The Vietnam War

Why this matters

The 1954 Geneva Accords drew a line at the 17th parallel, and that single line is what set up everything the rest of this war became. A country split in two on paper in 1954 was still split by weapons and politics for the next two decades, until the war finally ended in 1975.

Students read the resolution's actual legal text for themselves rather than a summary of what it did, and the wording turns out broad enough to justify nearly any escalation. That distinction is the argument I want them to carry into the writing task, deciding how much authority one incident should hand over.

From one teacher to another

Congress passed the resolution just days after the August 1964 clash in the Gulf of Tonkin, and its wording turned out broad enough that one vote could authorize years of war without asking Congress again. Students read that wording for themselves, weigh what was reported about the clash against what declassified records later concluded, and trace how the war grew step by step, a handful of advisors first, then the sustained bombing known as Rolling Thunder, before it ended in 1975. I close on the credibility gap that outlasted the war, since it's still the reason lawmakers argue over how much power a vote like that should hand a President.