3 The War in Vietnam

At the beginning of the 1960s, few Americans could have identified Vietnam on a map or explained why the United States might be involved in the small southeast Asian nation that lay halfway around the world. But by the end of the decade, U.S. involvement in Vietnam had cost thousands of American lives and embroiled the nation in a furious and sometimes violent debate over U.S. foreign policy. A growing antiwar movement in the United States drew public attention to its arguments with public protests and campaigns to change policy. By 1968 these protests had helped drive President Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973; served 1963–69) from office.

The roots of the conflict in Vietnam stretched back to the nineteenth century, when French colonizers took control of an area they called French Indochina, which included the modern countries of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and other portions of Asia. Early in World War II (1939–45), as the Japanese attempted to gain control of trade in the Far East, they evicted French forces from Indochina. Like the French, the Japanese were more interested in extracting riches from the area than they were in providing effective government. When native political forces rose up to combat Japanese rule, the United States was happy to help, for it too was fighting the Japanese in World War II. The United States provided arms and advice to Vietnamese patriots, called Vietminh, who were led by a man named Ho Chi Minh (1890?–1969). When the Japanese were defeated in 1945, Ho Chi Minh came to power. He quoted the American Declaration of Independence as he asserted Vietnam's right to be a free and self-governing nation. Many hoped that the United States, who fought the Revolutionary War (1775–83) with England in order to become independent, would support this new nation.

Cold War pressures

The appealing idea of supporting people who have been held down soon came into conflict with the larger driving force of American foreign policy in the years following World War II: the Cold War (1945–91). Soon after World War II ended, the United States and its Western allies, led by France, Great Britain, and West Germany, began to compete with the Soviet Union, China, and their allies for leadership of the world. The opposing sides did not engage in open armed conflict, but rather in a struggle to see which ideological system—capitalist democracy (a system of government and economics characterized by private ownership of property and free-market competition, such as that of the United States) or state-controlled communism (a system of government and economics characterized by state ownership of property and state control of economic decisions, such as that of the Soviet Union)—would control world trade and politics. From the moment World War II ended, both sides competed to attain influence over smaller nations around the world. This struggle to gain allies took place in Eastern Europe, Africa, and, most violently, in Vietnam. This Cold War struggle for supremacy pushed both sides into actions that were incredibly destructive and contrary to the very ideals they claimed to support.

Within the context of the Cold War competition, the United States was slowly drawn into the conflict in Vietnam. Following the collapse of Japanese control in French Indochina in 1945, the United States helped its longtime ally, France, reassert control over the area. Critics claimed that the United States had abandoned its ideological allies, the Vietminh, in order to enrich the French colonizers. But American politicians justified their support of France by claiming that the Vietminh were communist and that America needed to help prevent the spread of communism in the area. When the Vietminh went to war to evict the French from Vietnam, America provided great amounts of money, arms, and advice to the French (and ignored the pleas of the Vietminh for assistance). By 1954, the war had killed 95,000 French soldiers, 300,000 Vietnamese soldiers, and as many as a million Vietnamese civilians. In that year France withdrew from the area by negotiating a peace treaty that split Vietnam in half and granted Cambodia and Laos independence. North Vietnam was controlled by communists led by Ho Chi Minh, and South Vietnam, backed by the United States, was ruled by a corrupt government led by Ngo Dinh Diem (1901–1963). Neither side was satisfied with the divided country.

Between 1954 and 1964, America provided support to South Vietnam in the form of economic assistance, arms, and military training. Over the years, however, U.S. support for the Diem regime in South Vietnam became a source of embarrassment as Diem ruled in ways that violated American values. Diem enjoyed little support in his own country, and he ruled by oppressing, even torturing and killing, those who opposed him. More and more of the common people in South Vietnam supported the North Vietnamese and wished to see the two countries unite under communist rule. These people were known as the Vietcong; the "cong" part of the name meant "commies" because they supported the communist North. They mounted their own attacks against the Diem forces, supporting the growing civil war between South and North Vietnam. In 1960 alone the Vietcong killed more than 2,500 government officials.

The pull of war in Vietnam

This difficult situation greeted President John F. Kennedy (1917–1963; served 1961–63) when he took office in 1961. Kennedy had campaigned as a dedicated anti-communist, and he was determined to support the capitalist South Vietnam. Slowly, he increased the amount of American monetary aid, which reached half a billion dollars in 1962. More importantly, he increased the number of American military advisors stationed in South Vietnam, from 1,400 in 1961 to 11,300 in 1962. (Under American law, the president could not send soldiers to fight in a foreign war without authorization from Congress, so all soldiers sent to Vietnam were considered advisors.) He hoped that with more money and more military advice, the United States could help the South Vietnamese army defeat the Vietcong. Initial American military aid was not meant to fund attacks on the North, but only to support the government in the South. Yet as the failure of the Diem government became more obvious and the North continued to gain supporters in the South, the United States was drawn further and further into the conflict.

When Kennedy was assassinated late in 1963, President Lyndon Johnson (1909–1973; served 1963–69) inherited a miserable political situation. Some advisors urged him to withdraw from Vietnam while he still could. They pointed to the example of the French and argued that further involvement would cost many American lives. But those advocating withdrawal were in the minority. A majority of advisors urged Johnson to increase American involvement, arguing that to lose Vietnam to the communists would only encourage communists to attempt to take control of other small countries. They argued that it was vital to maintain a South Vietnamese government that was friendly to the United States, and they advised Johnson to send fighting troops and to use American forces to bomb North Vietnam. Johnson, believing that he had to send a strong signal to the Soviet Union, decided to increase American involvement even further, short of going to war. By the summer of 1964, Johnson increased the number of American soldiers and advisors in South Vietnam to 20,000. It was a significant step on the road to all-out American involvement in the war in Vietnam.

The long first stage to full-fledged American engagement in the conflict in Vietnam ended in August of 1964, when a minor military clash led President Johnson to ask Congress for full authority to commit American troops to the war. Once that authority was granted, American military goals—and the number of American troops involved— increased sharply. The documents included in this chapter explain why the United States got involved in the war and how it expected to win. President Lyndon B. Johnson 's Message to Congress, in which Johnson asked for support for the war, and the congressional resolution offering that support are two important documents related to the Vietnam War. Also presented here are excerpts from documents written by two key military advisors to President Johnson, McGeorge Bundy (1919–1996) and Robert McNamara (1916–). These documents urged Johnson to continue to escalate the war, suggesting ways that increased military resources might win the war.