23:30,650 --> 00:23:36,240 Confrontations shook Prague, Tokyo, west Berlin, Rome and Mexico City where 338 00:23:36,660 --> 00:23:39,750 soldiers massacred hundreds of protesting students. 339 00:23:40,160 --> 00:23:43,130 In the summer of '68 at the democratic convention 340 00:23:43,670 --> 00:23:48,590 10,000 protesters were manhandled along with the media by Chicago police. 341 00:23:50,340 --> 00:23:55,180 TV was now presenting a reality the public had never seen before. 342 00:23:55,930 --> 00:24:00,730 American authority figures acting as aggressors both at home and abroad. 343 00:24:01,520 --> 00:24:04,360 It seemed that the country was coming apart. 344 00:24:04,770 --> 00:24:09,940 People spoke of the gulf between the antiwar left and prowar right as a 345 00:24:10,490 --> 00:24:14,530 civil war like the one that had ripped the country apart over 100 years earlier. 346 00:24:18,330 --> 00:24:22,250 It was in the midst of this terrifying turmoil that the anticommunist 347 00:24:22,920 --> 00:24:27,630 hardliner Richard Nixon, so bitterly denied the presidency by John Kennedy 348 00:24:28,050 --> 00:24:34,840 in 1960, found his life's destiny. But he almost lost, stunningly in this climate. 349 00:24:35,390 --> 00:24:37,930 The right-wing segregationist Alabama governor 350 00:24:38,560 --> 00:24:40,640 George Wallace running with the retired general 351 00:24:41,100 --> 00:24:46,650 Curtis Lemay was pulling 21% and threatening Nixon's chances for victory 352 00:24:47,190 --> 00:24:48,940 barely a month before the election: 353 00:24:49,270 --> 00:24:51,030 As far as this problem of law-and-order is 354 00:24:51,570 --> 00:24:53,320 concerned, I'm the only one of the candidates 355 00:24:53,990 --> 00:24:56,620 who has laid out a precise program for 356 00:24:56,740 --> 00:25:01,040 stopping the rise in crime and for reestablishing freedom from fear. 357 00:25:01,580 --> 00:25:06,380 Riding the resentment of what he later called the 'silent majority', Nixon's 358 00:25:06,920 --> 00:25:11,630 law-and-order message resonated with white voters scared of ghetto rebellions 359 00:25:12,170 --> 00:25:14,630 campus disruptions and rising crime 360 00:25:15,300 --> 00:25:19,100 and it eked out the narrowest of victories. 361 00:25:22,520 --> 00:25:25,560 America's in trouble today not because our people have failed 362 00:25:26,440 --> 00:25:29,400 but because our leaders have failed, and what America need's 363 00:25:30,150 --> 00:25:32,690 our leaders to match the greatness of our people. 364 00:25:35,530 --> 00:25:39,370 Nixon was also claiming a secret plan to end the war in Vietnam 365 00:25:40,120 --> 00:25:42,200 refusing to divulge its details. 366 00:25:43,290 --> 00:25:48,630 What Richard Nixon actually delivered to the country was not peace, law or order 367 00:25:49,080 --> 00:25:52,050 but war, chaos and disorder 368 00:25:52,590 --> 00:25:55,970 as the only president to resign his office in disgrace. 369 00:25:57,630 --> 00:26:02,640 Nixon and his national security advisor and later secretary of state Henry Kissinger 370 00:26:03,100 --> 00:26:06,390 actually expanded the war which lasted 7 more years. 371 00:26:07,140 --> 00:26:11,520 Half the total of US casualties from the war occurred under Nixon. 372 00:26:12,400 --> 00:26:13,360 Kissinger later said: 373 00:26:13,820 --> 00:26:17,530 I refuse to believe that a little 4th rate power like north Vietnam 374 00:26:17,950 --> 00:26:19,700 does not have a breaking point. 375 00:26:20,820 --> 00:26:22,990 And he and Nixon set out to find it. 376 00:26:23,660 --> 00:26:27,920 Nixon's secret plan to end the war turned out to be withdrawing US forces 377 00:26:28,670 --> 00:26:32,840 starting April '69 and replacing them with US trained and equipped Vietnamese 378 00:26:33,710 --> 00:26:39,720 while systematically and ruthlessly bombing north and south Vietnam into submission. 379 00:26:40,390 --> 00:26:43,680 Drawing parallels with Eisenhower's nuclear threats in Korea 380 00:26:44,100 --> 00:26:47,480 which, he said, ended that war, Nixon boasted to an aide: 381 00:26:48,060 --> 00:26:51,770 I call it the Mad Man theory. We'll slip the word to them that 382 00:26:52,440 --> 00:26:56,570 Nixon is obsessed about the communists we can't restrain him when he's angry 383 00:26:57,110 --> 00:26:59,070 he has his hand on the nuclear button 384 00:26:59,530 --> 00:27:02,700 Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days, begging for peace. 385 00:27:04,450 --> 00:27:08,910 Two months into office Nixon began a secret bombing campaign inside 386 00:27:09,370 --> 00:27:14,290 neighboring Cambodia to destroy north Vietnamese military sanctuaries. 387 00:27:15,170 --> 00:27:17,670 He took extraordinary measures to hide it from Congress. 388 00:27:18,340 --> 00:27:20,090 Even the crew members involved believed 389 00:27:20,840 --> 00:27:22,800 they were hitting targets in south Vietnam. 