lyndon b johnson why we are in vietnam lyndon b johnson why we are in vietnam

Detail from "The Conquest of Siberia" (1895) by Vasily Surikov. By December, with attacks increasing in the countryside, a look back at those earlier metrics revealed that State Department analyses were indeed on the mark.8, Yet Johnson did not need that retrospective appraisal to launch a more vigorous campaign against the Communists, for his first impulse as the new president was to shift the war into higher gear. by David White, The Japanese Occupation of China 1937-45: The Divided Opposition and its Consequences by David White, What was the Nazi Volksgemeinschaft and how successful was propaganda in realising the vision of a racially exclusive society? Kennedy was essentially continuing the anti-Communist containment policy of his predecessors, but he was also impelled by a sense that he had been repeatedly bested by the more experienced Khrushchev and needed to make a stand somewhere. Charges of cronyism and corruption had dogged the government of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem for years, sparking public condemnation of his rule as well as successive efforts at toppling his regime. Upon taking office, Johnson, also. Claiming unprovoked attacks by the North Vietnamese on American ships in international waters, the Johnson administration used the episodes to seek a congressional decree authorizing retaliation against North Vietnam. On election day Johnson defeated Goldwater easily, receiving more than 61 percent of the popular vote, the largest percentage ever for a presidential election; the vote in the electoral college was 486 to 52. President Lyndon B. Johnson, left, and Vice President Hubert Humphrey in 1968. In explaining why such a large deployment was neededit was clearly far more than was needed for the protection of the Americans remaining in the nations capital after many had already been evacuatedJohnson now offered a markedly different justification that emphasized anti-Communism over humanitarianism, saying that the United States must intervene to stop the bloodshed and to see a freely elected, non-Communist government take power.20 Privately, Johnson argued more bluntly that the intervention was necessary to prevent another Cuba. In the days following his address, a number of influential members of the American press and U.S. Congress questioned the basis for concluding that there was real risk of the Dominican Republic coming under Communist control. During the campaign Johnson portrayed himself as level-headed and reliable and suggested that Goldwater was a reckless extremist who might lead the country into a nuclear war. Both the education bills and Medicare were civil rights measures in their own right, making federal funding to schools and hospitals dependent on desegregation. Have Any U.S. Presidents Decided Not to Run For a Second Term? Concern about his personal credibility was also at work in Johnsons calculus. See Conversation WH6505-29-7812, 7813, 7814, 7815. Lyndon B. Johnson, also referred to as LBJ, was the 36th president of the United States of America from 1963-1969. 07/22/2017 11:41 PM EDT. May 12 Lyndon B. Johnson visits South Vietnam Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson meets with South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem in Saigon during his tour of Asian countries. But leftist sympathizers continued to press for his return, and in the spring of 1965 the situation escalated to armed uprising. Instead of a nation with a unique history, South Vietnam was a political compromise, the creation of the Great Powers (the US, the Soviet Union, China, France and the United Kingdom) at the 1954 Geneva Conference. The emergence of the William Bundy task force highlights a key dimension of the administrations policymaking process during this period. Beginning in 1965, student demonstrations grew larger and more frequent and helped to stimulate resistance to the draft. The present Vietnam collection does not include all of the tapes related to the Dominican intervention, but transcripts of those tapes are planned as future additions to the collection. Lyndon B. Johnson was the 36th president of the United States and was sworn into office following the November 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Though his . The troops arrived on 8 March, though Johnson endorsed the deployment prior to the first strikes themselves. As real-time information flowed in to the Pentagon from the Maddox and the C. Turner Joy, the story became more and more confused, and as frustratingly incomplete and often contradictory reports flowed into Washington, several high-ranking military and civilian officials became suspicious of the 4 August incident, questioning whether the attack was real or imagined. This was particularly true of his conversations with broadcast and print journalists, with whom he spoke on a regular basis. In response to these reported incidents, President Lyndon B. Johnson requested permission from the U.S. Congress to increase the U.S. military presence in Indochina. . Bettmann/Bettmann Archive. HIST 115 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Ngo Dinh Diem, 17Th Parallel North amaranthweasel363. Civilian rule in Saigon came to an end in mid-June as the Young Turksmilitary officials including Nguyen Van Thieu and Nguyen Cao Kyrose to prominence at the head of a new ruling war cabinet. In between lie incidents of increasingly greater magnitude, including the decision to deploy the