Do the sources agree that L.B.Johnson's escalation of the Vietnam War was a "noble cause"?
Do the sources agree that L.B.Johnson's escalation of the Vietnam War was a "noble cause"? The sources give a variety of different responses to the question of nobility of the escalation of the Vietnam War. Source A is two campaign speeches made by JFK in 1956 and 1960 respectively. In the speeches, JFK talks about communism and America's situation in the Vietnam War. The word "struggle" is used many times in the speeches; this emphasises the deteriorating situation in Vietnam for the Americans. America's apprehension of 'The Domino Theory' is also very apparent. As the Americans were extremely anti-Communist they believed that impeding 'The Domino Theory' was a very noble and just thing to do. Even so, you must take into account the fact that these speeches were part of JFK's campaigns to be elected so he most probably said these things to please the American public, to gain votes. Source B is a quotation from LBJ's tapes while he was in office. Basically, he feels that people will only focus on his faults and none of the commendable actions that he is taking. It shows that LBJ is surcoming to the huge public pressure that is placed upon at the current time. This strain is obvious as LBJ uses such crude phrases as "Right up my ass". LBJ problem is that he has allowed Vietnam to become too personal to him. He feels that his reputation will be in shatters if America lose the
Escalation of American involvement in Vietnam
Discuss the escalation of American involvement in Vietnam from 1960 to 1968. Why did the USA ultimately fail to defeat the North Vietnamese and Vietcong. In 1960, Kennedy was elected as the new president of the United States. As the Cold War raged, Kennedy had ascended to power with the attitude that Americans would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and success of liberty." Kennedy was not one to back down from a fight or to allow the name of his country to be soiled. After a failed attempt at invasion in the Bay of Pigs, the movement of Laos from capitalism to communism, and the creation of the Berlin wall, Kennedy decided to use Vietnam to prove the strength of the United States. Kennedy and his young advisers believed that not to resist communism in Vietnam would be another example of weakness. The American involvement had 4 main stages: Indirect involvement, financial support, political involvement and military involvement. In 1961 military advisers were sent to South Vietnam to train the South Vietnamese army. American involvement developed through a series of escalations, as the South Vietnamese regime proved increasingly unable to defeat the Viet Cong by themselves. At first (1956) there were 700 American advisers. In 1959 President John F. Kennedy increased the number to 16,000.
To what extent was President Lyndon B. Johnson responsible for the escalation of the war in Vietnam? (1963-1969)
Historical Investigation To what extent was President Lyndon B. Johnson responsible for the escalation of the war in Vietnam? (1963-1969) A. Plan of investigation The particular question this investigation will be addressing is: "To what extent was Johnson solely responsible for escalating the was in Vietnam?" The focus of the sources used in answering this question looks at the policies and documents passed regarding American involvement in the war as well as evidence regarding military strategies and who was responsible for their creation and application. To analyze the true scale of the escalation of the war I will be looking at statistics and reports. Finally, I will address the assumption that the escalation of the war in Vietnam to the extent that it happened was intentional - therefore I will analyze at personal diary entries and memoirs of President Johnson, as well as letters and recorded conversations between him and his advisors, also taking into consideration social and political pressures that may have affected the situation. B. Summary of Evidence - Kennedy's decision to commit in Southeast Asia was rooted in the American pledge to battle and contain communism: and "Vietnam", Kennedy concluded, "is the place to make [America's] power credible"1. - "If freedom is to be saved, we need a whole new kind of strategy, a wholly different kind of force, and a
Vietnam War
Johnson, not Kennedy, bears the responsibility for the escalation of the war in Vietnam. 'How far do you agree with this statement?' President Johnson must take major responsibility for the escalation of the war in Vietnam, however he cannot take full responsibility as Kennedy also played a part in increasing commitment there. Johnson takes the larger amount of responsibility as he took the first major escalatory step by approving of large scale bombing in Vietnam; Operation Rolling Thunder, as a response to the Gulf of Tonkin incident. LBJ was also the first President to send ground troops into Vietnam. LBJ may have also got further involved in Vietnam because he didn't want to 'lose Vietnam' like Truman 'lost China' because 'losing China' affected Truman's reputation greatly and therefore LBJ did not want the same to happen to him over Vietnam. On the other hand, JFK must take some responsibility because during his time in office, military advisers in Vietnam were increased from 500 to 16,000. Also the American government had some involvement in getting rid of Diem, therefore increasing commitment to Vietnam and LBJ had the same foreign policy advisers as Kennedy, so they possibly brought Kennedy's ideas back into the White House. The Gulf of Tonkin incident is when a US Navy ship was allegedly attacked by North Vietnamese patrol boats. Reports of this attack angered LBJ
'Johnson alone bears the responsibility for the escalation of war in Vietnam in the years 1965-68.' Do you agree or disagree with this statement?
