Fear, Ambition, And Politics By Robert Dallek

We live in a society were they may be times were anything can happen, with terrorist organizations, and social justice issues causing uproar. While we have still problems to work on as citizens, the government we live upon continues to create new restrictions which restore fear into some citizens. Liberalism has been rare in the practice and theory in the last two hundred years. But as a state that lives off of liberal values, the struggle for equality still continues. In the essay “The Liberalism of Fear”, philosopher Judith Shklar focuses on developing the definition of political liberalism, by means of discovering the role that cruelty plays in political and social life. There are many primary issues in the Liberalism of Fear that I must addressed. Also I shalll expound on her arguments surrounding the fear of tyranny, fear of abuse and how it makes a distinct connection to our reality now.

“In August of 1964, in response to the American and GVN espionage along its coast, the DRV launched a local and controlled attack against C. Turner Joy and the U.S.S. Maddox , two American ships on call in the Gulf of Tonkin” (Brigham 2). This resulted in the United States government giving Lyndon Johnson the ability to make war under the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. President Johnson then gave orders to perform air raids on Northern Vietnam pushing the United States further into the war. Compared to 1962 when only 9,000 soldiers supported the South Vietnamese, by June 1965 82,000 soldiers occupied the country. The number only continued to rise exponentially, and by 1966 370,000 soldiers had been sent in to prop their South Vietnam allies. President Richard Nixon withdrew American soldiers from Vietnam and as part of the “vietnamization” of the war. Over and 60,000 American soldiers had been lost in a war to preserve the status quo, not to win.

In September 1945 Ho Chin Minh declared his country independence (Vietnam).Ho determination to make his country free brought him to the realization that, in other to achieve that, the Vietnamese would have to fight another war against the French colonialist. After several years of fighting the French were won out and sued for peace with the Vietnamese with a suitably ceremony on October 9 1945.This brought the intervention of the American, who wanted Vietnamese to be permanently divided which was temporally divided at the time (pp 150-151). As the Americans campaigned against communism, it has being portrayed to many that it is the right of the Americans to intervene in Vietnamese as world power. But the decision made by Johnson’s presidency was bias. The increase of American military troops in south Vietnam provoked and intensified the response from the north which eventually broke out to a war were so many lives were lost. The war ended with a great

In 1960s, the US was faced with another crisis of communist expansion in the war between North and South Vietnam. The Kennedy Administration decided to further pursue their containment strategy out of fear being seen by the international community as weak towards communism. During the Johnson Administration, an attack against American vessels that happened in the Gulf of Tonkin led to President Johnson being granted the ability to conduct broad military operations without congressional approval. The American public began to largely oppose American intervention in Vietnam because the optimistic statements made by the government ran contradictory to the reports of the violent fighting by American news outlets. During the Nixon administration, the US switched to a policy, later known as Vietnamization, where the main goal was to strengthen the South Vietnamese forces and provide them with better armaments so they can better defend themselves. Vietnamization proved to be ineffective as the South Vietnamese forces were unable to hold their own against the North without US air support as proven during Operation Lam Son 719 and the Easter Offensive. The signing of the Paris Peace Accords officially ended US involvement in the Vietnam War. The US followed containment policies during beginning of the war due to the underlying fear of the spread of communism and since the policies were inherited from previous

The article I chose for this assignment was Power and the Presidency, From Kennedy to Obama written by Robert Dallek. I found this to be a very interesting article. This article is tied in with this week’s chapter because this week’s chapter was on the president. This article was on the increases in power of the executive branch. I learned more about the increase in power in the office of the president and how it has changed over time. I learned that the President’s control over foreign affairs has been growing since the Theodore Roosevelt administration. I learned Kennedy greatly expanded the power of the presidency particularly in the area of foreign affairs. I learned that by the early 1960s, the president had become the principle architect

In 1965, he “ordered an increase in U.S. military forces in Vietnam, from the present 75,000 to 125,000”(History). Immediate reaction followed from this, and communist leader attacked him for this decision. This became “a major turning point, as it effectively guaranteed U.S. military leaders a blank check to pursue the war”(History). Johnson's future tactics included more men and many bombings and plans such as operation rolling thunder. These failed due to the fact that the Vietcong was not defeated stepping down from war. The more men he sent overseas just generated more chaos in America and deaths in Vietnam. In addition to this, North Vietnam had significantly less troops than we did in the South, they had about “10,000 troops...meanwhile we have an occupation force of 500,000 ground troops”, this doesn't include the naval and air command(Doc G). Lastly, the biggest shock for not only the President but the citizens lied in the fact that everyone believed it wasn't “possible for us to lose the war. We are too strong…”(Doc F). Johnson along with the generals aimed to “fight it with the least cost to ourselves and the greatest cost to our enemy”(Doc F). Unfortunately, it did the exact opposite with the failure through the President's failed military tactics and policies.

