Why did Johnson escalate key involvement in Vietnam Essay

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

LBJ’s decision to Americanize the war was not wise and well-informed, an accurate answer for U.S. defeat in Vietnam was the decision to Americanize the war. Influencing the belief that Johnson’ decision to escalate appeared to have been predetermined; Johnson consistently appeared to be in favor of increasing military in South Vietnam, and he only needed something to happen in order to validate his reasoning for the increase of U.S. involvement. This something was the Tonkin Gulf incident and this event became Johnson’s basis “to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States…” (Young, 119); that this was a declaration of war (Hunt, 67). However, this incident, as Nicholas Katzenbach said, “was

The Vietnam War lasted longer, bloodier, and more hostile than any U.S. President or American citizen imagined. Lyndon Johnson faced many other enemies during the war such as the duration, the immense number of deaths, and for the first time in most American’s history, failure. Through deep evaluation of Lyndon B. Johnson’s foreign policies as President during the Vietnam war, failure was a recurring outcome, as he faced military and political difficulties over having complete authority over political decisions made leading to the misuse of his respective power, receiving split support through torn Americans at home, and his accord to deport so many troops into combat in Vietnam.

In the months that came before or proceeded the 1964 presidential election, Johnson was mocked or blamed by the Republican candidate, Barry Goldwater, for being too soft in his approach to North Vietnamese military. In response to these comments by Barry Goldwater, Johnson told the public that he was not prepared to send US troops thousands of miles overseas to do what the South Vietnamese Army should be doing this whole time which was to protecting their own people. Johnson won the 1964 election by a landslide. Among the vast array of bills that he got passed were health assistance for the elderly and the poor and measures to protect the environment, increase aid to education, prohibit discrimination in housing, and protect consumer. Johnson hoped to pressure the North Vietnamese and their Viet Cong allies to give up, while at the same time avoid drawing China or the Soviet Union into the fighting. He had sent 550,000 U.S. troops to South Vietnam by 1967, a vast increase from the 16,000 that had been there when he succeeded to the presidency in November 1963. His failure to honestly discuss how badly the war was going and to reveal the true costs of the conflict led to a credibility gap with voters. He also badly underestimated the determination of the enemy to win. The Great Society did make some historic achievements,

Social and economic tensions were not the only things strained because of the war, political activities were on the brink as well. The Domino Theory, speculation that if one country takes another to communism, the surrounding countries will fall to it as well, was one of the main reasons for starting the war. If the Domino Theory had occurred, the United States would suffer a horrible loss to foreign affairs, something they were not able to handle at that time. When the affair in the Gulf of Tonkin happened in 1964, the U.S. government jumped on the idea to stop Vietnam. In the Gulf of Tonkin, a ship, the U.S.S. Maddox, was attacked by Vietnam patrol boats. Even though the Maddox was unhurt, the LBJ jumped on the opportunity to squash the Domino Effect before it started. Soon after the attack, Lyndon B Johnson got the ‘stamp of approval’ from Congress to counter attack. He was allowed to “Take all necessary measure to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.” (Doc A) Little did they know that their

The Vietnam War, lasting for approximately 20 years, was the longest and one of the most controversial wars in American history. Not only did the war take a heavy toll on the American troops fighting abroad, but it also led to riots and tension amongst Americans on the homefront. Two presidents devoted to winning the war against the spread of Communism in Vietnam as quickly and effectively as possible were Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. Although Johnson was a Democrat and Nixon was a Republican, their foreign policies in Vietnam were similar because they both kept secrets about the war from Congress and because both of their foreign policies were disliked by the American public. However, they differed because Johnson escalated the United

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

Lyndon B. Johnson became the 36th president of the United States on November 22, 1963. It was after Kennedy’s assassination that Johnson was sworn in as president. To the people, the great majority thought Lyndon Johnson was safe and secure. Johnson however, was a southerner who was profoundly insecure and desperately desired to be liked; yet he constantly did things to alienate himself. Johnson did many things for the general welfare with the Great Society such as federal aid to education, the Civil Rights Act, Medicare and the Voting Rights Act. While Johnson reforms in the arts and humanities, and the environment changed the face of America, he had kept many Americans ignorant about Vietnam. Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency can be seen as an act of heroism, in fact he would have been considered a great president if had not got involved in Vietnam. Johnson’s fatal flaw, like other heroes in Shakespearean tragedies, had a weakness in

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

For this reason the United States became involved in Vietnam because it believed that if all of the country fell under a Communist

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.

American Public Opinion of the Vietnam War At the beginning of the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, in 1965, the American Public favored the idea of war because they feared the threat of communism. Polls conducted in 1965, showed 80 percent of the population agreed with President Johnson and were for the war (Rousseau 11). The U.S. got involved with the war to stop communism from spreading throughout South Asia. Americans were afraid if one country on South Asia turned to communism, it would extend to other countries, which is known as the "Domino Theory".

He wanted to stop North Vietnamese Communists from taking over South Vietnam government in which the U.S. supported. Johnson believed that America’s national security depended on stopping the spread of communism around the world. American and Vietnamese causalities increased, and anti-war protests went on around college campuses and cities across the U.S. Johnson was no longer popular with his own Democratic Party. Johnson announced his decision to not run for reelection because it appeared that he might face a hard challenge for the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination. Johnson decided he wanted to focus on issues without dealing with the stress of a political campaign. The issues with Vietnam brought him nothing but pain and frustration during his last months in office. For four more years, the U.S. military involvement continued in Vietnam even after Johnson left Washington in January 1969. Johnson moved to his ranch in Texas. Here he worked on establishing his presidential library and writing his memoirs. On January 22, 1973, he had a heart attack. He died at his ranch at the age of 64.

What made this even more difficult was that he “had not given much attention to Vietnam or to foreign affairs in general” (Moise 30). For a nation like the United States in need of a decision on the fly, this was very troubling. Earlier “President Johnson felt that Harry Truman, in 1950, had erred by going into the Korean War without getting firm commitment of support from the congress” (Moise 226). In other words it appeared to be that Johnson would be careful about getting involved in a conflict like Vietnam. Being careful to say the least was not the case at all.

United States Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy had spent millions of dollars to aid the non-communist South Vietnamese. Before 1964 thousands of American military advisers were training and assisting the South Vietnamese army. President Lyndon B. Johnson’s decision to bomb North Vietnam put the United States in the center of the longest war in the nations history. The Vietcong (North Vietnamese) grew more aggressive after the incident at the Gulf of Tonkin. On November 1964, they attacked the American base at Bien Hoa and destroyed five B-57 jets while damaging twenty more. Since the increase of tension with the Vietcong continued, draft calls had increased substantially in the United States and American casualties were being felt across the country.