All in all I would say that this source is useful in giving us some reasons for the USA’s involvement in the war and clarifying that peace must be restored and kept in Vietnam.
However as this is taken from a speech it could be unreliable. I believe it could be unreliable because in most cases speeches are not written by the speakers but by somebody who is specifically employed to do this. This means that what we are being told is not necessarily true as the messages being conveyed are probably not the presidents actual feelings. There are also other limitations such as other pieces of important information that have been left out. For example the fact that President Johnson is exceptionally anti-communist. He was a supporter of ‘The Domino Theory’ and believed that communism was spreading rapidly. He was not in favour of this; some may say he even feared it. Also, he cleverly leaves out all the bad parts of what is actually happening in the war. Not once are the negative effects of, other awful happenings that occur in war mentioned. His speech comes across as extremely one-sided and only stresses what the effects of not going to war are.
Source B is part of a private conversation that President Johnson was having with an unknown person in May of 1964. This totally compromises what he said in his speech in April, 1965. In the conversation he implies that he doesn’t want the war to go ahead as Vietnam is not a worthy cause to start a war over. He puts forward reasons for and against the USA becoming involved in the situation in Vietnam which I believe would be his own views. What makes this source more reliable than the others is that it is a private conversation. This indicates that Johnson never intended for what he was saying to be leaked to the media or the public, so what he is saying is surely true as there’d be no need for him to lie. He also sounds informal in the way he is speaking, using colloquial language, for example the word ‘damn’ is used in one sentence.
On the other hand this source has it’s limitations as well. He states that he thinks it is not possible to fight the war in Vietnam as it is so far. This is untrue; he knows they can fight the war as he has sent thousands of troops to Vietnam along with US marines and chemical and other weapons. In a way this makes the source unreliable.
Source C, the final source, is the only one of the three sources that is not spoken or delivered by President Johnson. It is taken from Noam Chomsky being interviewed in October 1982. Within in this source Chomsky puts forward what he believes are the real reasons for America becoming involved in Vietnam in the first place. Some of the reasons he suggests are reinforced with some evidence. Chomsky implies that the actual reasons for the USA’s involvement were incorrect by saying, 'the U.S. did not want an independent South Vietnam that was no longer dominated by America.' He is suggesting that America didn't actually want South Vietnam to have independence, which clearly contradicts President Johnson said in his speech, because America wanted to be in control, and make sure South Vietnam would not become a superior force.
As what Noam Chomsky says is spoken after the war we can believe that this source is truthful. I believe this because with it being post-war he would have a much wider range of sources coming from different people. This also means that he is most-likely to have studied sources coming from a larger spectrum of view-points, meaning that he could make just judgements about the war based on information coming from more than one person. I believe that what Chomsky is telling us is true as by the 1980’s people were not afraid to speak truthfully and freedom of speech was more prevalent in society than it was in the 60’s. Also, Chomsky has more insight into what happened as, speaking after the war, he had access to the entire history of the war, with information available from all viewpoints.
On the other hand this source does have it’s limitations as did the two previous sources. For a start Professor Chomsky was not involved in the war whatsoever which means what he is saying is from his personal point of view but is not first-hand information of what is happening so not even he knows if what he is saying is One-Hundred percent true, let alone us. Secondly, the fact that he is speaking in an interview means that his interviewer could have made alterations to Chomsky’s words before the interview was officially released.
Overall, I would say that this source is not very useful in providing a detailed or balanced explanation of the reasons for America getting involved in the war in Vietnam. After all Professor Chomsky is a blatant war critic therefore he is always going to hold a biased opinion when speaking of war or war-related issues.
Each of the three sources I have studied is helpful in enabling us to understand, to some extent, the reasons behind the USA becoming involved in the Vietnamese war. Source A gives us the official reasons that the American public were supposed to hear, meaning that these are less likely to be true as they aimed to persuade the American public that what the US was doing was right. Source B displays President Johnson’s personal views about the situation in hand. This helps us clarify two things; one – how the President personally felt about what was happening in Vietnam, and two - that President Johnson was either lying in his speech of April 1965, or he drastically changed his views about Vietnam between the time of his speech and the time of the private conversation. Source C gives us unofficial reasons for America’s involvement; this is unlikely to be biased about the reasons as he was not involved in the war, meaning he has no motive for lying about them. This makes the source quite reliable, in some ways more so than the other two. Although, Source C does miss out some vital details and doesn’t mention a word about Communism, which is the main reason America became involved, not one of the sources mention anything about the policy of containment or the Truman doctrine, which makes them less useful because no opinions about these policies are shown.
Overall, I would say theses sources give us some insight into why the USA became involved with Vietnam, however this insight is limited. We are not given the whole story or full reasoning behind the USA’s involvement. In some ways Historians would find these sources useful but not explicit enough.
