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Lyndon b johnson and the vietnam war
Vietnam war history
Kennedy and the vietnam war
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against insurgents in Malaya, it didn’t work in Vietnam. The peasants resented being forced from their ancestral lands, and consolidating them gave the VC better targets. The program, which had been poorly managed, was abandoned after about two years, following the coup that deposed Diem” (HistoryNet).
In November, a coup deposed Diem, with the blessing of Kennedy’s administration, which had quietly assured South Vietnam’s military leaders it was not adverse to a change in leadership and military aid would continue.That same month, Kennedy himself was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. His successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson, inherited the Vietnam situation. Johnson wanted to focus on instituting “Great Society” programs at home, but Vietnam
was a snake he did not dare let go. Soon after there was the turning point at Tet. The North Vietnamese launched a wave of attacks in the late night hours of 30 January in the I and II Corps Tactical Zones of South Vietnam.Though initial attacks stunned both the US and South Vietnamese armies, causing them to temporarily lose control of several cities, they quickly regrouped, beat back the attacks, and inflicted heavy casualties on North Vietnamese.North Vietnamese were being defeated and incapable of launching such an ambitious military operation, whereupon the U.S. public support for the war declined and the U.S. sought negotiations to end the war. The North Vietnam ends up winning the war, thanks to great support of the U.S. No longer under foreign powers.
The relationship between conventional and guerilla operations was a key element of the Vietnamese communists’ “Dau Tranh” strategy to fight and win the Vietnam War. A brief description of the Dua Tranh (meaning struggle) strategy is appropriate since it was the basis for North Vietnam’s success. The strategy consisted of an armed struggle and a political struggle. The armed struggle began with Stage One hit and run guerilla tactics to “decimate the enemy piecemeal and weaken then eliminate the government’s administrative control of the countryside...
The aftermath — No More Vietnams — is well-covered in Appy’s work. The No More Vietnam mantra is usually presented as avoiding quagmires, focusing on quick, sharp wins. Instead, Appy shows politicians have manipulated No More Vietnams into meaning greater secrecy (think Central America in the 1980’s), more over-the-top justifications (“You don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud”) and an emphasis on keeping American deaths inside the acceptable limits of the day to tamp down any public anti-war sentiment.
In the fall of 1963 Kennedy’s Administration was preparing campaigns for the election of 1964 in hopes of bringing the fragile Texas Democratic Party closer. The Kennedys headed to Dallas on the morning of November 22, 1963 to attend a scheduled luncheon. On that tragic day President Kennedy was assassinated in a senseless act of violence. Within the next few hours, Vice President Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as president. In the midst of a grieving country, he was given the duty of handling a transition in leadership and presenting an acceptance speech before Congress. LBJ gave his acceptance speech of the U.S. presidency in front of Congress just five short days after John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. Expectations were high but then again no one knew what was to come of LBJ as president. In a time of much confusion throughout the country, it was his responsibility to reassure the American people about the nations’ immediate future and how he would handle the unfinished business and social issues that JFK had begun.
From 1954-1963, Diem presided over an increasingly corrupt, devious, and repressive regime. Communist guerrillas backed by North Vietnam launched a new rebellion, but a civil disobedience campaign led by the country's Buddhist monks contributed more directly to his downfall. Brutal persecution of the dissident monks in 1963 damaged the regime's already shaky international reputation. With American support, Vietnamese generals overthrew and assassinated Ngo later that year.
JOHN F. KENNEDY IN VIETNAM There are many critical questions surrounding United States involvement in Vietnam. American entry to Vietnam was a series of many choices made by five successive presidents during these years of 1945-1975. The policies of John F. Kennedy during the years of 1961-1963 were ones of military action, diplomacy, and liberalism. Each of his decision was on its merits at the time the decision was made. The belief that Vietnam was a test of the Americas ability to defeat communists in Vietnam lay at the center of Kennedy¡¦s policy. Kennedy promised in his inaugural address, Let every nation know...that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty. From the 1880s until World War II, France governed Vietnam as part of French Indochina, which also included Cambodia and Laos. The country was under the formal control of an emperor, Bao Dai. From 1946 until 1954, the Vietnamese struggled for their independence from France during the first Indochina War. At the end of this war, the country was temporarily divided into North and South Vietnam. North Vietnam came under the control of the Vietnamese Communists who had opposed France and aimed for a unified Vietnam under Communist rule. Vietnamese who had collaborated with the French controlled the South. For this reason the United States became involved in Vietnam because it believed that if all of the country fell under a Communist government, Communism would spread throughout Southeast Asia and further. This belief was known as the domino theory. The decision to enter Vietnam reflected America¡¦s idea of its global role-U.S. could not recoil from world leadership. The U.S. government supported the South Vietnamese government. The U.S. government wanted to establish the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), which extended protection to South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos in case of Communist subversion. SEATO, which came into force in 1955, became the way which Washington justified its support for South Vietnam; this support eventually became direct involvement of U.S. troops. In 1955, the United States picked Ngo Dinh Diem to replace Bao Dai as head of the anti-Communist regime in South Vietnam. Eisenhower chose to support Ngo Dinh Diem. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born in Brookline, Mass., on May 29, 1917. Kennedy graduated from Harvard University in 1940 and joined the Navy the next year.
This brief biography of Lyndon Johnson outlined his life beginning in rural Texas and followed the ups and downs of his political career. It discusses his liberal, "active government" mentality and its implications on both domestic and foreign issues. Johnson was obviously a man who knew how to get things done but his "under the table" methods are brought into question in this book, although, in my opinion, Schulman presents a fairly positive portrayal of LBJ.