Amrit Singh Thabal 16MB History Johnson alone bears the responsibility for the escalation of war in Vietnam in the years 1965-68. Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Only a few years of becoming president, Lyndon B Johnson had to do something about Vietnam, to get a victory; and fairly quickly. This escalation was set in the cold war, where the USSR and the USA were up against each other, and mutual destruction was only one bad move away. This escalation is where LBJ upped the ante in Vietnam and increase troop numbers vastly. From the start of 1965 23,000 US advisors were in Vietnam and by the end of the year 184,000 US soldiers were in Vietnam. This still increases over the years and by 1968, there are nearly 525,000 US troops in Vietnam. Not only troops, but spending and logistical support increased, therefore escalating the war. For this escalation, stalemate theorists blame a weak president (LBJ) for not backing out of Vietnam and for not being strong enough to stand up against the people and the military. But post-revisionists say that it’s a lot more complicated than one person and his weaknesses, it goes back 30 years. The war could have been escalated solely by Johnson. This may have been down to his personality; that he was the wrong man, in the wrong point of time in Vietnam. LBJ was very patriot and thought that the USA was the best
Vietnam war
* Total U.S. bomb tonnage dropped during: World War II = 2 057 244 tons Vietnam War = 7 078 032 tons (3.44 times as much as WWII) * Bomb tonnage dropped during the Vietnam War amounted to 000 lbs. for every man, woman and child in Vietnam. * An estimated 70 000 draft evaders and "dodgers" were living in Canada by 1972. * A Cornell University study placed the over-all total U.S. cost of the Vietnam war at $200 Billion * 30 April 1969 - Peak US troop strength 543 000 * Approximately 12,000 helicopters saw action in Vietnam * 9,087,000 military personnel served on active duty during the Vietnam era (August 5, 1964 - May 7, 1975). * 8,744,000 GIs were on active duty during the war (August 5, 1964 - March 28, 1973). * Married men killed: 17,539. * 61% of the men killed were 21 or younger. * Hostile (VC, NVA) deaths: 47,359. * Non-hostile (US, ARVN) deaths: 10,797. * POWs: 766 (114 died in captivity). * Total draftees (1965-73): 1,728,344. * Draftees accounted for 30.4% (17,725) of combat deaths in Vietnam. * Twenty-five (25) percent of the total United States forces serving in Vietnam were draftees * 76% of the men sent to Vietnam were from lower middle/ working class backgrounds * 82% of veterans who saw heavy combat strongly believe the war was lost because of lack of political will * (1993) Nearly 75% of the public agrees it was a failure of political
The Vietnam War
The Vietnam War "No 'healing', no apologies, no memorials, nothing can possibly compensate for the damage done and the pain inflicted....The only thing we can possibly do, twenty years too late, is to try and tell the truth." Eric Bergerud, Historian UC Berkely The problem is though, that there is no one truth about the Vietnam War, even more than two decades after America's intervention. Critics of the intervention claim that the war was unnecessary and immoral and also policymakers in Washington dragged the country into and unwanted war. A group of scholars and military leaders have contrasting ideas, providing a strong defense for the American intervention. Although there is a multitude of facts and sources, without a framework to place them into context understanding the war would be impossible. Even after a careful examination of all the information we have today, it would reveal neither view as entirely accurate. The Vietnam War was arguably the most traumatic experience for the United States considering a whole range of events including two world wars, assassinations of two presidents, the Great Depression, the Cold War, racial issues, etc... Examining the events of the war including the Tonkin Resolution, Ho Chi Minh trail and Tet Offense while analyzing US involvement in the war can help us understand more about the truth of the war and why it was considered one of
Vietnam War.
