Vietnam War Environmental Movement

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

America has gone through high and lows as a country, but overall we overcome and grow and use our history to shape out future. When John F. Kennedy died, Lyndon B. Johnson took over as president and was at first liked and favored that he came back for a real term after the term he took over after JFK died. He then changed, and brought many Americans to fight in Vietnam and sacrifice their lives for a Vietnamese war, and was greatly looked down upon for this. Lyndon B. Johnson politically and socially with his Great Society and changed during his time as President of the United States of America.

The Vietnam War raged on from 1954-1975, taking over three million lives with it. Conflicts rooted in the cold war resulted in the United States sending troops to defend South Vietnamese democracy. However as the war became more lengthy and expensive, many civilians began to protest the United States participating in the war, creating the Antiwar Movement. Though the movement had lasting effects on society, it did not immediately cause the United States to retreat from Vietnam. The antiwar movement of the 1960’s, which is deeply connected with the transcendentalist belief of Civil Disobedience, protested the involvement of the United States in the infamous Vietnam War, and has had numerous effects on the American Military and Government to this day. However, the movement that strived for peace did not completely accomplish its goal of ending the United States’ involvement in international armed conflict.

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.

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

In the first essay Fear, Ambition, and Politics by Robert Dallek, he talks about the way that the United States started to really conflict with Vietnam and how some of Lyndon Johnson’s issues led the U.S. into it. One thing was clear and it was that Lyndon Johnson did not want communism to spread. Johnson’s advisors would continuously report to him that things were starting to become more serious in Saigon. Johnson did not want to send troops though, saying the he would “not permit the independent nations of the East to be swallowed up by Communist conquest, and it would not mean sending American boys 9 or 10,000 miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing themselves.” Clearly his word did not last though. Dallek seems to have a rather negative view of Johnson because he wasn’t taking the precautionary steps to prevent certain events, and he could not keep his word. Johnson seemed to disagree with his own actions about what we should do in Vietnam because it was so unpredictable. He did not want American involvement, but the pressure ended up getting the best of him. He sent one of his advisors, McGeorge Bundy, to Vietnam to talk about what we should do to help alleviate South Vietnam. Bundy thought that U.S. action was a must or “defeat would be inevitable and there is still time to turn it around.” Johnson then decided to start bombing the North on February 8th, but he was not pleased with having to make this decision. This is known as the Rolling

I do not think that Lyndon Johnson was correct in assuming that the Eisenhower and Kennedy administration committed him to go into the Vietnam War. Personally, I believe that everyone makes their own decisions, regardless of what has happened previously. Obviously the decisions that were made in the past could affect the present decisions being made but at the end of the day, Lyndon Johnson committed himself to the War in Vietnam.

President Johnson used the Gulf of Tonkin as an excuse to declare war on Vietnam, which was believed to be fabricated, and was easily able to obtain the War Powers Act from congress. This lead to major protests from around the whole country, many thought the war was immoral, and many thought that the United States had no valid reason to intervene with the foreign affairs in Vietnam. This and many other protests from around the country made the 19060’s to be one of the most hostile decades in American history. In 1968 a killing of over 400 Vietnamese civilians later named the My Lai Massacre only added fuel to the protests flames, and it was clear that most Americans now disapproved of the war in Vietnam. 1969 these protests seemed to force politicians to end the

has adapted to the jungle and the way of life in Vietnam, he would be

The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was on August 7, 1964 and it gave Congress permission to expand the Vietnam War. In the spring of 1964, military personal developed a mission to attack North Vietnam, but Lyndon B. Johnson worried that the people would not support the growing war. Later that same year, powerful forces had gotten control over almost half of South Vietnam. As of that time Johnson was being criticized by the Senator Barry Goldwater, for not handling the war more aggressively. On August 2, there was a raid on the North Vietnamese coast by South Vietnamese warships, and the destroyer Maddox was attacked by North Vietnamese boats. Just a few days later Maddox was reportedly under attack again. After that last attack on the Maddox, Johnson

The failure of the Vietnam War is what made Johnson one of the most unknowledged presidents in American history in my opinion. In 1965 two years after Johnson’s inaugration America entered a large scale war in Vietnam. Johnson established a bombing progam ‘Operation Rolling Thunder’ against North Vietnam in 1965 that continued to 1968. Johnson just kept sending American troops into North Vietnam by late july 1965 Johnson had agreed ón another deployment of an additional deployment of 50,000 troops to Vietnam and he made all these massive military decisions without having any real military experince himself. Many people

However, Nixon added on to the losses in the war and the continuing of it for four more years. Even though Nixon had an agreement with Johnson not to do anything that would result in the undercut of the United States position, he went ahead and did it anyway. Nixon did not want Johnson to receive all the glory for stopping the ongoing war in Vietnam when his term was at its final days. Nixon received information from Richard Allen on the progress of the peace talks and made sure to convince Diem that they were not in his best interest. Nixon convinced Diem he’d come up with a better negotiation, Diem would only have to wait a couple weeks until Nixon was elected president. By the end of Johnson’s presidency he failed to end the war because

Johnson’s escalation in Vietnam was a defining moment of his presidency. Many things influenced him to escalate, including the cold war context, the advice from the working group, the weakness of the South Vietnamese Government, and protecting the US bases. I think that the main factor which influenced Johnson to escalate US Involvement was the advice given to him by the Working group because these were his closest and most trusted advisors.

President Johnson believed that we should escalate troop deployments. Mr. McNamara did not. It happened anyway and the United States faced repercussions because of it. The fighting in Vietnam was a civil war to the people of Vietnam, not a Cold War battle like the United States saw it as. We saw what we wanted to see, what we believed was going on.

President Kennedy saw the Vietnam situation as America’s fight to stop the spread of communism. Kennedy, who was young and well liked by the American people, did not really see much protest from the American people. He wanted equality in America, and supported open-mindedness in his country; at his assassination in 1963 only 15,000 troops were in Vietnam. His successor, Lyndon B. Johnson greatly increased the number of troops that went to Vietnam, reaching 500,000 in 1966. Television allowed the American public to see what these soldiers were facing and that this was a senseless war. Too many men were coming home in American flag draped coffins, causing many Americans to rebel and move to the new hippie counterculture.