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The public view of the Vietnam war
The public view of the Vietnam War
How is truman and eisemnhower connected to the cold war
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Recommended: The public view of the Vietnam war
Oluseun Taiwo
3/15/14
History 261
Dr. Hagaman
Lyndon Johnson’s War
In his monograph, Lyndon Johnson’s War, Michael Hunt converses the different verdicts, choices, faults and actions which lead up to the Vietnam War. Hunt exploits documents from both American and Vietnam archives to explain in full the actions taken by many American leaders and the potential thought process of our counterpart the Vietnamese and other European and Asian countries and their leaders. In each and every one of these archives he makes a point of it to explain how the United States came to be drawn into the conflict in Southeast Asia and several times through this book Hunt makes the silent argument that the Unted States of America fought the war as if it were “fighting a conventional war.”(Hunt, pg. 53) Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of further American involvement into the war.
Hunt begins his book by means of looking into a more global and broad view of American politics. The opening Chapter, “The Cold War World of The Ugly American” focuses on the actions that President Truman and Eisenhower where plagued with during the cold war. A reoccurring character throughout popular Asian history, Ho Chi Minh, was quite a large role in the Americans decision to get involved because not only he was fighting the French, a common ally for the Americans, but also the Ideology which he relentlessly fought for (communism), assorted with the geographic location of Vietnam is what troubled the United States. At the time they were adamant about practicing a strict policy of “continment” which saw the united states side with the failing French so not only ould a French colony be saved, but also to stop the big gains and advancements that communism had been...
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...Johnson and his administrations shoulders because he was the main president during the height of the war. He makes this clear by naming the title of his book after Lyndon -Lyndon Johnson’s War- specifically highlights Johnson and places an “owner” on the war. Also, significant is the fact that Johnson was not voted into office but simply placed there because President Kennedy had passed, meaning that many American people could not specifically agree with what Johnson believed in. He makes note of it that Lyon Johnson and his office weren’t remotely ready for this war.
In Hunts Lyndon Johnson’s War, he imposes on his readers just how ill prepared each presidential administration ( multiple due to elections and assassination) was. He makes several notes saying how the poor vision of US forgein policy esscientially runined any chance for the United States of America
Lawrence’s purpose in writing this book was concise and to the point. In recent history, due to the fall of the Soviet bloc, new information has been made available for use in Vietnam. As stated in the introduction, “This book aims to take account of this new scholarship in a brief, accessible narrative of the Vietnam War… It places the war within the long flow of Vietnamese history and then captures the goals and experiences of various governments that became deeply embroiled in the country during the second half of the twentieth century” (Lawrence, 3.) This study is not only about the American government and how they were involved in the Vietnam conflict, but highlights other such countries as France, China, and the Soviet Union. Lawrence goes on to say that one of his major goals in writing this book is to examine the American role in Vietnam within an international context (Lawrence, 4.) Again, this goes to show that the major purpose of Lawrence’s study included not only ...
Stephen Ambrose speaks much on wars that America was directly or indirectly involved in. In one chapter, The Legacy of World War Two, he saw war, for the US and the Allies, in World War Two, as “not to conquer, not to enslave, not to destroy, but to liberate” (Ambrose 120) He goes on to say that “the Marshall Plan was the most generous act in human history.” (Ambrose 121) The Marshall Plan created NATO, the Berlin Air Lift and Ambrose swimming in patriotism claimed it was “the American spirit, more than American productive power, that made it so.” (Ambrose 121) He continues h...
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.
Kotz discusses how Johnson's memories of the depravation of his poverty-stricken farm life with his father in the western hill country of Texas and the impoverished Mexican Americans in his home region influenced his later decisions. Kotz reveals how a feeling of inadequacy gripped LBJ's psyche. This feeling of inadequacy sometimes drove Johnson into periods of dark depression. Yet it also encouraged him to ignore the intellectual shackles of southern traditions of racial prejudice a...