Marines and the shift from defensive to offensive operations. In his April 1965 speech, Johnson limited himself to a defensive strategy of containment in Indochina. Original Vietnam War Personal & Field Gear, Original WW II US Field Gear & Equipment, Original WW II British Hats & Helmets; Additional site navigation. Meanwhile, as Johnsons reform consensus gradually unraveled, life for the nations poor, particularly African Americans living in inner-city slums in the North, failed to show significant improvement. Vast numbers of African Americans still suffered from unemployment, run-down schools, and lack of adequate medical care, and many were malnourished or hungry. In the late spring, developments closer to home offered striking parallels to the situation in Vietnam. Rotunda was created for the publication of original digital scholarship along with Instead his time in office is mostly associated with deepening American involvement in the war in Vietnam which ultimately proved futile. Hoping to apply more pressure on the Communists, the administration began to implement a series of tactics it had adopted in principle within the first week of Johnsons presidency. Bundys presence in Vietnam at the time of the Communist raids on Camp Holloway and Pleiku in early Februarywhich resulted in the death of nine Americansprovided additional justification for the more engaged policy the administration had been preparing. Lyndon Johnson's presidency began and ended with tragedy. In the spring and summer of 1965 Johnson was laboring to get through Congress some of the most controversial of his Great Society programs: the Voting Rights Act, federal aid to education, and Medicare, among others. His constant refrain about continuity and legality appears to have been as much a justification/rationalisation as a cause of his choices and actions. Like sending troops in there to Santo Domingo. Using its own defense measures and aided by aircraft from the nearby aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga, the Maddox resisted the attack and the North Vietnamese boats retreated. I think everybodys going to think, were landing the Marines, were off to battle., President Lyndon B. Johnson, 6 March 19651. Broad planning for the war often took place on an interagency basis and frequently at levels removed from those of the administrations most senior officials. His limited goal was to keep North Vietnam from destroying South . His report to LBJ was not a happy one, as signs pointed to a deterioration in South Vietnamese morale and an acceleration of Communist success. But segregationists and red-baiters might well have blocked the civil rights achievements of the Great Society, prompting racial conflict at home that would have made Detroit seem like a picnic. Never during the ten-year-long Second Indochinese war did a government emerge in Saigon worthy of the support of the people of South Vietnam. Indeed, George Ball predicted that the United States would eventually have to put half a million troops in Vietnam, a prediction which Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara vehemently rejected. Some citizens of South Viet-Nam at times, with understandable grievances, have joined in the attack on their own government. Lyndon B. Johnson's tenure as the 36th president of the United States began on November 22, 1963 following the assassination of President Kennedy and ended on January 20, 1969. The primary charge against Johnson was that he had violated the Tenure of Office Act, passed by Congress in March 1867 over Johnson's veto. Get the detailed answer: Why did America get involved in the Vietnam conflict? Restoration of colonial rule fanned the flames of nationalism still further in Vietnam, and significantly elevated the role of the Communist element within the national resistance to the point where it dominated what had previously been a politically broad-based independence movement. Yet Johnson was a genuine social reformer who wished to raise Americans out of poverty, expand education, provide enhanced welfare and free medical care, tackle urban renewal, preserve and protect the environment and end racial discrimination the Great Society vision. We beat the Communists first, then we can look around and maybe give something to the poor., It was for these reasons that Johnson carried out the military escalation quietly and almost clandestinely. From the incidents in the Tonkin Gulf in August 1964 to the deployment of forty-four combat troop battalions in July 1965, these months span congressional authorization for military action as well as the Americanization of the conflict. He was following the political interpretation and policy direction known as Containment which had first been suggested by George Kennan and adopted by Harry Truman in 1947. Lyndon Johnson. The regimes that followed in the wake of Ngo Dinh Diem, who was ousted in a coup in 1963, were particularly weak and corrupt. . Limited war was a guiding principle restraining successive US presidents for fear of triggering Chinese or Russian intervention as had happened in Korea in 1950. He advanced the Kennedy legacy, obtaining far more than Kennedy would likely have gotten out of Congress, and then won a . "I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party as your President." President Lyndon Johnson telling the nation on March 31, 1968 that he would not seek reelection. Johnson accepted the offer of his friend and confidant Abe Fortas to undertake a secret mission to Puerto Rico to negotiate