390 00:27:24,560 --> 00:27:28,390 Though most americans remained in the dark about the country they were invading 391 00:27:29,060 --> 00:27:31,150 the truth occasionally seeped out, as 392 00:27:31,900 --> 00:27:36,070 when freelance journalist S. Hersh in nov. 1969 393 00:27:36,820 --> 00:27:41,070 broke the news that a year and a half earlier US forces had massacred up to 394 00:27:41,740 --> 00:27:44,370 500 civilians in the village of My Lai 395 00:27:44,910 --> 00:27:48,080 nicknamed Pinkville for its strong enemy sympathies. 396 00:27:49,830 --> 00:27:53,540 Babies, pregnant women and old people had been scalped and mutilated 397 00:27:54,080 --> 00:27:56,840 as command of the situation broke down. 398 00:27:57,710 --> 00:28:01,880 Not a single shot had been clearly fired at US forces. 399 00:28:02,300 --> 00:28:05,140 Indicative of the growing dehumanization of this time, and 400 00:28:05,680 --> 00:28:09,180 resembling US attitudes towards the Japanese in WW2 401 00:28:09,640 --> 00:28:15,520 65% of Americans told pollsters they were not bothered by the news of massacre 402 00:28:16,520 --> 00:28:20,900 The only officer found guilty was given a partial pardon by Nixon 403 00:28:21,780 --> 00:28:24,280 public opinion strongly in favor. 404 00:28:25,950 --> 00:28:28,160 There were few limits to Nixon's thinking 405 00:28:28,580 --> 00:28:31,330 he and Kissinger planned for a savage attack 406 00:28:31,750 --> 00:28:35,920 possibly using nuclear weapons in the fall of 1969 407 00:28:36,340 --> 00:28:41,470 but were thwarted when millions parti- cipated nationwide in an Oct. moratorium 408 00:28:42,050 --> 00:28:46,640 and 3/4 million protesters flocked to Washington in november 409 00:28:47,050 --> 00:28:51,230 Still, Nixon recklessly put the military on secret alert 410 00:28:51,680 --> 00:28:57,440 flying 18 nuclear armed B-52s over the polar ice cap towards the Soviet union 411 00:28:57,980 --> 00:29:02,490 trying to force them, once again unsuccessfully, to pressure the 412 00:29:02,900 --> 00:29:04,780 north Vietnamese to peace terms. 413 00:29:06,240 --> 00:29:11,370 Le Duan took over the leadership when Ho Chi Minh died in 1969 414 00:29:11,910 --> 00:29:15,620 later told a visiting journalist that the US had threatened to use nuclear weapons 415 00:29:16,210 --> 00:29:18,380 on 13 different occasions. 416 00:29:18,920 --> 00:29:21,340 But that had not changed their policies. 417 00:29:22,420 --> 00:29:25,260 Although they would pay a terrible price for their independence 418 00:29:26,260 --> 00:29:30,850 the Vietnamese understood a basic truth the american leaders never grasped 419 00:29:31,600 --> 00:29:34,230 the Vietnamese foreign minister later said 420 00:29:34,980 --> 00:29:38,060 we knew that they could not stay in Vietnam forever, 421 00:29:38,610 --> 00:29:40,900 but Vietnam must stay in Vietnam forever. 422 00:29:42,440 --> 00:29:46,360 The Vietnam war was about independence and time 423 00:29:47,110 --> 00:29:49,200 not territory or body counts. 424 00:29:49,990 --> 00:29:52,290 America's 6th president J. Quincy Adams 425 00:29:53,040 --> 00:29:54,660 a century before had warned that 426 00:29:55,330 --> 00:29:56,670 a nation should not go abroad, 427 00:29:59,630 --> 00:30:02,670 It was here in Vietnam that the US ran into 428 00:30:03,130 --> 00:30:06,630 its ultimate monster, an enemy that could not be defeated because 429 00:30:07,300 --> 00:30:11,760 they were fighting to protect their homeland against foreign invaders. 430 00:30:12,310 --> 00:30:16,020 The US would win every major battle, but it never won the war. 431 00:30:17,020 --> 00:30:21,270 According to his lawyer John Dean and other insiders, Nixon was 432 00:30:21,610 --> 00:30:25,650 actually obsessed with war protesters and often adjusted his ... 433 00:30:26,450 --> 00:30:28,280 to diminish their outrage 434 00:30:29,030 --> 00:30:32,990 but now stilling himself by drinking heavily and watching the movie Patton 435 00:30:33,870 --> 00:30:34,950 over and over again. 436 00:30:36,000 --> 00:30:37,410 Americans love a winner 437 00:30:38,920 --> 00:30:40,750 and will not tolerate a loser. 438 00:30:41,840 --> 00:30:44,170 Americans play to win all the time 439 00:30:44,420 --> 00:30:45,710 I wouldn't give a hoot and hell for 440 00:30:46,130 --> 00:30:48,470 a man who lost and laughed. 441 00:30:49,720 --> 00:30:54,850 That's why americans have never lost and will never lose a war. 442 00:30:55,720 --> 00:31:01,650 Because the very thought of losing is hateful to americans. 443 00:31:02,400 --> 00:31:07,990 Nixon in april 1970 announced a joint US-south Vietnamese ground invasion 444 00:31:08,320 --> 00:31:11,160 of Cambodia to destroy bases along the border. 