The speech gives many reasons as to why the US felt they were doing right going into Vietnam. We already know that America had to keep to its policies and President Johnson also reminds the American public of this when he says “since 1954 every American President has offered support to the people of South Vietnam”, “we are also there to strengthen world order. Around the world, from Berlin to Thailand- there are people whose well-being rests on the belief that they can count on us if they are being attacked”. By saying this President Johnson gave the public a sense of responsibility so they feel as if America is doing right by going in to Vietnam as they are staying true to their policies and restoring peace around the world. Through this speech the President was trying to persuade the American public. He knew by informing the public he would be able to calm the emotional situation they were in and would at the same time gain there support as the public would know that the US was going in for a ‘good cause’. So to speak on basic terms, President Johnson wanted to win the hearts and minds of the American population.
Also President Lyndon Johnson wasn’t as appealing in terms of looks and status compared to Kennedy and therefore needed to try harder to get his voice heard.
The speech contains biblical influence meaning it gives reference to the bible to influence the American public. “Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further”. Johnson was a very religious individual and this reference from the bible was to get the people on his side by using the biblical quote as propaganda to say “god is on our side”. Most of the American Public were protestant and Johnson himself was a devoted Protestant therefore by quoting this from the bible he was influencing a lot of people.
The speech seems to be an excuse, a cover up for going in to Vietnam. People in America could watch what was happening in Vietnam via TV. What the American people saw was America not only killing those at ‘fault’ but also several innocent people who had nothing to do with the war. Johnson had to justify these actions otherwise the public would loose faith in their own country.
This speech does raise some questions such as why did president Johnson make this speech to the public one month after operation rolling thunder? Was Johnson influenced by hawks to write this speech? Was America’s fear of communism so great that they were prepared to fight in Vietnam and cause destruction or did America only enter Vietnam as it helped keep their reputation? Did President Johnson want to enter Vietnam or was he under pressure because he had only just come to power and he wanted to prove himself?
This speech does show oxymoron and therefore it may seem to be propaganda to many. President Johnson does go right into the reasons for America’s involvement in Vietnam, in this speech. If we examine the speech closely we can see that Johnson puts across ten clear reasons to Americas actions. In my opinion this speech is effective in persuading the audience that America went into Vietnam for the right reasons. This is because it only gives us a one sided view and since we are given so many point its influences us in believing that America went into Vietnam for the right reasons. The speech probably had the same effect on the American public.
There are quite a few limitations to this source. First thing the source is biased. This means that we only get the American point of view. Therefore we are not able to judge if America’s actions were in fact for the right reasons just by looking at this source as we are not given another point of view from which we can form an opinion which is not biased.
The source does show feeling in terms of desperation but this feeling would not have been portrayed when President Johnson was giving the speech. The feeling of desperation comes across when you study the source in detail but we know that when he was delivering the speech he had to deliver it in confident and positive manner so that the audience he is delivering to would pick up on the speech in the way he inclined them to.
This source is reliable as it comes from one of the American president’s and the American government. It was a justification for why America entered Vietnam. This source have not been altered or been tampered with.
I think that this source is very useful in helping understand why America went in to Vietnam as it gives us all the main reasons as to why they went in and from these we can see why America thought it necessary to go in to Vietnam. Each one of these reasons helps us to see how America saw the situation in Vietnam as being crucial to and extent that they had to take actions and enter Vietnam whether the wanted to or not.
Source B:
Source B is a secretly taped conversation between President Johnson and his college/ colleges. It was then turned into a written document. It is therefore a primary source. We do not know much about who produced this source and for what reasons it was produced. We also do not know exactly who President Johnson was having this conversation with but it is most likely that he was talking to a person he trusted sincerely because what he says in the conversation is highly regarded as personal thoughts and feelings and these words were probably not supposed to be heard by anybody else.
It is obvious that President Johnson did not know that he was being taped otherwise he would have not revealed him true feelings towards the situation in Vietnam. This makes the source fairly reliable but there is also another factor we have to consider before we can say that source is reliable and this is the fact that the source could have been tampered with. Since we do not know who produced the source and why, we cannot be sure of if they have tampered with the source or not and this plays a big part in how reliable the source is.
