| A | B |
|---|
| flexible response | this military strategy was adopted during the Kennedy presidency |
| Geneva Accords | this temporarily divided Vietnam along the 17th parallel |
| Tonkin Gulf Resolution | this granted the US president broad military powers in Vietnam |
| Operation Rolling Thunder | this was the first extensive bombing of North Vietnam |
| Dien Bien Phu | when this fell to Vietnamese forces, the French began to leave Vietnam |
| domino theory | this is based on the idea that countries on the brink of communism were waiting to fall one after the other |
| Ho Chi Minh Trail | this allowed Communists in North Vietnam to supply military arms to the government opposition group in South Vietnam |
| Vietminh | Group of Vietnamese nationalists organized by Ho Chi Minh and dedicated to Vietnamese independence |
| Ho Chi Minh | he led the Indochinese Communist Party and fought French, Japanese, and US forces for the independence of Vietnam |
| Ngo Dinh Diem | this Vietnamese anti-Communist declared himself the ruler of South Vietnam and canceled unification elections |
| Vietcong | Communists guerrilla force that fought against the government of South Vietnam |
| Henry Kissinger | he served as the top US negotiator in Vietnam |
| Silent Majority | Nixon's term for a large group of conservative voters who disliked changes that took place in the 1960s |
| Khmer Rouge | this Communist group seized power in Cambodia after the US invasion of that coutnry unleased a brutal civl war |
| Pentagon Papers | publication of this revealed, among other things, that the Johnson administration had lied to the American public about its intentions in Vietnam |
| Vietnamization | this was specifically designed to bring an end to America's involvement in Vietnam and to bring about "peace with honor" in Vietnam |
| War Powers Act | 1973 legislation that required the president to get congressional approval before committing U.S. troops to an armed struggle. |
| Agent Orange | the US military used planes to spray this leaf-killing toxic chemical that devastated the landscape of Vietnam |
| Robert McNamara | as secretary of defense in the Johnson administration, he helped to craft and guide the US policy in Vietnam |
| napalm | to expose Vietcong tunnels and hideouts, US planes dropped this gasoline-based bomb that set fire to the jungles of Vietnam |
| search-and-destroy mission | conducted by US soldiers, these resulted in the uprooting of Vietnamese villagers with suspected ties to the Vietcong, the killing of their livestock and the burning of their villages |
| William Westmoreland | as the US commander in South Vietnam, this general introduced the concept of the body count in the belief that as the number of Vietcong casualties rose, the Vietcong would eventually surrender |