445 00:31:12,780 --> 00:31:16,620 6 students were shot and killed by the national guards at Jackson State 446 00:31:16,950 --> 00:31:19,250 in Missisippi and Kent State in Ohio 447 00:31:19,790 --> 00:31:22,880 More than 400 campuses went on strike or shut down 448 00:31:23,630 --> 00:31:30,300 4 million students, 300,000 faculty members, 30 ROHC buildings burned or bombed 449 00:31:31,180 --> 00:31:35,970 more than 700 colleges experiencing some kind of protest activity 450 00:31:36,850 --> 00:31:38,730 Kissinger described Washington as a 451 00:31:45,070 --> 00:31:49,110 the airwar intensified. Nixon said in 1970: 452 00:31:49,650 --> 00:31:52,610 I want everything that can fly to go in there and crack the hell out 453 00:31:54,700 --> 00:31:57,740 sounding more like a gangster than a statesman, Kissinger conveyed the 454 00:31:58,080 --> 00:31:59,160 order to bomb 455 00:32:03,000 --> 00:32:08,000 words that could have been spoken by a defendant in the ... at Nuremberg 456 00:32:09,670 --> 00:32:13,930 When Nixon, after he resigned, was confronted with his law breaking he replied: 457 00:32:14,470 --> 00:32:17,310 when the president does it, that means it's not illegal. 458 00:32:18,310 --> 00:32:22,140 By this time, Cambodia had been subjected for 5 years to a 459 00:32:22,690 --> 00:32:25,980 brutal air bombardment and an escalating civil war that left 460 00:32:26,650 --> 00:32:30,780 100s of thousands of Cambodians, many of them civilians, dead. 461 00:32:33,320 --> 00:32:38,450 The communist rebels the Khmer Rouge used his atrocities to recruit angry peasants from 462 00:32:38,660 --> 00:32:41,830 the country side and grew exponentially during the bombing. 463 00:32:42,580 --> 00:32:48,630 They finally seized power in 1975 from a corrupt US backed military dictatorship 464 00:32:48,960 --> 00:32:51,880 and then unleashed new horrors on their own people. 465 00:32:52,970 --> 00:32:56,800 On top of the half million Cambodians killed in the US phase of the war 466 00:32:57,800 --> 00:33:01,850 1.5 million more perished during Pol Pot's monstrous regime. 467 00:33:02,600 --> 00:33:06,770 Perhaps 25% of Cambodia's population died during this period. 468 00:33:11,570 --> 00:33:13,110 Meanwhile in Vietnam 469 00:33:13,780 --> 00:33:18,490 many troops were making individual choices, whether to go into combat or not 470 00:33:19,370 --> 00:33:23,290 Recent surveys estimate that well over 50% of soldiers in Vietnam 471 00:33:23,830 --> 00:33:26,040 use marijuana. 472 00:33:48,730 --> 00:33:54,990 In a remarkable admission in 1971 the armed forces journal revealed that 473 00:33:55,400 --> 00:33:59,120 the conditions of the troops in Vietnam were only exceeded by the 474 00:33:59,570 --> 00:34:05,160 French army mutinies of 1917 and the collapse of the Russian army in 1917. 475 00:34:05,910 --> 00:34:07,540 Still, Nixon persisted. 476 00:34:08,210 --> 00:34:14,130 By bombing Cambodia and continuing the secret and crippling bombing of tiny Laos 477 00:34:15,010 --> 00:34:19,930 which was started in 1964, Nixon bombed north Vietnamese cities for the first time 478 00:34:20,350 --> 00:34:24,390 since '68. Civilian casualties soared. 479 00:34:26,020 --> 00:34:31,400 And after a landslide re-election over antiwar candidate George McGovern 480 00:34:31,770 --> 00:34:37,650 in 1972, Nixon unleashed a 12-day christmas bombing on the north 481 00:34:38,530 --> 00:34:39,950 the heaviest yet of the war. 482 00:34:41,280 --> 00:34:43,120 The outcry in the world was deafening. 483 00:34:44,540 --> 00:34:48,040 A peace agreement was concluded the next month in Paris 484 00:34:48,830 --> 00:34:53,750 it was essentially the same deal that had been offered to Johnson in '68 485 00:34:54,170 --> 00:34:58,220 and which Nixon had secretly undermined in order to win election. 486 00:34:59,760 --> 00:35:03,810 The US promised to pay the north 3.25 billion dollars in reparations 487 00:35:04,760 --> 00:35:06,170 but later reneged. 488 00:35:06,520 --> 00:35:10,900 Elections were promised, promptly, but south Vietnam dithered and delayed 489 00:35:11,230 --> 00:35:12,900 for the next year and a half. 490 00:35:13,230 --> 00:35:14,940 We today have concluded an agreement 491 00:35:15,820 --> 00:35:21,070 to end the war and bring peace with honor in Vietnam and in southeast Asia. 492 00:35:21,620 --> 00:35:26,450 Nixon brought home the last american combat troops in march '73. 493 00:35:27,330 --> 00:35:30,710 As it would decades later in Iraq and Afghanistan, 494 00:35:31,250 --> 00:35:35,840 the US invested huge amounts of money into training and equipping a corrupt 495 00:35:36,170 --> 00:35:38,800 south Vietnamese ally to fight for themselves. 496 00:35:39,880 --> 00:35:41,090 It did not work. 497 00:35:41,640 --> 00:35:44,050 Nor did Nixon's mad man thesis. 498 00:35:44,720 --> 00:35:49,390 In april '73 trying to buy time for the south Vietnamese army, he ordered the 499 00:35:49,730 --> 00:35:54,560 most intense bombing of the entire war of both north and south, but 500 00:35:54,980 --> 00:35:59,690 overwhelmed by Watergate revelations, he was forced to rescind the order. 501 00:36:01,780 --> 00:36:05,370 The war dragged on 2 more years until the south Vietnamese army 502 00:36:05,700 --> 00:36:07,580 simply collapsed and fled. 503 00:36:08,240 --> 00:36:12,170 The north Vietnamese forces overran Saigon in april '75. 