In my opinion the purpose of the source was to let the people of America know about what the President really thought of the situation in Vietnam. The source is an embarrassment to the President as it portrayed his as being weak. In the source it shows that the President himself does not know why he was going into Vietnam and had no understanding of the situation therefore making him an unsuitable president. This source could have been used to bribe the president but I think that it was used as a form of blackmail and obviously posed as a threat to Johnson. Once again although we do not know who produced this source it is highly likely that it was produced by Hawks who thought they would be able to use this and maybe blackmail the president into doing what they thought was right.
This source shows that Johnson himself did not know how to deal with the Vietnam situation. The fact was that America had been involved with Vietnam way before Johnson came to power. America had supplied the French forces with $1.2 billion of military aid. However in 1954 the French had been defeated at the battle of Dien Bein Phu and they decided to leave Vietnam. In May 1954, at the Geneva conference it was agreed that elections would take place in two years time meanwhile Vietnam would be divided into two halves North Vietnam and South Vietnam. The elections however did not take place. The United States continued supplying military aid and advisors to South Vietnam. They were protecting South Vietnam from communist guerrillas also known as the National Liberation Front. President Johnson had no choice but to continue on in Vietnam.
The conversation took place in May 1964. In the conversation it seems as if the President is confused about how to handle the Vietnam situation. Then on the 2nd of August 1964, North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked the US destroyer. The US government responded to this by bombing North Vietnamese naval bases and oil refineries. May 1964 to August 1964. In four months the President had resolved to Starting Operation Rolling Thunder. This seems very suspicious because at first he didn’t know what to do and then four months later he decides to attack Vietnam. I think that the secretly taped conversation was in fact used against him by one of the hawks as a form of blackmail and encouraged him to take actions in Vietnam or he would be humiliated in front of the American public.
We already know that President Johnson came in to power straight after President Kennedy’s death in 1963. He was an expert in politics yet he did not know how to handle the situation in Vietnam. The problem was that he was tied down by the American policies and the Truman Doctrine especially played a big part. Johnson faced three options in Vietnam: escalating the war, continuing with limited involvement or cutting and running. He chose the second option and later on it resulted in the escalation of the war.
Some statements which are present among the speech such as “Its just the biggest damn mess…What the hell is Vietnam worth to me… what is it worth to this country” helps us to see the speech as being emotionally honest and also lets us know that President Johnson was not truly committed to the American policies at heart. If this was to be published to the American public they would highly disapprove of Johnson’s position as president. This would influence them to gain feelings of dislike towards him as he would have been hiding his true views on the situation in Vietnam.
By looking at this source many questions can be raised. One of the first is Why did Johnson get involved with Vietnam if he didn’t want to? Of course we already know that he was tied down by the American policies especially the Truman doctrine, but he could have also have got involved in Vietnam without actually having to send American soldiers down there. Johnson knew that if he didn’t act upon communist actions that it would result into further assault and he also mentions this in the conversation when he says “of course if you start running from the communists, they may chase you into your own kitchen”. This emphasises that although he didn’t want to go into Vietnam he knew that if he didn’t do anything about it the situation would worsen and affect other areas which would slowly fall to communism. Another question would be who was President Johnson talking to in such an open manner?
This conversation took place 10 months before the start of operation rolling thunder. This shows us that the President did not know how to handle the Vietnam situation. This also raises the point that maybe President Johnson was forced to enter Vietnam probably by hawks. This taping could have been used as blackmail so that the president enters Vietnam like the hawks wanted him to.
This source is not biased in that it is putting forward the president’s views on the situation in Vietnam and was supposed to be a personal conversation so was never mean to be published so therefore cannot be regarded as being biased on not biased.
This source is very useful in understanding why America went into Vietnam because by studying the source we can assess that one of the main reasons America stepped into the war was because they were terrified of the affect off communism on the Vietnam and surrounding countries and although President Johnson didn’t want to get involved he had to take actions to keep Americas “heroic” status and policies intact.
Source C
Source C is from a TV interview that took place in October 1982. Professor Noam Chomsky was the person getting interviewed. He is a left winged liberal. In this interview he looks back in time at the Vietnam War and criticizes it. In fact Chomsky wasn’t a historian or a professor of history. He was actually a professor of linguistics never the less he was giving his views on the Vietnam War. This does not mean that he cannot express his views as some people may think that his point of view does not count because he is not a professor in a topic that would relate to warfare. Therefore many people would regard this source as being unreliable but in my opinion in is very reliable as it gives a lot of information on the reasons why America went to war.
