Vietnam War Propaganda

Today we hear the word war and thoughts shift to the Middle East. In the 60’s we may have thought about Vietnam, in the 40’s perhaps Pearl Harbor or Hitler and in the 20’s maybe the U Boat or the Red Barron. The supposed winner and loser in each war may have crossed the mind as well but not much more. Why did these wars happen? What was being fought for and who was making the sacrifice? In David W. Blight’s article, “The meaning or the fight: Frederick Douglass and the memory of the fifty fourth Massachusetts,” he proves that in modern American society the memory of war is that of a fight and not of what was being fought for. Media, the entertainment industry, and even our education systems paint quite a different picture for each of us.

Vietnam in 1954 was a country that had nationalism flowing in their veins after the decades of being under French and for a short time the Japanese rule. All the Vietnamese wanted was to be its own country. The North started fighting back the French and did whatever they could to take back their homeland. The French were beginning to feel this under the numerous attacks the Vietnamese started against them. A number of nations met to determine how the French could peacefully withdraw. The Geneva Accords came from the meetings and a cease fire was initiated. The French left and their was a temporary division along the 17th parallel. A democratic election was to be held in 1956 that would reunite the country under one government.

In this journal, Mitchell Lerner offers his assessment on the commonly accepted view among historians and people generally that Lyndon B. Johnson’s popularity declined due to the way he handled U.S involvement in the Vietnam War, by keeping the growing involvement a secret and not being truly honest about the odds how a victory in this war. . However, Lerner argues that this evaluation of Johnson fails to take into account several aspects pertaining to Johnson himself and the political atmosphere of the late 20th century. Lerner first claims that Johnson did attempt to make his intentions with Vietnam explicit, but either his words were ignored or misinterpreted by many Americans. Additionally, Lerner asserts that Johnson actions in Vietnam, like increasing the amount of U.S ground troops in Vietnam, should have also made Johnson commitment to Vietnam evident. Again though, Johnson actions were ignored by the American people. Lerner reasons that the American people generally ignored Johnson’s affairs in Vietnam because they were more concerned with domestic issues plaguing the United

In reality, his main concern as president was to ‘provide education and medical care to the browns and the blacks and the lame and the poor’ (Hunt 72). He wanted to focus on social reforms but with Vietnam looming, he had no choice but to try to handle that situation and to end the wishy – washy debates on the war that occurred in the homes of Americans. Johnson wanted ground troops; all he needed was a reason to send them there. The sooner he sent troops to crush communism, the sooner he’ll be working on his domestic programs (Hunt 79). President Johnson first started by launching sorties against the North Vietnamese, then when that wasn’t working as fast, wanted ground troops to do the dirty work. The only thing this president needed was a reason to send combat troops. Obviously, he completely disregarded the lessons from the past and so after the second Gulf of Tonkin Incident, proclaimed that ‘he didn’t just screw Ho Chi Minh, he cut his pecker off,’ (Hunt 85). This, of course, was said after he destroyed a few Northern Vietnamese facilities. As the years worn on, public support for the war decreased and, different advisors brought up the thought of that this was a place that a ground war should not be found, “They would go into Vietnam as foreigners lacking local cooperation’s and good intelligence and fighting in unfavorable jungle terrain, “ warned Secretary of State George Ball (Hunt 103). Nevertheless, President Johnson did not want to hear anything about it and declared war against

Regarded as one of the most controversial and polarizing military conflicts in U.S. history, the Vietnam War has left a deep and lasting impact on American culture, politics, and foreign policy. From 1964 to the present day, the Vietnam War redefined the scope of U.S. influence both at home and abroad, and caused a fundamental shift in American society that dramatically changed the way in which Americans viewed their government and the role of the United States as a world power. For an entire generation of Americans, who watched as the horrors of the war in Vietnam unfold before the spotlight of the national media, the Vietnam War directly challenged the superiority of the American way and the infallibility of U.S military dominance. In truth, the U.S government, U.S. military, and the American people as a whole struggled to accept the lessons of America’s greatest military failure and the sobering reality of the war’s consequences. To this day, the legacy of this so-called “American War” continues to resonate throughout the fabric of American society as a cautionary tale of U.S foreign intervention and blind acceptance of open-ended conflict.

The Vietnam War had discredited the United States’ stereotype of being the strongest world power for being “undefeatable” in war by trapping the most powerful foreign nations into a merely undefeatable war, and by destroying any hope that the United States had for institutional change in Vietnam. The United States’ involvement in domestic affairs had again proved that the nation felt confident enough to present itself as the “problem solver” in issues regarding foreign policy. The main intention of Americans was to bring forth an established democracy to Vietnam that would overpower

War is often seen as a sensitive and debatable topic and one of the most controversial wars to have ever been fought was the Vietnam War. In Lyndon B, Johnson’s “Speech on Vietnam (September 29.1967)” and Martin Luther King’s speech, “Why I am opposed to the War in Vietnam” we are offered two different perspectives on this matter. While Johnson provides reasoning on why we should fight the war, it is King’s speech that shows a more compassionate side to Vietnam that I agree with.

how to get there. What went wrong was Johnson’s foreign policy: foremost, the disaster of Vietnam.

