Source B is again from President Johnson, but presents a very different perspective to Source A. He is speaking privately in May 1964 just less than a year before his speech in Source A. Whilst in Source A he describes a war in Vietnam as preventing “instability and unrest” in Source B he describes it as “the biggest damn mess”. Source A appears to show a President confident in the reasons why America sent troops into Vietnam, whereas Source B shows a president full of doubts and worries about being drawn into a war that is thousands of miles away. However Johnson is clearly in a dilemma, which shows when he says “I don’t think it’s worth fighting for. And I don’t think we can get out”. I know that he feared that large scale involvement in Vietnam would jeopardise his chances of winning the forthcoming Presidential elections and disrupt his domestic policies where he wanted to create a Great Society. I know that his foreign policy became increasingly linked to his domestic policies, like civil rights and tackling poverty. He knew that if he `lost` Vietnam to Communism it would shatter his presidency and kill his administration. On the other hand he is saying “All the politicians are saying let’s move ... they’d bring a president down if he ran out”. Clearly, there is a huge difference between the way he is speaking about Vietnam in May 1964 and April 1965. This may be due to the fact that he is in a stronger political position in April 1965 because he has been re-elected. It is also possible that his opinion about how involved America should be in Vietnam had changed since 1964. I know that in August 1964, North Vietnamese patrol boats opened fire on American ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. This led to Congress passing the Tonkin Gulf resolution, giving Johnson complete power to take `any necessary action to prevent further aggression and achieve peace and security` . However as President Johnson is speaking privately I think he is more likely to be revealing his personal opinion about Vietnam. It is clear from what he is saying that he doesn’t care about the Vietnamese people, but ultimately he fears that if he allows South Vietnam to fall to communism they “may chase you into your own kitchen”. This again implies the American’s fear of Domino Effect of Communism. We are left with feeling that Johnson is full of doubt about whether it is right for him to take America to war thousands of miles away. We know this when he says “this is a terrible thing we are getting ready to do”.
Source C is an interview with Noam Chomsky in 1982; nine years after the last American forces had left Vietnam. By the 1980s many people were questioning the importance of the Vietnam War, and began to criticise America’s involvement. Many would have been interested in what Chomsky had to say as he had been openly critical of America’s involvement during the war. Chomsky, a life-long anarchist, sympathised with communism and had previously written books about the possible benefits of a Communist government. As a result of this, I know that Chomsky was due to go on trial in 1968 for his support of the Communism. Had it not been for the Tet offensive, it was likely that Chomsky would have been jailed. This could have possibly made Chomsky’s views of America’s war against Communism in Vietnam biased against America. However I know that Chomsky had and continued to be an unstinting critic of US foreign policy for many years. The source clearly comes from a very left wing perspective. He says in the interview that the “official truth” of America’s involvement was that they were defending South Vietnam. I know that this is the case because the US state department released a paper in February 1965, giving reasons for American involvement in Vietnam. It stated that they were fighting a brutal campaign of terror and armed attack from the North. Chomsky goes on to say that this is not the truth. He claims that the major war was against South Vietnam, saying that it destroyed the farming and peasant’s society. The South was devastated. Although when America launched Operation Rolling Thunder in 1965 it targeted sites in North Vietnam, this air offensive lasted until 1972, and the list of targets expanded to include towns and cities in South Vietnam. The ancient city of Hue in South Vietnam was devastated by bombing after a US raid in 1967. Chomsky says in the source that there were “no Vietnamese around anyway”. Here, Chomsky means that the USA didn’t recognise the Vietnamese as a race with their own culture, but saw then as Americanised Asians in South East Asia. He then goes on to say that America did not want an independent South Vietnam. This could be true, because I know that in 1954 America stopped elections taking place in South Vietnam, fearing a communist victory. Chomsky accuses America of not wanting Vietnam to develop and reform their own economy because it would “undermine American influence in the area”. I know that Congress refused to allow financial aid into Vietnam, possibly to stop them recovering as a nation.
The sources I have studied provide three very different views as to why America became involved with Vietnam. The two speeches made by President Johnson both refer to the theory of the Domino Effect. However both sources fail to give an historian any information about what the Domino Effect involved and why America believed in it. There is no information about how the Americans were determined to resist the spread of Communism in Vietnam, which they saw as the first domino in the row. None of the three sources make any reference to Diem, whom the Americans had supported because of his anti-Communist stance, despite the fact that he led a very corrupt government. There is no information about how when tension between the North and South Vietnam increased so did America’s involvement. Source A can only be described as a propaganda speech made to influence and persuade American citizens. Johnson completely fails to provide any kind of balance when describing the reasons for going to war in Vietnam. The President talks about the war with almost religious zeal, by quoting from the Bible. He perhaps provides false reasons as to why he has decided to go to war so that America not only accepts a full scale war, but supports one. It could be argued that Source B is a more reliable account of Johnson’s real reason for becoming so involved in Vietnam. It at least gives us Johnsons accurate opinion which contradicts Source A, allowing us to discredit Source A further. It reflects the real dilemma Johnson faced and that it was not just a case of fighting for the freedom of the people of South Vietnam. In source C, Noam Chomsky delivers a critical view of America’s involvement in Vietnam. He questions the “official” reasons given for the US going to war in Vietnam. However whilst there is evidence to suggest that Chomsky could be accurate in his views, we know that he has always been against US foreign policy. Unlike Source A, Sources B and C are successful in presenting valid reasons why America should not have gone to war or at least their real motives in doing so. Source A on the other hand provides a smoke screen as to the real reasons America became involved in Vietnam. This is useful to a historian as it tells us about propaganda around this period.