504 00:36:12,920 --> 00:36:17,960 Disturbing images of fleeing civilians, deserting south Vietnamese soldiers, 505 00:36:18,380 --> 00:36:22,220 their officers a step ahead of them, and US embassy marines beating down 506 00:36:22,760 --> 00:36:29,430 deperate US connected Vietnamese trying to escape on the last helicopters off the embasy roof 507 00:36:30,430 --> 00:36:33,270 would remain indelibly imprinted in the american psyche. 508 00:36:34,150 --> 00:36:38,400 They also added fuel to the already angry hardliners who, like Nixon, 509 00:36:38,860 --> 00:36:42,450 contended that the media had sold out Vietnam. 510 00:36:43,110 --> 00:36:48,490 Nixon, meanwhile, caught at a web of crimes known as the Watergate Scandal 511 00:36:49,040 --> 00:36:53,830 paranoid over his domestic enemies and further revelations that would expose 512 00:36:54,370 --> 00:36:58,960 his illegalities on several fronts, grew increasingly erratic. 513 00:36:59,630 --> 00:37:04,760 His defense secretary instructed military leaders not to respond to Nixon's orders. 514 00:37:06,640 --> 00:37:09,600 The system was truly beginning to crack. 515 00:37:10,010 --> 00:37:12,640 I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow. 516 00:37:13,640 --> 00:37:19,320 Vice-president Ford will be sworn in as president at that hour in this office. 517 00:37:20,610 --> 00:37:22,820 Nixon, thus, avoided impeachment. 518 00:37:23,570 --> 00:37:28,620 But over 40 of his people were convicted of crimes, several of them going to jail. 519 00:37:29,490 --> 00:37:33,960 Nixon was pardoned by his newly appointed vice-president Gerald Ford. 520 00:37:35,500 --> 00:37:39,670 As the war, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon faded from american 521 00:37:40,000 --> 00:37:46,340 TV screens, trust between the presidency and the american people was betrayed. 522 00:37:47,090 --> 00:37:51,350 Kissinger, now promoted to secretary of state, came through unscathed. 523 00:37:51,890 --> 00:37:58,150 He and north Vietnam's Le Duc Tho were awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace prize. 524 00:37:59,110 --> 00:38:01,520 Knowing that the peace had not yet been achieved, 525 00:38:02,190 --> 00:38:05,900 Le Duc Tho had the grace to turn the prize down. 526 00:38:07,110 --> 00:38:11,160 The US licked its wounds, but few in power reflected on the deeper 527 00:38:11,450 --> 00:38:12,990 meaning of what had occurred. 528 00:38:13,330 --> 00:38:15,620 The Eisenhower dominoe theory proved to be a myth, 529 00:38:16,500 --> 00:38:18,790 the feared virus had not spread. 530 00:38:19,330 --> 00:38:24,510 Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia Taiwan, the Philippines, and 531 00:38:24,920 --> 00:38:30,930 most importantly Japan, all prospered and remained firmly in the western camp. 532 00:38:32,010 --> 00:38:37,060 Worried about US loss of prestige in Asia and clearly not having learned 533 00:38:37,390 --> 00:38:42,190 the lessons of supporting dictatorships, Nixon and Kissinger turned with fresh eyes 534 00:38:42,980 --> 00:38:46,360 to Latin America to reassert US power. 535 00:38:48,450 --> 00:38:53,240 Chile had survived as a model democracy since 1932. 536 00:38:54,120 --> 00:38:56,200 It would not survive Nixon and Kissinger. 537 00:38:56,750 --> 00:38:59,580 When socialist Salvador Allende won the election 538 00:38:59,920 --> 00:39:03,210 of 1970 promising to nationalize US companies 539 00:39:03,630 --> 00:39:07,590 like IT&T that essentially controlled the Chilean economy, 540 00:39:08,340 --> 00:39:13,260 Nixon told his CIA chief: make the economy scream. 541 00:39:14,140 --> 00:39:19,520 The IMF and the World Bank, with Robert McNamara at its helm, 542 00:39:19,940 --> 00:39:21,350 denied loans to the regime. 543 00:39:22,230 --> 00:39:27,690 The CIA funded opposition parties, pushed propaganda and disinformation, 544 00:39:28,150 --> 00:39:32,740 offered bribes, organized demonstrations and strikes against the government. 545 00:39:33,620 --> 00:39:35,910 And finally condoned the murderer of 546 00:39:36,660 --> 00:39:39,080 the most powerful Chilean general 547 00:39:39,410 --> 00:39:41,830 who'd vowed to defend democracy. 548 00:39:42,130 --> 00:39:46,840 When Salvador Allende took his case against the US to a pack general assembly 549 00:39:47,300 --> 00:39:52,220 at the UN in december '72, he was cheered wildly, but 550 00:39:52,550 --> 00:39:55,180 may well have signed his death warrant: 551 00:39:56,140 --> 00:40:00,980 We find ourselves opposed by forces that operate in the shadows without a flag 552 00:40:01,390 --> 00:40:04,360 with powerful weapons from positions of great influence. 553 00:40:05,110 --> 00:40:08,820 We're potentially rich countries, yet we live in poverty. 554 00:40:09,280 --> 00:40:14,200 We go here and there begging for credits and aid, yet we're great exporters of capital. 555 00:40:14,820 --> 00:40:18,660 It's a classic paradox of the capitalist economic system. 