LYCOS RETRIEVER 
South Vietnam: South Vietnamese
built 629 days ago
In October, 1955, the South Vietnamese people were asked to choose between Bao Dai, the former Emperor of Vietnam, and Ngo Dinh Diem for the leadership of the country. Colonel Edward Lansdale suggested that Diem should provide two ballot papers, red for Diem and green for Bao Dai. Lansdale hoped that the Vietnamese belief that red signified good luck whilst green indicated bad fortune, would help influence the result.
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It has been claimed that, in particular, the South Vietnamese government of Nguyen Van Thieu was nothing more than an American puppet, and point to American connivance in Thieu's manipulation of the 1971 South Vietnamese Presidential election as evidence. On the other hand, some point to sharp differences between Thieu and Nixon at the time of the Paris Peace Accord to demonstrate that he was not a puppet. The historical consensus is that there existed a symbiotic relationship between the Thieu government and US military involvement in Indochina: without American support the Thieu government could not survive; while the US needed to maintain the Thieu government to be able to continue its involvement in Indochina. The removal of one of these factors would inevitably bring about the end of the other.
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South Vietnamese civilians scramble to board a U.S. helicopter during the American evacuation of SaigonThe Ford Administration saw the final withdrawal of American personnel from Vietnam in 'Operation Frequent Wind', and the subsequent fall of Saigon. On April 29 and the morning of April 30, 1975, the American embassy in Saigon was evacuated amidst a chaotic scene. Some 1,373 U.S. citizens and 5,595 Vietnamese and third country nationals were evacuated by military and Air America helicopters to U.S. Navy ships off-shore.
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At the end of April 1970 US and South Vietnamese troops were ordered to cross the border into Cambodia. While the invasion succeeded in capturing large quantities of North Vietnamese arms, destroying bunkers and sanctuaries, and killing enemy soldiers, it ultimately proved disastrous. By bringing combat into Cambodia, the invasion drove many people to join the underground opposition, the Khmer Rouge, irreparably weakening the Cambodian government. When the Khmer Rouge came to power in April 1975 it imposed a cruel and repressive regime that killed several million Cambodians and left the country with internal conflict that continues today. The extension of the war into a sovereign state, formally neutral, inflamed anti-war sentiment in the United States and provided the impetus for further anti-war demonstrations in Australia. In the well-known Moratoriums of 1970, more than 200,000 people gathered to protest against the war, in cities and towns throughout the country.
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Local communists, supported by North Vietnam, continued to confront the South Vietnamese government. The United States pledged its support for the South, and initially sent military advisers. In May 1962, Prime Minister Robert Menzies announced that a small group of Australian military advisers, expert in jungle warfare, would ... assist the South Vietnamese government. In the face of the escalating civil war the United States sent its first combat troops in 1964, and this was built up to a force of half a million. In April 1965 Prime Minister Menzies announced the commitment of the first Australian combat troops, and between 1965 and 1972 approximately 50,000 Australians served with the army, air and naval forces in the Vietnam War. Of these approximately 19,000 were conscripts as, through the 1965 amendments to the Defence Act, men conscripted by ballot under the National Service Scheme could be required to serve overseas.
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As the fighting between the Viet Cong and the South Vietnamese continued, the U.S. continued to send additional advisers to South Vietnam. When the North Vietnamese fired directly upon two U.S. ships in international waters on August 2 and 4, 1964 (known as the Gulf of Tonkin Incident), Congress responded with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. This resolution gave the President the authority to escalate U.S. involvement in Vietnam. President Lyndon Johnson used that authority to order the first U.S. ground troops to Vietnam in March 1965.
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