In the reading entitled “The Impossible Victory” by Howard Zinn he discussed the events during the time of Vietnam War. “When the United States fought in Vietnam, it was organized modern technology versus organized human beings, and the human beings won.” Before United States interfere, in 1945, under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh, a communist leader, Vietnam fought against Japan and won their independence. However, as Zinn points out “the Western powers were already at work to change this.” United States sent troops to Vietnam to stop the spread of communism all over Asia. During this year President John F. Kennedy was assassinated and Lyndon B. Johnson succeeded as the new president. United States knew that fighting against communism was

Because Johnson believed in the domino theory, that if one county turned Communist, namely Vietnam, then neighboring nations would also turn Communist, his approach to the Vietnam War was to escalate the attacks to the point in which the Communists could no longer fight back. Johnson escalated the war through a variety of attacks, including Operation Rolling Thunder, which was the first of many aerial bombings on North Vietnam. Moreover, it was under Johnson’s administration that tens of thousands of American troops were dispatched to Vietnam which was another factoring intensifying the war. On the contrary, Nixon’s approach to the war in Vietnam was to pull out American troops because he valued American lives over containing Communism in Vietnam. Therefore, because the war had reached a stalemate by the time Nixon was in office and he valued American lives over containing communism, he implemented the process of Vietnamization, the organized transaction of American troops in Vietnam that were replaced by South Vietnamese troops. The reason why Johnson chose to escalate the war while Nixon tried to bring American troops home was because of their differing political views. Since Johnson was a Democrat and held some fairly liberal beliefs, like helping the impoverished at any cost, it was only natural for him to show compassion for the South Vietnamese by fighting Communism in order to create a better quality life for them even if it meant sacrificing American lives. However, because Nixon held more conservative views and believed in preserving order in one’s own nation before reaching out to others, Nixon implemented the process of Vietnamization in order to bring

US policy during the war was weak and not nearly aggressive enough to beat the North Vietnamese. For example, President Johnson was unwilling to order a full scale invasion of North Vietnam. His reason for this was it passed through the territory of countries not involved in the war This was due to fears that it would also provoke China into entering the war directly. Another example would be Johnson’s refusal to cut off the Ho Chi Minh Trail. As a result, supplies would continue to flow uninterrupted. The reasons for not cutting off the trail were mainly political. These political reasons include not wanting to breach Laotian neutrality, especially since the North Vietnamese had no qualms about breaching, and that US

Johnson felt that if Vietnam became communist, then American interests and security would be threatened by a stronger communist network. Politically, Johnson would lose the mid-term elections

When Rolling Thunder failed to weaken the enemy’s will after the first several weeks the purpose of it began to change. Bombings then tended to be directed at the flow of men and supplies from the north (Karnow). Damaging as it was to the north, Ho Chi Minh still maintained the same course. Operation Rolling Thunder was a desperate attempt to convince the North Vietnamese to initiate negotiations and hopefully a ceasefire. This operation showed that LBJ was ineffective and ignorant. He was blind to the fact that the North Vietnamese were obviously going to retaliate because of Operation Rolling Thunder.

In June 1965, the United States government began to realize that under present conditions, the odds of winning the fight in Vietnam are unlikely, as the ratio of guerilla to anti-guerilla forces is 10-1. However, President Johnson vowed that he would not be the first President to lose a country to Communism,

The United States intervention in Vietnam is seen by the world as America’s greatest loss and longest war. Before the start of the war in Vietnam, the thought of the United States losing this war was unheard of because America was technologically superior, no country in south East Asia could contend with them. Lyndon B. Johnson announced that he would not be the president to allow South East Asia to go Communist . Why the United States lost the war has been a huge debate since the end of the war, because there were so many factors affecting why they lost; the war was a loss politically, after losing support from not only the American public but also the South Vietnamese and losing a political mandate for the war by 1973, when the last

In 1965, the United States of America officially enter the war against North Vietnam. After the Gulf of Tonkin incident where North Vietnamese attacked two U.S. ships on August 2nd and 4th, 1964, this event was a chance for U.S. President Lyndon Johnson to give authority for U.S. to enter war in Vietnam. United State involvement in Vietnam War was an approach to seize the communist aggression. A campaign authorized by President Johnson called “Operation Rolling Thunder” which started on February 24th, 1965 is a series of extensive bombing directed towards the North Vietnamese predicted to be eight weeks long until the North Vietnamese surrender to U.S. power. However, this campaign lasted two years longer than expected.

There was not much serious thought in escalating the Vietnam War until the Tonkin Gulf incident occurred. In the Gulf of Tonkin it was reported “that two American destroyers had been attacked by North Vietnamese PT boats on August 4, 1964,” (Friedman 293). Shortly after these incidents, “Johnson immediately escalated the war by ordering airstrikes on North Vietnam” (Friedman 293). These events made it so Johnson could raise United States involvement in Vietnam without congressional backing on his decisions. Increasing involvement in the war was appealing though because after the Tonkin Gulf incident support of military involvement in North Vietnam raised from thirty one percent approvals to fifty percent approval (Moise 226). Although approval of the amount in favor immediately after the Gulf of Tonkin incident rose, it was a “mistake on Johnson’s part… assuming that the