Part of America’s foreign policy along with containment was to maintain their sphere of influence, especially any strongholds they had in Eastern Europe where communism was especially strong. It was “defending South Vietnam from North Vietnamese aggression,” as is said in Source C. Source C is very critical of the war and is partially right when it says “the United States did attack South Vietnam,” but the Source is also very biased as it comes from Noam Chomsky, a well known critic of the war. Despite this the source is very useful because it is not just a criticism of the war by a civilian but it intellectual opposition by someone who is dedicated to a cause and is well known for it. In fact, you could say, since there were American advisors in South Vietnam since the 1950’s, it could be seen as simply maintaining the sphere of influence, albeit stepping it up to the next level by sending in ground troops.
Overall, each of the three sources contributes to the reasoning behind the war but there are differences in them which indicate their usefulness. Source A is public propaganda and so cannot be considered to be the President’s real views on the subject. Source B is completely off the record and is therefore a much more likely representation of the President’s personal views on the subject and, because of this, it is a much more useful source. Source C however is from a well known and very biased author and is also over 10 years after the war and is therefore likely to be unreliable in its facts and figures. Because of these reasons I can conclude that, although the sources may be of use individually, together they are not very useful because of their conflicting viewpoints
Question 2
The Vietnam War was the world’s first ever televised war. From the beginning of the war, almost every home in America had a colour television in it and the media broadcasted images of the brutality of war directly to people’s homes. No longer could the government edit what news of the war the public saw and heard about like they had in World War I and II. This war was uncut and as horrifying as being there yourself. This was one of the main reasons that the American public lost faith in the war and why, ultimately, America lost the war.
Throughout the war journalist’s and cameramen flew out to Vietnam to tell the public what was really happening. This was especially prominent during the period of the Tet Offensive with people like Barry Zorthian. He was a journalist living close to the embassy in Saigon when it was assaulted by a 15 man VC suicide squad and he said “I’ve never been convinced that those last 25 thousand casualties were justified” When suspected journalist’s and voices of the people lost their faith in the war what else could the public do but lose faith as well? Another well respected anchorman Walter Cronkite said “What the hell is going on? I thought we were winning this war” when he saw the footage of the attack on the Saigon embassy. President Johnson’s reaction to this was “If I’ve lost Walter Cronkite, I’ve lost Mr Average Citizen.” Cronkite’s opinion would influence millions of Americans and the war had managed to alienate him. Photo’s like Source E showed the kind of images that shocked people. It shows two children who were hit with napalm running away while American soldiers stand and take photos. This picture could have been enticed a bad reaction out of the people who saw it. It could have also been edited extensively. In the original photo, the background shows smoke rising from the children’s village that had just been destroyed. This possible editing of the source affects its usefulness but this doesn’t affect the fact that the soldiers who were supposed to help them were taking pictures of their suffering. Source F is from an American journalist in 1970. Despite the war being largely documented by the media, the fact that it is by limits the usefulness of the source because he could have been very selective about what he was writing about and leave out anything good that the American’s were doing or anything bad that the North Vietnamese did. However he was writing about and criticizing the Americans tactics such as defoliation, Search and Destroy and Operation Rolling Thunder. Before the media, the public might not have known about the kind of destructive tactics their army was using and now it was revealed.
The tactics used by the Americans were highly controversial. These included Operation Rolling Thunder, Guerrilla Warfare, Search & Destroy and Defoliants. Guerrilla warfare was unlike anything the Americans had been trained to do. Source D shows how the American troops coped with the terrain and the threat from the Viet Cong. The American troops are completely surrounded by Viet Cong soldiers and they have no idea that they are about to be ambushed. This was an anti-American poster by the North Vietnamese but it has a degree of truth to it. The Americans were entirely unused to fighting in the terrain they faced and so they used tactics like Defoliants to combat it. They destroyed mile upon mile of the vegetation to combat the threat of ambushes but to no avail. All they managed to do was alienate the South Vietnamese peasants and the American public. This meant that the Viet Cong were allowed to integrate into South Vietnamese villages and the US were forced to deploy tactics such as Search & Destroy. Unfortunately this tactic was far from perfect and it led to the murdering of hundreds of innocent civilians like the massacre at My Lai. This led to increased opposition to the war and the Americans back in America.
Due to the extensive media coverage of the war, opposition from the American public and politicians was at an all time high. When President Johnson assumed the office, his plan was to create “The Great Society”. He wanted an American equivalent of the welfare state. However, because of the war this became impossible as is shown in Source H. It shows Johnsons chopping up The Great Society and feeding it into the American economy to create the Vietnam War. This was a cause of great controversy because one of the reasons that Johnson won the election was because he promised a Great Society and now he was forced to give it up because of the financial cost of the war. He simply could not afford both of them. The strain it would put on America’s finances would be unacceptable and so he broke his electoral promise and axed the Great Society in favour of the war and Source H is an interpretation of this. This led to protests by students and other citizens across the whole of America. Protests like the one at Kent State University in 1970. Source J shows hundreds of people protesting against the war. What it doesn’t show is that at this very same protest, 4 innocent civilians were shot dead by the National Guard. This increased opposition because now civilian casualties were at home as well. Politicians like Robert McNamara, Johnson’s Secretary of Defence, resigned in protest of the war. The opposition wasn’t just limited to Americans though. Source K shows Australian opinion polls on the war. The Australians had sent 7000 of their troops to Vietnam to help the Americans fight the guerrilla side of the war and by 1969 the Australian public were mostly opposed to their troops fighting in the war. Despite their casualties being relatively low, they were still unacceptable and this was also true for the American’s. The North Vietnamese had huge amounts of casualties but they were fighting for their country whereas the American Soldier’s were fighting for something else entirely.
The average age of an American soldier in The Vietnam War was 19. These supposed soldiers were being drafted in with no experience whatsoever and this led to many of the problems within the war. Incidents such as Fragging and Drug abuse were the cause of the soldier’s lack or morale and inexperience. Source G says “many of them thought they were going to do something courageous on behalf of their country” and this is true because most of the soldiers either did not know why they were fighting or simply did not believe in their cause. Larry Colburn was at the massacre of My Lai and said “What we did was completely wrong. It made no military sense. It made no sense of any kind. What the hell do you think we accomplished by doing this?” Many of the soldiers did not see the massacre as doing anything wrong. This was the effect of the war on the young men who fought. Nearly 500 civilians were slaughtered at My Lai and no one saw anything wrong with it. The American public however were appalled that their soldiers could commit such acts of atrocity and the media didn’t help. Pictures were broadcast showing the scenes of horror at My Lai and this turned even more people against the war than ever before.
The Vietnam War was the world’s first ever televised war. It was also a devastating loss for the United States. Each of the sources provides evidence to support media being an important reason behind the defeat of America. However, not all of the sources are completely unbiased. For example, Source D is a North Vietnamese poster and is therefore very biased in support of the Viet Cong and against the American troops. Despite this, sources such as Source E, Source F and Source J, provide evidence which is mainly unbiased although it is limited to some extent. Because of this, I believe that there is sufficient evidence in the sources to claim that media was an important reason behind why America lost the war.