The question becomes how would the course of American History, primarily Vietnam, be different had Kennedy remained President. To truly answer the question, would the Vietnam war still occur under the Kennedy administration, first analyze how Kennedy handled the situation in Cuba and the Cold War, use reasonable and presented evidence to make a ruling on whether or not the Vietnam War would occur, and the last looks at why Johnson invaded Vietnam and the Kennedy memory. The Kennedy assassination was a noteworthy turning point in history as the conflict in Vietnam would never occur since Kennedy was skeptical and cognizant when deciding on foreign policy issues, on top of having little to gain from a war in
... Ngo Dinh Diem and his regime. In Diems attempts to maintain a sense of national independence and ignoring American advisors in regards to how to manage his nation placed both himself and America in a very bad situation. Jacob broke down the reasons why Diem’s policies and decisions as head of state in Vietnam ultimately led to its demise, from his totalitarian policies and misuses of American funding/support. Jacobs does not put all blame on Diem but also points out that despite information gathered from American officials in Vietnam the American government supported a government that was unpopular and full of corruption. In the end Jacob reinforces his claim that the United States and their “Diem experiment” pushed America into a shifting relationship with Vietnam that would ultimately lock the nation into a state involvement that it could not back out of.
During the LBJ administration, Johnson was focused on ending the War on Poverty, the centerpiece of his presidency, and bringing justice to his fellow men and women. However, his pressing desire was to give the “Great Society a chance to grow and prosper! Johnson inherited the presidential seat after the death of John F. Kennedy. Immediately, Johnson was concentrated on establishing himself in the office of the Presidency, and to continue the legacy of JFK. Johnson quickly administered a group of domestic programs which he called the “Great Society”. Johnson’s vision for the Great Society drew on both his own primary identification with the New Deal (which he supported heavily) and his commitment to go beyond the achievement of FDR to create an America worthy of leadership in the twenty-first century. For America, this was the perfect time to build a Great Society. LBJ was confident that this was a time to prove that our material progress is only the foundation on which we will build a richer life in mind and spirit. He believed that the Great Society rested on an abu...
As a result, the Geneva agreement was set up to try and keep order in
This book details the discussion of government policy in the stages of the Vietnam crisis from 1961-July 1965. It examines the main characters of President Lyndon B. Johnson, Robert McNamara, in addition to the military, which included the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It began in the Kennedy era amidst the Bay of Pigs incident and how that led to mistrust of the military planning by advisors and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It continues with Johnson and his administration making decisions over and over that continued to commit more and more involve...
Lyndon Johnson is an intimate, complex and ambitious portrait of a President. He came to office with strong ambitions to emphasize equality for all, to generate hopes for the Great Society, and to reshape his America, but ultimately he withdrew from the political arena where he fought so hard. Johnson’s legacy started with a tragedy and ended with a tragedy: the story began with the cold bullet that went through his predecessor’s head, which enveloped the country with anger, chaos, and mourning, and ended with the deaths of fifty-eight thousand Americans, which threw the nation into tumult.
Prior to our involvement in the Vietnam War, South Vietnam experienced political turmoil, at the fault of the United States. After the withdrawal of the French in 1954 the CIA set up a non-communist government. The problem was that the U.S government was not concerned with whether or not they were setting up a proper democracy, as much as they just wanted to prevent communism. The Diem Regime was a totalitarian government and was Catholic. He was anti-communist which was all the CIA and American Government cared about. The people of South Vietnam did not like him, and he was eventually assassinated in 1963 (Wood 4-24). Leading up to the Vietnam War the U.S was living in great fear of communism spreading throughout the world. Politicians and the American people feared the ‘domino theory’. According to our class lecture, the domino theory is the fear that the U.S coul...
The conflict in Vietnam for the United States started when President Dwight D. Eisenhower went along with the domino theory and sent in military advisors in South Vietnam to stop the communist movement from taking place in South Vietnam. The Vietnam conflict was between the communist’s and the United States. North Vietnam was led by Ho Chi Minh, and Ho Chi Minh led the Viet Cong, a guerilla group to help spread communism. The United States were supporters of the South Vietnam because they wanted them to maintain their government rather than falling to the domino theory of communism. After Eisenhower’s term ended John F. Kennedy became president and took control of the situation of Vietnam but on November 22, 1963, Kennedy was assassinated. Lyndon B. Johnson succeeded presidency and the problems of Vietnam were left to himself. In 1963, the Tonkin Gulf incident occurred where, the U.S.S Maddox was attacked by North Vietnamese naval ships on august 2 1964. Two days later an even more controversial attack happened where it was reported another ship was attacked again but has later been proven false. Johnson used these events to gain congressional approval to enter into Vietnam. However the Tonkin Gulf Incident was questioned to have even happened which makes the war undoubtedly questionable Immediately after the incident . Many troops were killed in Vietnam and the United States eventually lost the war and does not achieve their goal to stop communism. Despite the large amount of conflict in Vietnam that needed to be resolved, escalating the war was the wrong idea by Johnson, as the many consequences of the war for the United States outweighed the potential spread of communism.
Kennedy and Diem were both killed in 1963 and 1964. Johnson took control of the situation by increasing the amount of money and manpower put into Vietnam. Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving the president full military power. After Johnson dramatically escalated the amount of soldiers in Vietnam, The North Vietnamese mounted a surprise attack during the Vietnamese new year, and this strike was called the Tet Offensive. It made America more aware of what they were up against, that the communists were capable of fierce, guerrilla warfare, unlike anything Americans had ever fought before. Images of the terror and disarray reached back home, and the U.S. began to wonder how effective their involvement in Vietnam really was.