In the mid-1960s, Lyndon B. Johnson tacked his name onto a long list of U.S. presidents presiding over conflict in Vietnam. More so than his predecessors, however, President Johnson’s involvement was arguably more significant, because he was the first U.S. president to commit the United States to a ground war in Vietnam. His escalation of the war in early-1965 came as a surprise to many, considering his pledge to deescalate the conflict during the 1964 election campaign against Republican Barry Goldwater. However, in analyzing declassified executive documents, the Johnson Administration had, by the summer of 1964, decided that escalation in Vietnam was the only course of action which could feasibly end the conflict and establish stability in the region. Following President Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, Johnson felt it necessary to continue his predecessor’s legacy in Vietnam, although his reasons for doing so were less refined than were Kennedy’s. Unconfident in foreign affairs, Johnson was assured in one thing: his alarmist views on the spread of communism. Spurred on by the criticism of his contemporary Republican opponents, Johnson took a hardline stance at the beginning of his presidency, declaring that he would do whatever necessary to stop the spread of communism in Southeast Asia. Furthermore, understanding that a withdrawal from Vietnam would undercut the legitimacy of U.S. foreign commitments, Johnson—albeit reluctantly—ignored the suggestions of political

Johnson and his advisors did what they thought Kennedy would have done and increased American forces to aid in the Vietnam conflict although Johnson remained reluctant (Moss, 2010 p.122). The critical military questions were how much U.S. assistance was enough and what form it should take (Anderson, 1999).

After John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November of 1963, Lyndon B. Johnson was immediately sworn in to take his place. Kennedy was killed at a crucial time in his presidency. Kennedy had recently killed off the Vietnam leader that the United States had put into power, Diem. Due to this and an overall increase in soldiers fighting, the combat in Vietnam was beginning to thicken more than it ever had. Lyndon B. Johnson was left with a lot on his plate, but he still maintained a strong belief to not “lose Vietnam.” Therefore, as the Viet Cong became more of a threat to our nation’s security, Johnson sent more troops to fight against the oppressive nature of communism.

Although war comes with risk, leaders often find it inevitable when it comes to assuring the safety of their citizens. The Vietnam War was a significant movement in history that extended from 1965 – 1973 through the political years of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. The antiwar movement caused division within the administration as to the deciding factors of the United States involvement in Vietnam. Their decisions caused the most traumatizing event of the 20th Century. More than two decades ago the longest war ended, yet questions remain unanswered: what was the motivation of President Kennedy and his administration (Nolting, Lodge, Rusk and McNamara) to get involved in the Vietnam War, the role of Diem and the escalation of

The overall efforts of the United States in Vietnam has been described as a ‘war of liberation’ this can also be used to define Eisenhower’s overall policy towards Vietnam as it was based fundamentally on the fear that it was ‘certain that the fall of Vietnam to Communism would lead to the loss of all of Southern Asia’ and in an attempt to prevent this; his administration adopted a new policy of nation building. The overall aim of nation building was to build a Western government within Vietnam that would be strong enough to withstand Communism and also build a new Vietnamese nation. This was done by appointing Diem; a Catholic, to run North Vietnam with the belief that him acting as a figurehead would make it less likely for Ho Chin Minh to take power of Vietnam. Herring further explains ‘The Eisenhower administration after Geneva firmly committed itself to creating in the Southern part of the country a nation that would stand as a bulwark against Communist expansion.’ However, this did not happen without its consequences, for example: this over amplified American’s commitment to Vietnam by following the precedent policies by Truman aligned the United States with unstable and unrepresentative regime, and ultimately failed in laying the foundations for a completely stable nation as David L Anderson explained America

The Vietnam War and Korean War greatly changed America forever. It was the longest war fought in America’s history, lasting from 1950 to 1973. Both of the Wars ruined America’s self-image by waging war against the people of Korea and Vietnam becoming the first time in history the United States failed to accomplish its stated war aims, to preserve a separate, independent, non-communist government. The elections had great effects on the America, as the communist parties of Korea and Vietnam led millions of their people to restore the independence of each individual country. The Americans strictly against national elections rose to take control, but ended up mishandling the situation. Now the question is not about how come they did this, but

In the two hundred years since 1775, there has been thirty-five years of fighting in what we consider major conflicts or wars. This averages out to about one year of war to every almost 6 years of our existence as a nation and during that time, we have not been without formal military organizations. Over the course of history, the United States has engaged in many battles that were a crucial phase in developing who and what we have become. Throughout this assessment, we will analyze what were some of the true tipping points that shaped (1) America’s paradoxical love-hate relationship with war and, (2) How this relationship influences American warfare.