556 00:40:20,290 --> 00:40:23,250 The CIA urged its Chilean agents to act. 557 00:40:23,670 --> 00:40:26,750 Military leaders directed by gen. Augusto Pinochet 558 00:40:27,630 --> 00:40:32,220 executed their coup d'etat on sep 11, 1973 559 00:40:32,680 --> 00:40:38,220 As the military closed in, Allende made a final radio address from the presidential palace: 560 00:40:57,160 --> 00:41:01,200 Allende took his own life with the rifle given him by Fidel Castro. 561 00:41:01,960 --> 00:41:06,880 Pinoched seized power. His junta killed or disappeared over 3200 opponents 562 00:41:07,750 --> 00:41:11,590 and jailed and tortured tens of thousands more in a rain of terror known as the 563 00:41:11,920 --> 00:41:13,470 Caravan of Death. 564 00:41:14,430 --> 00:41:19,470 For the Chilean people, 9/11 has a far more tragic meaning than our 9/11 565 00:41:20,220 --> 00:41:23,520 that marked the end of their government at the hands of the US. 566 00:41:24,730 --> 00:41:28,650 Argentina would follow with a terrifying dirty war against leftists 567 00:41:29,730 --> 00:41:37,620 that would last from 1976 to '83 and kill or disappear an estimated 9-30 thousand people. 568 00:41:38,740 --> 00:41:43,410 The new Pinochet regime in Chile was quickly recognized and given aid, and 569 00:41:43,870 --> 00:41:45,830 lasted in power until 1988. 570 00:41:46,790 --> 00:41:49,880 Chile's intelligence service was master-minded 571 00:41:50,290 --> 00:41:53,050 by col. Manuel Contreras who became a 572 00:41:53,380 --> 00:41:55,130 paid CIA agent. 573 00:41:55,680 --> 00:41:58,640 He organized death squads that hunted down political opponents 574 00:41:59,050 --> 00:42:01,140 in Latin America, Europe and the US. 575 00:42:01,890 --> 00:42:06,270 His secret police even sent agents to Washington DC to blow up a 576 00:42:07,060 --> 00:42:09,770 former Chilean diplomat critical of the regime. 577 00:42:11,320 --> 00:42:16,360 Called operation Condore, the assasination ring included the right-wing governments 578 00:42:16,780 --> 00:42:21,490 of Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Paraguay and Brazil. 579 00:42:22,700 --> 00:42:26,540 Assasination squads tracked down and killed more than 13,000 dissidents 580 00:42:26,960 --> 00:42:28,710 outside their home countries. 581 00:42:29,130 --> 00:42:32,300 Hundreds of thousands more were thrown into concentration camps. 582 00:42:33,500 --> 00:42:38,340 At a minimum, the US facilitated comm.s among these intelligence chiefs. 583 00:42:39,090 --> 00:42:43,560 In an internal CIA history that was de-classified in 2007 584 00:42:44,020 --> 00:42:47,520 it was revealed that under the leadership of counter-intelligence chief 585 00:42:49,810 --> 00:42:52,770 who was obsessed with the idea of Soviet union 586 00:42:53,190 --> 00:42:54,940 infiltrating his organization and 587 00:42:55,280 --> 00:42:58,650 taking over ultimately most of the world, the CIA had been 588 00:42:59,240 --> 00:43:02,950 actively involved in creating and using foreign police forces and 589 00:43:03,490 --> 00:43:04,700 counter-terrorism units, 590 00:43:05,120 --> 00:43:10,580 and training close to 800,000 military and police officers in 25 countries 591 00:43:11,380 --> 00:43:14,090 including secret police and death squad leaders. 592 00:43:15,960 --> 00:43:19,880 After a dismal decade marked by Vietnam, Watergate and 593 00:43:20,680 --> 00:43:23,180 initial congressional investigations into the 594 00:43:23,600 --> 00:43:27,230 activities of the CIA, America felt confused. 595 00:43:28,520 --> 00:43:30,600 What kind of country were we? 596 00:43:31,060 --> 00:43:32,690 The answer was a perturbing one. 597 00:43:33,230 --> 00:43:36,940 Despite the deep drift between left and right, and young and old 598 00:43:37,610 --> 00:43:41,110 Americans were enjoying rising standards of living, 599 00:43:41,780 --> 00:43:44,700 and a loosening of strict sexual gender and moral codes 600 00:43:45,540 --> 00:43:49,040 it was even halting progress in race relations. 601 00:43:49,660 --> 00:43:53,500 No war taxes were levied, and the draft was finally muff ball 602 00:43:54,380 --> 00:43:56,590 Those who could afford a college education, 603 00:43:57,340 --> 00:43:59,420 by-and-large, did not go to Vietnam. 604 00:43:59,840 --> 00:44:01,180 The working class did. 605 00:44:02,470 --> 00:44:06,760 Most Americans happily enjoyed the fruits of the 1960s economic boom, 606 00:44:07,390 --> 00:44:12,850 a boom driven in part by the military- industrial complex with its huge arm sales. 607 00:44:13,190 --> 00:44:19,320 By example, more than 5,000 helicopters out of close to 12,000 were lost in Vietnam. 608 00:44:20,440 --> 00:44:26,120 Between 1951 and '65, the state of California alone received $67 billion 609 00:44:26,660 --> 00:44:30,710 in defense contracts, which helped revitalize the empty American west, 610 00:44:31,370 --> 00:44:34,080 employing huge numbers in new cities and towns. 