with Bosch, someone Fortas had come to know through mutual contacts. By Andrew Glass. In an effort to achieve consensus about security requirements for those troops, key personnel undertook a review in Honolulu on 20 April. But LBJ was equally committed to winning the fight against the Communist insurgency in Vietnama fight that Kennedy had joined during his thousand days in office. Comprised of figures from the business, scientific, academic, and diplomatic communities, as well as both Democrats and Republicans, these wise men came to Washington in July to meet with senior civilian and military officials, as well as with Johnson himself. The undesirability of renewed colonialism was seen as a lesser evil, so first Truman and then Eisenhower switched support from the indigenous independence forces to their more powerful ally, France. governance Fears of a general race war were in the air. Woods, Conflicted Hegemon: LBJ and the Dominican Republic,. An Asia so threatened by Communist domination would certainly imperil the security of the United States itself. "The. In a sense, Johnson was able to avoid the label he so greatly feared would be pinned to his name. Nevertheless, the State Departments influence in Vietnam planning was on the rise, as it had been since early 1963. US Information Agency Fifty years ago, during the first six months of 1965, Lyndon Johnson made the decision to Americanize the conflict in Vietnam. He risked his own career for the good of the people in the United States. Two days later, on the night of 4 August, the Maddox and another destroyer that had joined it, the USS C. Turner Joy, reported a new round of attacks by North Vietnamese military forces. He began his career as a teacher. Homework Help 3,800,000. Since 1954 every American President has offered support to the people of South Vietnam Our objective is the independence of South Vietnam We want nothing for ourselves. Unhappy with U.S. complicity in the Saigon coup yet unwilling to deviate from Kennedys approach to the conflict, Johnson vowed not to lose the war. George Herring describes Johnson as a product of the hinterland, parochial, strongly nationalistic, deeply concerned about honor and reputation, suspicious of other peoples and nations and especially of international institutions.. Meeting with his top civilian advisers on Vietnam, LBJ told them to forget about the social, economic, and political reforms that Kennedy had stressed. The credibility concerns of Johnson and his advisers were not limited to how the USA would be viewed if it did withdraw it would not have been seriously damaged since only Australia, Thailand, the Philippines, Taiwan and South Korea backed continued American involvement it was equally the threat to their own and the Democratic partys standing. In response, President Johnson ordered retaliatory strikes against North Vietnam and asked Congress to sanction any further action he might take to deter Communist aggression in Southeast Asia. This section is for pieces, both published and unpublished, which Open History Society members have written. On 7 April, before an audience at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, LBJ outlined a program of economic aid for both South and North Vietnam, characterized by efforts to fund a $1 billion project to harness the productive power of the Mekong River. Sponsored. In an effort to provide greater security for these installations, Johnson sanctioned the dispatch of two Marine battalions to Danang in early March. In April 1964 US intelligence reported that substantial numbers of regular North Vietnamese troops were infiltrating into South Vietnam via the Ho Chi Minh Trail. McNamaras arrival and report back to Johnson on 21 July began the final week of preparations that would lead to Johnsons announcement of the expanded American commitment. The first phase began on 14 December with Operation Barrel Rollthe bombing of supply lines in Laos.13. Lyndon B. Johnson, Tet Offensive champagnecrow196. Copyright 2014 by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia. Out of that process came Johnsons decision to expand the number of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam to eighty-two thousand. Beginning in the mid-1960s, violence erupted in several cities, as the country suffered through long, hot summers of riots or the threat of riotsin the Watts district of Los Angeles (1965), in Cleveland, Ohio (1966), in Newark, New Jersey, and Detroit, Michigan (1967), in Washington, D.C. (1968), and elsewhere. Thus ideological inflexibility and political self-interest snuffed out any alternative to escalation; and Johnsons pride and his domineering, machismo character led him to see any weakening of the American position in Vietnam as a personal humiliation. Like other major decisions he made during the escalatory process, it was not one Johnson came to without a great deal of anxiety. American intelligence and Foreign Service operatives on the ground began requesting new assignments. Critics accused the Johnson administration of overreacting and lending too much credence to unsubstantiated claims of strong Communist influence amongst the rebel factions. April 7, 1965 Kennedys largesse would also extend to the broader provision of foreign aid, as his administration increased the amount of combined military and economic assistance from $223 million in FY1961 to $471 million by FY1963.2, Those outlays, however, contributed neither to greater success in the counterinsurgency nor to the stabilization