Thursday, October 3, 2013

Why were we in Vietnam?

"Our objective is the independence of South Vietnam and its freedom from attack.  We want nothing for ourselves--only that the people of South Vietnam be allowed to guide their own country in its own way." -- Lyndon Johnson, April 7, 1965

This is LBJ's justification to the American public regarding the US escalation in Vietnam.  How do you assess this statement?  What are some of the objectives that you see behind the Vietnam conflict that Johnson did not mention here?

10 comments:

  1. In our reading there is a quite sizable list of hidden motives and objectives. In order to prevent my post becoming a massive wall of text, I've decided to focus on one. In this case ill be turning my attention to #2. One of the 'secret' reasons for the US being determined to ensure that South Vietnam stays an ally and more importantly stays within the realm of democracy. Also there were financial motivations as well: in fact Vietnam was considered an "accurate barometer of all our fortunes in southeast asia"

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  2. I think the objective was for South Vietnam to gain its independence. However, the objectives of containment and US power are sort of buried in this statement. This statement makes it seem like the US was being a self-less ally when in reality, the US did not want Communism to spread to its own country. And as someone mentioned on a previous blog post, the US wanted to defeat other countries and warn them not to attempt to enforce Communism in its borders.

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  3. In Chief of Staff's memorandum, I specifically see the underlying motive to keep a "winning" reputation. #8 details that they were going to escalate the war because they no longer wanted to be "fighting the war on the enemy's terms." Maybe one of the US's goals throughout this was to prove themselves as the top dog country, therefore backing down was not an option. Johnson's justification for involvement is honestly just annoying because it is kind of common sense that we were not in Vietnam just to be nice and try to support the people who they have "pledged" to defend. It seems like he wants to conceal his intentions because he doesn't want to be hated by the people, but people were already against involvement so I am not sure why he still chooses to justify the US involvement in this petty manner.

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  4. LBJ wanted South Vietnam to be able to grow and develop as a country, ans they had the right to. There was communist pressure from the North, and he felt that there needed to be intervention to stop the North from taking control and steering the South down a road that the American people as a whole didn't believe in.
    The statement says that the US is acting ONLY on South Vietnam's best interests, but I feel that the this was a plan that America had wanted to do for a while in their attempt to combat communism with force.

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  5. I'm sorry, but that's total BS. The US didn't even care or want to get involved when the French asked until the war was practically over and it became clear that without the French it would be a communism regime. Now I still don't really get why the us cares so much about communism it seems to just sort of bother them that people aren't following their example. But the point is no war is entered simply out of the goodness of a country's heart, there has to be alternative motive in order for it to be worth it.

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  6. I think that was a very good front to put on for the American people to believe. But with hindsight, we know that America was worried about the other countries around Vietnam and the effects of losing Vietnam would have on them. We also wanted to make sure that who ever (Russia) was backing up N. Vietnam that they knew we meant business and were not going to back down so easily. Also knowing that America wanted to help france regain Vietnam after it lost it helps in identifying the true reasons why we went into Vietnam.

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  7. President Lyndon Johnson says "Our objective is the independence of South Vietnam and its freedom from attack. We want nothing for ourselves--only that the people of South Vietnam be allowed to guide their own country in its own way.", i found this piece of text to be interesting and definitely has its worthiness of close reading. Yes, US's objective is to protect South Vietnam and its freedom from attack, however, i would view "Objective" as explicit yet superficial. As the reading mentioned "The failure of Our program in South Vietnam would have heavy influence on the judgement of Burma, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan etc..." it is not rocket science to conclude that there would have been a corresponding unfavorable effect upon our image around the Globe. Not to mention the notion contained within the Domino Theory that if one power were to fall to mommunism then surrounding countries would also be susceptible, given the facts that Laos, Cambodia and Thailand are on a fairly fragile foundation and seems unlikely to survive communism infiltration from the north just like what happened to North Korea to China, China to Russia.

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  8. I almost feel as that being in Vietnam is just an excuse for the US to increase its "exceptionalism". In Johnson's speech, he does mention how they have a "promise to keep" that cannot be broken, and they seek to "strengthen world order" by "maintaining America's value." I think the most important reason is to maintain America's value...although the US is helping other countries all the time, the idea seems kind of selfish? Another reason I noticed was the US govt wanted to turn the Vietnam govt over to the US military commander the direction of the war. Really, the US was just taking bolder actions throughout southeast Asia to be totally informed of what was going on, and to keep their position as the most powerful country in the world.

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  9. I think ultimatly, the goal of south Vietnam was to gain independence. This will allow them to grow and more develop as a country. He says, "We want nothing for ourselves--only that the people of South Vietnam be allowed to guide their own country in its own way." I think in my opinion, this is a very selfless act. We want nothing for ourselves. But he is speaking for a lot people, the question is. Is this what everybody wants. He runs the risk of getting independence and the failing. And I for one would be worried about that.

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  10. The official objective for the US involvement was of course helping the people to gain their right of self determination. The cover was a humanitarian "program" with the purpose of freeing the people that are oppressed by communist governments. I think that this is an objective one can easily agree with and an honorable thing to do. But regarding the history of Americas "world-wide confrontation" with communists tells another story. In the end, I think that it was just again about putting on a fight with some communists because the US couldn't stand the Ussr. For me it is a horrible thing that so many innocent people had to suffer because of this conflict and that the US praises itself as the liberator...

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