611 00:44:34,750 --> 00:44:38,670 This, in turn, redistributed the power in Congress with many representatives 612 00:44:39,130 --> 00:44:42,720 throughout the gun belt, becoming dependent on the arms industry for 613 00:44:43,180 --> 00:44:45,050 their positions in government. 614 00:44:45,680 --> 00:44:50,810 And, as it would later in Iraq and Afghanistan, the government would pay for the war 615 00:44:51,270 --> 00:44:56,400 by printing more dollars, straining its ability to convert dollars into gold, 616 00:44:57,270 --> 00:45:01,860 inflating the currency and helping to create a deficit that grew from 617 00:45:02,400 --> 00:45:04,820 $3 billion in the early '60s to a 618 00:45:05,360 --> 00:45:09,200 staggering $25 billion by 1968. 619 00:45:10,200 --> 00:45:12,370 Speculation, ... 620 00:45:14,870 --> 00:45:16,960 productive reinvestment lagged 621 00:45:17,630 --> 00:45:20,250 corruption also abounded in Vietnam where 622 00:45:20,800 --> 00:45:24,510 US shipped huge warehouses of goods to the warzone. 623 00:45:25,050 --> 00:45:29,350 Enormous base camps with giant merchandising centers called PX's 624 00:45:29,970 --> 00:45:33,600 flowered in a primitive landscape like mini Las Vegas's 625 00:45:34,270 --> 00:45:35,770 fueling dreams of consumption. 626 00:45:36,310 --> 00:45:41,230 Black markets thrived as cars, refrigerators, TV sets, food and drink 627 00:45:41,820 --> 00:45:43,990 distorted a 3rd world economy. 628 00:45:44,650 --> 00:45:50,450 Deadly weapons disappeared stolen by racketeering insiders, both US soldiers and 629 00:45:50,790 --> 00:45:55,370 civilians, who greedily sold to both south and north Vietnamese. 630 00:45:55,790 --> 00:46:00,380 Financial scandals, as in most wars, disappeared in the debris and chaos. 631 00:46:01,500 --> 00:46:03,880 Ominous signs began to emerge. 632 00:46:04,420 --> 00:46:08,680 Factories fled either to developing countries or the non-union south 633 00:46:09,550 --> 00:46:13,810 as older northern industrial cities began to decay from unemployment, 634 00:46:14,480 --> 00:46:16,980 poor housing and schools, and drugs. 635 00:46:18,850 --> 00:46:23,230 Real wages not only stagnated, they were actually declined for the next 30 years 636 00:46:23,650 --> 00:46:27,780 as the middle and working class' standard of living steadily eroded. 637 00:46:28,320 --> 00:46:34,580 In 1971, Nixon removed the US from the $35/ounce gold standard and 638 00:46:35,120 --> 00:46:37,330 abrogated the Bretton Woods treaty that 639 00:46:37,670 --> 00:46:39,630 had governed the post-war economic alliance. 640 00:46:40,380 --> 00:46:42,800 OPEC, an organization of oil producing countries, 641 00:46:43,340 --> 00:46:46,300 mostly in the mideast, now felt powerful enough 642 00:46:46,920 --> 00:46:49,220 to punish the US for supporting Israel 643 00:46:49,550 --> 00:46:54,390 in the 1973 war. Oil prices quadrupled in the next year. 644 00:46:54,810 --> 00:46:58,640 The US which, prior to the 1950s, produced all the oil it needed 645 00:46:59,310 --> 00:47:02,020 was now importing 1/3 of its supply. 646 00:47:02,690 --> 00:47:05,860 The country would suffer deep cycles of inflation and recession 647 00:47:06,530 --> 00:47:10,780 with Wall st. profiting from the increasing volatility and insecurity 648 00:47:11,120 --> 00:47:15,160 of a speculative bubble economy, that reached its nadir in the 649 00:47:15,700 --> 00:47:17,660 great recession of 2008. 650 00:47:18,460 --> 00:47:23,340 The Vietnam war would indeed spell the end of the last significant period 651 00:47:24,000 --> 00:47:27,840 of social and political reform the US had seen. 652 00:47:28,510 --> 00:47:32,890 Was the country now a paper tiger living on borrowed money and time? 653 00:47:34,100 --> 00:47:38,560 This question would haunt the national imagination through 1970s 654 00:47:39,100 --> 00:47:41,730 and even the 1980s into the '90s 655 00:47:42,270 --> 00:47:47,860 when, with the fall of the Soviet union, the sense of American domination re-emerged 656 00:47:49,280 --> 00:47:54,740 The accepted mythology of the time was the US lost the war in Vietnam. 657 00:47:55,830 --> 00:47:58,790 But as linguist, historian and philosopher 658 00:47:59,250 --> 00:48:01,040 Noam Chomsky has pointed out 659 00:48:01,420 --> 00:48:06,880 it's called a loss, a defeat, because they didn't achieve the maximal aims 660 00:48:07,340 --> 00:48:11,590 the maximal aims being turning it into something like the Philippines. 661 00:48:12,130 --> 00:48:15,100 They didn't do that. They did achieve the major aims: 662 00:48:15,970 --> 00:48:19,350 It was possible to destroy Vietnam and leave. 663 00:48:20,020 --> 00:48:24,940 Elsewhere he wrote, south Vietnam had been virtually destroyed, and 664 00:48:25,400 --> 00:48:29,440 the chances that Vietnam would ever be a model for anything had essentially disappeared. 