of South Vietnamese politics. Start filling in the gaps now. The flag of Vietnamese nationalism had been captured by the Communist leader Ho Chi Minh and his followers in the north: it would not be easily wrested from them. No interest on the part of the North Vietnamese was forthcoming. This coincided with the assassination of Diem (with American collusion) and subsequent chaos in the South Vietnamese government, administration and army. The Military Draft During the Vietnam War. Specifically, he had removed from office Edwin Stanton, the secretary of war whom the act was largely designed to protect. strives to apply the lessons of history to the nations most pressing contemporary Compounding the new administrations problems was the realization that earlier assumptions about progress in the war were ill-founded. The Soviets supplied North Vietnam by sea. Prior to finalizing any decision to commit those forces, however, Johnson sent Secretary of Defense McNamara to Saigon for discussions with Westmoreland and his aides. His extraordinarily slim margin of victory87 votes out of 988,000 votes castearned him the nickname "Landslide Lyndon." He remained in the Senate for 12 years, becoming Democratic whip in 1951 and minority leader in 1953. I don't always know whats right. "Why We Are in Vietnam". The presence of several policy options, however, did not translate into freewheeling discussions with the President over the relative merits of numerous strategies. Home. These forces were, however, largely used for search-and-destroy missions because the administration was receiving reports that the South was about to collapse, a concern that grew when it was realised that the air offensive was making little impact on the war in the South. In coming weeks and months, questions and doubts about the necessity of the military intervention grew. Escalation was achieved through use of the Congressional Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of 1964 which empowered the president to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent any further aggression.. In thinking about Vietnam, the model LBJ had in mind was South Korea. There you will be made to feel welcome by one of our committee members. Johnson interpreted his victory as an extraordinary mandate to push forward with his Great Society reforms. Johnson quotes Southeast Asian leaders who agree that the U.S. presence is integral to preventing the malevolent spread of communism. Balls arguments about the many challenges the United States faced in Vietnam were far outweighed by the many pressures Johnson believed were weighing on him to make that commitment. He considered the depth and extent of poverty in the country (nearly 20 percent of Americans at the time were poor) to be a national disgrace that merited a national response. Only that way, he argued, could he sell the compromise to powerful members of Congress. As he expressed to longtime confidant Senator Richard Russell (D-Georgia), LBJ understood the symbolism of sending the Marines and their likely impact on the combat role the United States was coming to play, both in reality and in the minds of the American public.16. But the man that misled me was Lyndon Johnson, nobody else. Johnson rejected a legislative strategy that would have entailed open-ended discussion, preferring to obtain the funds under the authority Congress granted him via the Tonkin Gulf Resolution of August 1964a move, he knew, that would further ratify that authority should he need to act even more boldly in the future. . He came into office after the death of a popular young President and provided needed continuity and stability. Sometimes I take other people's judgments, and I get misled. . President Lyndon B. Johnson expanded American air operations in August 1964, when he authorized retaliatory air strikes against North Vietnam following a reported attack on U.S. warships in. So did his long time mentor and friend, Senator Richard Russell of Georgia. But that endgame, when it did come during the administration of President Richard M. Nixon, was deeply contingent on the course that Johnson set, particularly as it flowed out of key decisions he took as president both before and after his election to office. The size of those forces would be considerable: a total of 44 free world battalions, 34 of which would be American, totaling roughly 184,000 troopsa sizeable increase from the 70,000 then authorized for deployment to the South. Nevertheless, it remained dissatisfied with progress in counterinsurgency, leading Secretary of Defense McNamara to undertake a fact-finding mission to Vietnam in March 1964. Shortly after, he vented to adviser McGeorge Bundy in a now familiar monologue: I dont think its [South Vietnam] worth fighting for and I dont think that we can get out. by David White, Medical Mayhem in the US Civil War? A genuine Communist threat had effectively been created by US policy, based on the speculative domino theory, and this was amplified when the French were defeated and pulled out of south-east Asia. If anything, he encouraged his closest advisers to work even harder at helping South Vietnam prosecute the counterinsurgency. President Lyndon B. Johnson is shown during his nationwide television broadcast from the White House on March 31, 1968. If I left the woman I really loved the Great Society in order to get involved in that bitch of a war on the other side of the world, then I would lose everything at home But if I left that war and let the Communists take over