The Vietnam War is a hot topic, should there be war or not? Lyndon B. Johnson says yes to war and Martin Luther King says no to war. In “Speech of Vietnam” by L.B.J. he is saying why it is best to go to the Vietnam War. While in “Beyond Vietnam” by M.L.K. he is saying why it is not necessary to go to to war. The Vietnam War is what is best for America and for other the nations. The cause of the Vietnam War began with a colonial war between Vietnam and the French. The Vietnamese were trying to free themselves from a French colony. The Vietnamese leader was Ho Chi Minh, a Communist, so he received support from USSR and Red China. The French left Vietnam, so there was a peace conference in Geneva attended by France, Vietnam, the USSR, and the U.S. The peace conference achieved Vietnam being split in half temporarily, the North is communist led by Minh and the South is democratic led by Diem. Diem said Communists were attacking his government, which alerted many anti-communist nations. What is …show more content…
“Communist rule in Vietnam...would be repressive and antidemocratic..”(Farber,140). Communist rule will not be nice and beneficial to Vietnam, that is the wrong view of Communism. Their oppressive government needs to be overthrown, just like how the British were to the Americans. They got their peace and freedom through fighting. The Domino theory is if Vietnam becomes a Communist country, the rest of the dominos will fall (Farber,122). Therefore, even more nations will fall into Communism, and not be in democracy. Also, in L.B.J.’s speech “Speech on Vietnam” he says that by tackling this problem now there will be way less of a chance of a nuclear war (Johnson,3). It is better to fight this problem now because in the future it can be more violent. L.B.J stresses in his speech that by going into war there will be less nuclear weapons and less
Furthermore, United States’ support in Vietnam was initially supposed to be limited to training support (source A). As even United States president, Lyndon Johnson, was aware of the potential escalation of the war in Vietnam if American military forces were to involve themselves in the Vietnamese conflict. President Johnsons statement that “… we could get tied down in a third world war” (source A) substantiates the idea that America feared the worldwide consequence of American support in Vietnam (Source A). Contrary to this however,
“What do These Sources have to say about the Origins, Nature, Course or Consequence of the Vietnamese Revolution?” During 1945 Vietnam was in a time of true change which needed to come, there was massive unrests due to famine and unemployment, and with the Japanese surrender and the end of the World War, that time had finally come. The Viet Minh had waited a long time for the opportunity to secure the country for the Vietnamese people and gain their independence, it took fifteen days and on 2nd September Ho Chi Minh read the Declaration of Independence. This was not to last, since Indochina was about to become a front line for the Cold War.
In addition to general exhaustion from war, the American people wanted to focus on domestic equality before moving forward with global equality and democracy. Anti-Vietnam War protests were not necessarily unwarranted, as the anti-democracy Tet Offensive of North Vietnam resulted in the deaths of thousands of American soldiers, with the vast majority of states reporting over 100 war casualties in 1968 alone. (Document E) Economically, the Vietnam War was challenging to manage, as the department of defense budget once again rose to today’s equivalent of 450 billion dollars, adding to an already quickly growing, massive national debt. (Document G)
This investigation will assess to what extent did Nixon achieved the ‘Peace with Honor’ in the Vietnam war? This investigation will focus on Nixon’s Peace with Honor statement given for Vietnam in the early 1970s after entering office. Whereas Nixon was involved within the combat in Vietnam for almost four years. During the Vietnam war, Nixon planned to ‘de-Americanize’, which also became known as Vietnamization plan. From this plan, Nixon built up the South Vietnamese armed forces to create a more improved combat responsibility, while he was withdrawing the American troops therefore Vietnam can create opportunity for its own political future.
“I thought the Vietnam war was an utter, unmitigated disaster, so it was very hard for me to say anything good about it” - George McGovern. There are numerous controversial topics dispersed among the subject of American history due to the amount of unethical decisions that have been made in order to improve the lives of the people or keep America out of the clutches of war. Throughout American history, historians have debated the ethical impact that the Vietnam war had on the United States. Although some people may believe that the Vietnam War achieved the goal of avoiding communism and protecting the people, the overarching idea is that it was an unjust war because of the countless lives that were lost from the participating countries, the
The Indochinese were so exhausted from all the oppression and discrimination that the French encroached on them that Minh’s idea of the ideal world seemed perfect, Communism was the answer. Everyone would be “equal,” and their needs would be met and paid for according to their abilities, this ideology was paradise. Ho Chi Minh proposed there to be ten main goals for this Communist revolution. He first claimed that they need to completely overthrow French imperialism and the reactionary Vietnamese capitalist class. Their demand for resources, raw materials, and cheap labor has worked the Indochinese people to the bone and they were not paid properly for their services.