665 00:48:30,400 --> 00:48:35,990 When an aging and wiser Robert McNamara returned to Vietnam in 1995 666 00:48:36,740 --> 00:48:41,660 he conceded, somewhat in shock, that despite official US estimates of 667 00:48:42,330 --> 00:48:49,000 2 million Vietnamese dead, that 3.4 to 3.8 million Vietnamese had perished. 668 00:48:49,550 --> 00:48:54,800 In comparison 58,000 americans died in the fighting and 200,000 were wounded. 669 00:48:55,340 --> 00:49:00,060 The US had destroyed 9,000 of south Vietnam's 15,000 hamlets, 670 00:49:00,720 --> 00:49:06,270 in the north all 6 industrial cities, 28 of 30 provincial towns 671 00:49:06,810 --> 00:49:10,320 and 96 of 116 district towns. 672 00:49:11,110 --> 00:49:14,360 Unexploded ordnance still blankets the country side. 673 00:49:14,910 --> 00:49:19,080 19 million gallons of herbicide had poisoned the environment. 674 00:49:19,620 --> 00:49:23,660 Almost all of Vietnam's ancient triple canopy forrests are gone. 675 00:49:24,540 --> 00:49:27,840 The effects of chemical warfare alone lasted for generations, 676 00:49:28,590 --> 00:49:33,300 and can be seen today in the hospitals in the south where agent orange was used 677 00:49:34,180 --> 00:49:39,850 dead fetuses kept in jars, surviving children born with horrid birth defects 678 00:49:40,310 --> 00:49:44,020 and deformities, and cancer rates much higher than in the north. 679 00:49:44,560 --> 00:49:50,150 And yet, incredibly, the chief issue in the US was for many years 680 00:49:50,150 --> 00:49:53,650 the hunt for 1300 soldiers missing in action, 681 00:49:54,320 --> 00:49:58,910 a few hundred of them presumed taken as captives by the north Vietnamese. 682 00:49:59,660 --> 00:50:02,080 High grossing action movies were made out of it. 683 00:50:13,880 --> 00:50:17,260 No official apology from the US has ever been issued, 684 00:50:18,390 --> 00:50:22,640 and absolutely no appreciation of the suffering of the Vietnamese 685 00:50:22,890 --> 00:50:26,600 President Bill Clinton finally recognized Vietnam in 1995 686 00:50:27,480 --> 00:50:28,560 20 years later. 687 00:50:30,110 --> 00:50:34,280 Ever since the war, american conservatives have struggled to vanquish the 688 00:50:34,820 --> 00:50:40,620 Vietnam Syndrome, which became a catch phrase for americans' unwillingness 689 00:50:41,030 --> 00:50:43,330 to send troops abroad to fight. 690 00:50:45,620 --> 00:50:49,710 For a war that so mesmerized and defined an entire generation, 691 00:50:50,130 --> 00:50:54,510 surprisingly little is known about Vietnam today among american youth. 692 00:50:55,300 --> 00:50:56,720 This is not accidental. 693 00:50:57,470 --> 00:51:03,810 There's been a conscious and systematic effort to erase Vietnam from historical consciousness. 694 00:51:05,140 --> 00:51:09,520 It's time that we recognized ours was in truth a noble cause. 695 00:51:10,600 --> 00:51:14,730 We dishonored the memory of 50,000 young americans who died in that cause 696 00:51:15,400 --> 00:51:19,700 when we gave way to feelings of guilt as if we were doing something shameful. 697 00:51:20,780 --> 00:51:24,160 It was not only conservatives who white-washed history 698 00:51:24,830 --> 00:51:28,750 Whatever we may think about the political decisions of the Vietnam era, 699 00:51:29,290 --> 00:51:33,670 the brave americans who fought and died there had noble motives. 700 00:51:34,670 --> 00:51:39,800 they fought for the freedom and the independence of Vietnamese people. 701 00:51:40,680 --> 00:51:44,180 The outcome has been shrouded in sanitized lies. 702 00:51:44,600 --> 00:51:49,640 The Vietnam veterans' memorial in Washington, dedicated in nov. of '82, 703 00:51:50,190 --> 00:51:56,110 now contains the names of 58,272 dead or missing americans. 704 00:51:56,530 --> 00:51:57,610 The message is clear; 705 00:51:58,070 --> 00:52:00,570 the tragedy is the death of those americans. 706 00:52:01,450 --> 00:52:06,370 But imagine if the names of 3.8 million Vietnamese and millions of Cambodians 707 00:52:06,910 --> 00:52:09,410 and Laotians were also included. 708 00:52:10,080 --> 00:52:14,420 The supposed shame of Vietnam would be finally avenged by Ronald Reagan, 709 00:52:15,210 --> 00:52:16,300 the 2 Bush's 710 00:52:16,710 --> 00:52:20,420 and even to an extent Barack Obama in the decades to come. 711 00:52:21,510 --> 00:52:26,560 The irony is that the Vietnam war represented a sad climax of the 712 00:52:27,100 --> 00:52:29,980 WW2 generation from which Johnson, 713 00:52:30,600 --> 00:52:33,020 Nixon, Reagan, Bush Sr. 714 00:52:33,560 --> 00:52:35,650 and all the generals in high command came; 715 00:52:36,190 --> 00:52:40,900 those proclaimed by the mainstream media in the late 1990s as the 716 00:52:41,320 --> 00:52:42,740 greatest generation. 717 00:52:43,530 --> 00:52:47,450 Yet, that same media ignored the arrogance of a generation that 718 00:52:48,200 --> 00:52:53,670 over-confident from WW2, dismissed Vietnam as a 4th rate power 719 00:52:54,120 --> 00:52:55,540 that could be easily defeated. 