This source is a secondary source as Chomsky wasn’t actually witnessing the war when he was interviewed. This interview took place round about 17 years later after the start of Operation Rolling Thunder. The purpose of the source is to inform us on why America really went to war. It is one persons opinion and therefore is biased as it gives us a one sided view which in this case is not in favour of America. By looking at the source we can tell that Chomsky disapproved of America involving themselves in the war as this caused further destruction. The south was devastated due to the destruction in the “farming, peasant society” as it says in the source.
America is discredited in the source as Chomsky was trying to get across that America was not alone defending South Vietnam against North Vietnam but also destroying the South. Why did America go in to Vietnam in the first place? They though that if they helped South Vietnam against attacks from North Vietnam it would help to stop the spread of communism from going further on and affecting the whole world.
To understand the concept you have to look closely at the context of America’s involvement in Vietnam. In 1960 the National Liberation Front was set up in South Vietnam. Its aims were clear: get rid of the Americans, over throw Diem and reunite South Vietnam and North Vietnam. 1960 was also the year the J.B.F Kennedy came to power. Kennedy helped to equip the South Vietnamese army and also increased the number of military advisors. The US did as much as they could and by 1961 they spent nearly $270 million in military support for Diem. In November 1963 Kennedy was assassinated and President Johnson came to power. Johnson had his own view about the domino theory and he thought that South Vietnamese government would not be able to defend itself against North Vietnam and thus would be unable to keep them out of the south. Therefore he thought it was necessary to help the South in order to keep it communist free. In July 1664 the Gulf of Tonkin incident took place. The American senate gave Johnson the power to assist any country who needed help in keeping there freedom. The bombing of North Vietnam known as ‘Operation Rolling Thunder’ had already started in February 1965. Thus America became involved in Vietnam.
Chomsky argues in source C that America “did not want an independent South Vietnam that was no longer dominated by America”. He also goes on to say that America feared that South Vietnam might be able to improve and develop itself and this would slacken the influence America had in the area. Basically America did not want to lose South Vietnam to the communists.
Communism was slowly spreading in the eyes of the Americans. China had already fallen to communism in 1949 and America believed that if South Vietnam fell to communism so would Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and then Burma and India would eventually also fall. President Johnson strongly believed that South Vietnam alone could not win the war.
What Chomsky was trying to get across was that America’s involvement did not help the situation in Vietnam but instead worsened it. Vietnam was devastated. The Americans used a chemical called ‘Agent Orange’ to destroy the Vietnamese forests in which the Vietcong were hiding. This chemical stripped the trees of all of there leaves and the trees would die a few days later. The Americans used this chemical against the Vietcong because the Vietcong were good at hiding and were experts at jungle warfare therefore they used ‘Agent Orange’ to clear the trees so that they could get a better view of their enemy. Around 15% of Vietnam was destroyed by ‘Agent Orange’. The ‘Agent Orange’ not only affected the forests but also the Vietnamese people. Dioxin the sub-agent of ‘Agent Orange’ had been found to cause cancer and malformations. The Vietnamese people suffered from birth malformations. Also America also used a chemical called ‘Agent Blue’ to demolish the harvesting of rice. This not only starved the enemy but also the allied farmers too. Between one to two million Vietnamese people died in the Vietnam War.
The Vietnam War not only affected Vietnam but America also suffered losses.58, 000 Americans died in the war and there were 350,000 casualties. After the Vietnam War the US was afraid to get involved elsewhere. They did not want another situation similar to the one in Vietnam. It is estimated that more than 3 million Americans at the average age of 19, served in the Vietnam War. The estimated cost of the war $176 billion if you put together the amount spent on Vietnam while Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon where in power.
There are some limitations to this source such as the information given in the source is very basic and does not go in to depth therefore we cannot see the source as giving us enough for us to form our own opinions about the American involvement in Vietnam. We would have to do some research aswell as this is a one-sided source and therefore to get an overall view on the topic we would have to look at another point of view.
The source does show feelings of disapproval and dislike for the American actions and this comes across through the way America is portrayed in the source. I think that this source was created to compete against the right winged American politicians at that time.
In my opinion this source is very useful in helping understand why America entered Vietnam as it pieces together the main reasons such as the American fear of the spread of communism and relates it to the situation in Vietnam. This source also helps us to see the point of view of a left wing American politician who is hind sighting on the Vietnam situation.