The Vietnam War is known as the first war America “lost.” The loss of lives was a devastating number. The American government was very secretive as to their plans in Vietnam. Although President Johnson said that the US had no desire to get involved in the war, he and close government officials prepared in case they truly needed to go to war. The public was eased into a false sense of security.
“Beyond Vietnam-A Time to Break Silence” Rhetorical Analysis Over the years there have been many great speeches said by very good orators, but few of them had the effect that Martin Luther King, Jr. had on his audience, and none were as famous as his “I Have A Dream” speech. What made Dr. King’s speech so compelling was the fact that he was preacher and was very good at capturing the audience’s attention. The way he presented his arguments to captivate the audience and to get them to agree with whatever he was saying was a technique called the Aristoliean rhetoric, a device that helped him persuade his audience to accomplish his goals. But when he made the “Beyond Vietnam-A Time to Break Silence” speech on April 4, 1967, it was not recognized
The Vietnam War was a war the United States should have never been involved in. The “Domino Theory” was a direct cause of the war. The war resulted in much death; innocent civilians and young Americans were killed. The Vietnam war also resulted in rioting, distrust for the United States government, and the loss of many lives. 58,000 Americans were killed and 300,000 were wounded.
One of the most controversial wars in history and a turning point in American foreign policy, the emotions and events surrounding the Vietnam War capture the essence of the era. The rise of rebellious youth culture and anti-war and anti-draft movements were key social aspects of American life leading up to and during the fighting. (Doc 2, 3) On the political side, Congress aimed to control the Chief-Executive with legislation such as the War Powers Act of 1973, requiring the president to remove all unreported troops in Vietnam and report any further sent. (Doc 7) To say the country was divided would be a massive understatement.
The Vietnam war was preceded by a very turbulent time in our history with problems here in the states such as racism, women’s rights, and a president being shot. But in Vietnam they were going through a civil war, which they had done before, but not to this extent, this time they got the U.S.S.R. involved. It was communist Russia and North Vietnam against South Vietnam. The U.S. started to get
Vietnam saw the war as a fight for independence while the U.S. saw the war as a fight against the communist regime, aiming to instil its capitalist approach in order to alienate the Soviets from the rest of society. This is a perfect example of numerous things in the theory of Realism, namely: the balance of power, the idea that peace and stability are most likely to be maintained when military power is distributed to prevent a single superpower from controlling the world; the security dilemma, the tendency of states to view the defensive arming of adversaries as threatening, causing them to arm in response so that all states’ security declines; and national interest, the goals that states pursue to maximize what they perceive to be selfishly best for their country (WPTT, 2011, pp.32-33). The U.S. saw the Vietnamese becoming allies with the Soviets as a security dilemma, so in order to somewhat restore the balance of power, a war was declared on the Vietnamese, all to preserve its national interest. The U.S. declared war on Vietnam even though there was no real need for one, as the Vietnamese were much too busy fighting for their independence from the Chinese in an attempt to differentiate
The anti-war movement grew increasingly popular in American society, which led to America lost numerous supporters. Some advocates with peaceful wishes advocated the U.S could withdraw troops sent to fight in the Vietnam Wars for the reason that it would contribute to less human bloodshed and less property damage in the region. Early opposition to U.S. involvement in Vietnam drew its attention in the Geneva Conference of
1. What problems did the United States face in the Vietnam War? As the United States struggled against communism in Vietnam, it would face many problems. In the late 1950’s President Eisenhower and later President Kennedy sent military supplies and advisers to South Vietnam. Despite the American aid the Vietcong grew stronger with support from North Vietnam.
According to The Vietnam War: an intimate history, it states: “Ho Chi Minh and Ngo Dinh Diem, the two best-known Vietnamese leaders of the Vietnam War era, have long been viewed as polar opposites” (Ward and Burns 44). Ho was a representation of communism while Ngo is anticommunist. Ho ruled the North while Ngo ruled the South. The Vietnamese communist is called “Viet Nam Cong