720 00:52:55,880 --> 00:53:00,800 From, what the ancient Greeks call, hubris or arrogance comes the fall. 721 00:53:01,670 --> 00:53:07,470 And from this initially obscure war came a great distortion of 722 00:53:07,890 --> 00:53:10,180 economic, social and moral life in America. 723 00:53:10,850 --> 00:53:14,350 A civil war that polarized the country to this day, 724 00:53:15,020 --> 00:53:19,820 with much denied, little remembered, nothing regretted and, perhaps, 725 00:53:20,610 --> 00:53:21,900 nothing learned. 726 00:53:22,900 --> 00:53:26,280 History must be remembered, or it will be repeated until the 727 00:53:26,820 --> 00:53:28,580 meanings are clear. 728 00:53:28,910 --> 00:53:31,750 The second president of the US, John Adams, 729 00:53:32,080 --> 00:53:35,330 once said: 'Power always thinks it has a great soul 730 00:53:35,710 --> 00:53:40,970 and that it is doing God's service when it's violating all his laws.' 731 00:53:41,260 --> 00:53:46,430 which makes the details of the oncoming history a sad, inevitable blood bath 732 00:53:47,050 --> 00:53:49,260 that repeats itself again and again 733 00:53:49,680 --> 00:53:52,100 as the USA much too often 734 00:53:52,770 --> 00:53:57,350 stood on the side of the oppressors. Propping up allies with financial and 735 00:53:58,020 --> 00:54:03,030 military aid, war-on-drugs programs, police and security training, 736 00:54:03,690 --> 00:54:09,830 joint military exercises, overseas bases and occasional direct military interventions 737 00:54:10,580 --> 00:54:15,910 the US empowered a network of tyrants who were friendly to foreign investors 738 00:54:16,500 --> 00:54:21,630 who could exploit cheap labor and native resources on terms favorable to the empire. 739 00:54:22,590 --> 00:54:27,090 Such was the British and French way and such will be the American way. 740 00:54:27,970 --> 00:54:31,010 Not raping, looting Mongols; but rather 741 00:54:31,600 --> 00:54:37,390 benign, briefcase toting, Ivy League educated bankers and corporate executives 742 00:54:38,020 --> 00:54:45,360 who would loot local economies in the name of modernity, democracy and civilization 743 00:54:46,030 --> 00:54:49,410 to the benefit of US and its allies. 744 00:54:50,820 --> 00:54:55,870 During the cold war, politicians and the media side-stepped debate over the 745 00:54:56,410 --> 00:55:01,130 basic morality of the US foreign policy by mouthing platitudes about 746 00:55:01,540 --> 00:55:07,010 US benevolence and insisting that harsh, even dirty, tactics were needed 747 00:55:07,670 --> 00:55:09,430 to fight fire with fire. 748 00:55:10,050 --> 00:55:13,350 The Kissingers of the world called it Realpolitik 749 00:55:14,220 --> 00:55:20,770 but even when the Soviet union collapsed in the early 1990s, our nation's policies 750 00:55:21,230 --> 00:55:26,280 did not change, as the US time and again has taken the side of 751 00:55:26,820 --> 00:55:33,030 the entrenched classes or the military, against those from below seeking change. 752 00:55:34,370 --> 00:55:38,080 It was the American war against the poor of the earth, 753 00:55:38,750 --> 00:55:42,880 the most easily killed, the collateral damage. 754 00:55:43,880 --> 00:55:48,010 As was asked at the beginning, was it really about fighting communism 755 00:55:48,590 --> 00:55:51,970 or was it a misunderstood or disguised motivation? 756 00:55:53,390 --> 00:55:58,850 It was George Kennen, America's leading early cold war strategist, who went to 757 00:55:59,520 --> 00:56:03,020 the heart of the matter in a memorandum written in 1948: 758 00:56:04,110 --> 00:56:10,030 'with 50% percent of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population, 759 00:56:10,450 --> 00:56:13,410 we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. 760 00:56:14,490 --> 00:56:20,080 Our real task is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to 761 00:56:20,620 --> 00:56:22,330 maintain this position of disparity. 762 00:56:23,000 --> 00:56:27,590 To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality, and daydreamings. 763 00:56:28,260 --> 00:56:32,630 We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as 764 00:56:33,050 --> 00:56:37,100 human rights, the raising of the living standards and democratization. 765 00:56:37,760 --> 00:56:40,730 We are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. 766 00:56:41,690 --> 00:56:45,860 The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.' 767 00:56:47,610 --> 00:56:52,530 But George Kennen, who lived to be 101 years old in 2005, 768 00:56:52,950 --> 00:56:55,910 was an intellectual who never sought political office. 769 00:56:56,580 --> 00:57:01,620 Never in his wildest dreams could he have imagined the barbaric 770 00:57:02,160 --> 00:57:06,840 proportions of the upcoming presidency of Ronald Reagan. 771 00:57:07,290 --> 00:57:09,460 I’m proud to be an American, 772 00:57:10,130 --> 00:57:13,220 where at least I know I’m free 773 00:57:13,630 --> 00:57:18,890 cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land 774 00:57:19,310 --> 00:57:25,440 God bless the USA.