South Vietnam, then I would be seen as a coward and my nation would be seen as an appeaser and we would both find it impossible to accomplish anything for anybody anywhere on the entire globe. The North Vietnam Army and the underground Vietcong were free to move in and out of their sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia. The president responded by appointing a special panel to report on the crisis, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, which concluded that the country was in danger of dividing into two societiesone white, one Black, separate and unequal., Examine President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society legislation and handling of the Vietnam War, Analyze the effects of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passed under the Lyndon Johnson administration during the Vietnam War. Johnson saw no evidence that President Kennedy had intended to deescalate. Johnson opted not to respond militarily just hours before Americans would go to the polls. Theres not a bit.25 Coming on the eve of Johnsons dispatch of the Marines to Vietnam, it was not a promising way to begin a war. There are no marching armies or solemn declarations. Those pressures were rooted in fears about domestic as well as international consequences. It meant in particular that America could never send ground troops into the North. American casualties gradually mounted, reaching nearly 500 a week by the end of 1967. As the transcripts included in this volume of taped conversations indicate, those decisions were often agonizing ones, conditioned by the perception that Vietnam was a war that he could neither abandon nor likely win. Passed nearly unanimously by Congress on 7 August and signed into law three days later, the Tonkin Gulf Resolutionor Southeast Asia Resolution, as it was officially knownwas a pivotal moment in the war and gave the Johnson administration a broad mandate to escalate U.S. military involvement in Vietnam. 1965 Department of State Pamphlet We Will Stand With Viet-Nam Lyndon B Johnson. While Johnson resumed the bombing and increased its intensity following the failure of MAYFLOWER, South Vietnam continued to suffer increasing strain from both political instability and pressure from Communists. Having secured Congressional authorization with the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, Johnson launched a bombing campaign in the North, and in March 1965, dispatched 3,500 marines to South Vietnam. The job, therefore, couldnt be finished which would mean an open-ended commitment. $29.95 + $5.85 shipping. Those 3,500 soldiers were the first combat troops the United States had dispatched to South Vietnam to support the Saigon government in its effort to defeat an increasingly lethal Communist insurgency. In documenting those private uncertainties, the Dominican Crisis tapes share characteristics with the tapes of what became a much larger and more serious crisis where U.S. intervention was simultaneously and rapidly escalating: Vietnam. Many more would be required to regain the initiative and then to mount the win phase of the conflict. We are there because we have a promise to keep. Image Those Tuesday Lunches would involve a changing array of attendees over the course of the next two years and, by 1967, would become an integral though unofficial part of the policymaking machinery.15. The shuffling and reshuffling of military personnel also contributed to Diems troubles, further undermining the counterinsurgency; indeed, by reserving some of the Souths best troops for his own personal protection instead of sending them out to defeat the Communists, Diem contributed to the very incidenthis forcible removal from powerhe was trying to forestall.3 A poor showing against the Vietcong at the battle of Ap Bac in January 1963 sparked the most probing questions to date about those personnel shifts and about the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). Johnson, a southerner himself, worked to persuade congressmen and senators from the former Confederacy to acquiesce in, if not actively support, passage of these measures. Press Conference, July 28, 1965. And like most politicians he routinely asserted that everything was done for principled non-self-regarding reasons: Why are we in South Vietnam? technological innovation designed for scholars and Elected to the presidency in December 1962, Bosch had proved popular with the general population. President Lyndon B. Johnson announces that he has ordered an increase in U.S. military forces in Vietnam, from the present 75,000 to 125,000.Johnson also said that he would order additional increases if necessary. American lives are in danger.18 With the concurrence of his national security advisers, Johnson immediately ordered four hundred U.S. Marines to the Dominican Republic, a deployment he announced in a brief, televised statement from the White House theater at 8:40 p.m. that evening. These were: that America keeps her word; that the future of all south-east Asia was the issue; that our purpose is peace; and that the war was a struggle for freedom. Lyndon B. Johnson, Why We Are in Vietnam, 1965 By the summer of 1964 the Johnson Administration had already made secret plans to escalate the American military presence in . As his popularity sank to new lows in 1967, Johnson was confronted by demonstrations almost everywhere he went. By mid-March, therefore, Johnson began to consider additional proposals for expanding the American combat presence in South Vietnam.