VIETNAM WAR For much of Vietnam's history it has been under foreign rule, primarily by the Chinese. In 1860, France began its domination of the area and had, by the late 19th century, implemented its colonization in a number of regions around the Gulf of Tonkin. During WWII, the Japanese government took control of much of the area and set up a puppet regime that was eventually forced out by the Vietnamese at the end of that war in 1945. After WWII and until 1955, France fought hard to regain their former territories in the region, but with a poorly organized army and little determination among the troops, their efforts soon collapsed. The French were finally defeated at Dien Bien Phu on the 8th of May 1954 by the communist general Vo Nguyen Giap. The French troops withdrew, leaving a buffer zone separating the North and South and set up elections in order to form a government in the South. The communist regime set up its headquarters in Hanoi under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh. Many North Vietnamese left the country and fled south where the self-proclaimed president, Ngo Dinh Diem had formed the Republic of Vietnam. Between 1955 and 1960, the North Vietnamese with the assistance of the southern communist Vietcong, tried to take over the government in South Vietnam, and in November 1963 President Diem was overthrown and executed. The following year, the North Vietnamese
American involvment in vietnam war
How can we explain America's involvement in the Vietnam War? To what extent did America get it "wrong, terribly wrong"? America's official explanation for its involvement in the Vietnam War was the containment of communism and the liberation of the Vietnamese people. As is usually the case when nations involve themselves in war, the reasons for it are not as simple as are made out. In this essay I will argue that the allied victory in World War 2, the Cold War, and the national image, all played a part in America's involvement in Vietnam. Robert McNamara, the then Secretary of Defence, wrote twenty years after the war "We were wrong, terribly wrong." So how did they get it wrong? The blanket answer is their failure to see that victory was highly unlikely and victory without massive cost was impossible. Repeated advice to that effect from their own military experts and others went unheeded. The history of the Vietnamese response to centuries of attack by other nations, the extent of their desire for independence and justice, and the grass-root support for the iconic Ho Chi Minh and his motivated resistance movement were not taken into account. I will show that these factors together with civil unrest at home and an unwillingness to lose face are why America got it terribly wrong. World War 2 ended in victory for allied forces with America emerging as a superpower. A new
Why did the United States fail to win the Vietnam War?
Why did the United States fail to win the Vietnam War? The Vietnam War was a prolonged war which begun in 1954 and ended in 1975. The war was between the communist armies of North Vietnam who were supported by the Chinese and the armies of South Vietnam who were supported by the United States. However, although the United States were significantly involved, they failed to win the Vietnam War. This was predominantly due to many factors, which included: the failure of the political will, influence of the anti-war movement, role of the media, military failure and the US failed to understand the Vietnamese context. The combination of these factors led to the failure to win the Vietnam War. The failure of the political will consisted of the fact that the defeat was an inevitable consequence due to the gradual escalation which was forced onto the US military by a civilian government. In spite of this, the US could have won the war with much more needed effort but the government did not have the political nerve to do this. Thus, the escalation policy convinced the communists that the US lacked the will to win and could be worn down. Hence they took advantage of this unwillingness of the US in order to succeed in the war. In comparison to this the influence of the anti-war movement also resulted in the failure of the US. This was because many citizens in the US were against the