Only in the Vietnam War was the United States’ participation criticized. This is such a gigantic change from prior wars that it bears study as to why it happened, and better yet, should have it happened. This paper will discuss the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War, by asking the simple question, Should have the United States’ gotten involved in the first place? This paper will prove that, in fact, America should not have gotten involved in the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War took place between 1947- 1975.
Discussions of the causes of the Cold War are often divisive, creating disparate ideological camps that focus the blame in different directions depending on the academic’s political disposition. One popular argument places the blame largely on the American people, whose emphasis on “strength over compromise” and their deployment of the atomic bomb in the Second World War’s Pacific theatre apparently functioned as two key catalysts to the conflict between US and Soviet powers. This revisionist approach minimizes Stalin’s forceful approach and history of violent leadership throughout World War 2, and focuses instead on President Harry Truman’s apparent insensitivity to “reasonable Soviet security anxieties” in his quest to impose “American interests on the world.” Revisionist historians depict President Truman as a “Cold War monger,” whose unjustified political use of the atomic bomb and ornery diplomatic style forced Russia into the Cold War to oppose the spread of a looming capitalist democratic monopoly. In reality, Truman’s responsibility for the Cold War and the atomic bomb drop should be minimized.
Offner, Arnold. “‘Another Such Victory’: President Truman, American Foreign Policy, and the Cold War.” Taking Sides: Clashing Views On Controversial Issues in United States History. Ed. Larry Madaras and James M. SoRelle. 14th Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011. 291-301.
He was also a Gulf War veteran who commanded an armored cavalry. His desire in writing this book was to examine, through the recently declassified documents, manuscript collections, and the Joint Chief of Staff official histories, where the responsibility for the Vietnam foreign policy disaster lay, but also examine the decisions made that involved the United States in a war they could not win. 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.
The speech “War Message” by former president Woodrow Wilson is one of the most memorable speeches of all time. He is able to capture the audience’s attention and really make them listen with the help of many rhetorical elements. Woodrow Wilson is by far one of the best presidents this nation has ever seen and also one of the best speakers of all time. The magnitude of this speech and what it is about gives it such an appeal without even trying. The rhetorical elements of this text such as ethos, pathos, and logos are what gives this speech its credibility, its powerfulness, and its persuasiveness.
Johnson faced a number of defining moments during the tumultuous 1960s: he advanced the Kennedy legacy, presided over the Great Society, but started the Vietnam War. Johnson’s legacy was very controversial. He achieved a vast expansion in domestic policies through his efforts in constructing the Great Society, and is essentially considered as one of the most successful domestic policy presidents in U.S. history. Nevertheless, his tragic handling in foreign affairs ruined his reputation. The Vietnam War not only dragged his approval rating from “78 percent in December 1963 down to 49 percent in Jan 1969,” but also switched his legacy from a triumph to a tragedy. Nowadays, he is, in fact, most remembered for his failure in the Vietnam War. Admittedly, Johnson’s mistakes in the Vietnam War harmed American deeply. Many claim that his administration has been the worst in the modern-age presidency. Nevertheless, while acknowledging his tremendous accomplishments in domestic affairs, Johnson’s legacy still deserves more respect.
With this book, a major element of American history was analyzed. The Cold War is rampant with American foreign policy and influential in shaping the modern world. Strategies of Containment outlines American policy from the end of World War II until present day. Gaddis outlines the policies of presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, including policies influenced by others such as George Kennan, John Dulles, and Henry Kissinger. The author, John Lewis Gaddis has written many books on the Cold War and is an avid researcher in the field. Some of his other works include: The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947, The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past, Surprise, Security, and the American Experience, and The Cold War: A New History. Dr. Gaddis received his PhD from the University of Texas in 1968; he currently is on a leave of absence, but he is a professor at Yale . At the University, his focus is Cold War history. Gaddis is one of the few men who have actually done a complete biography of George Kennan, and Gaddis even won a Pulitzer Prize in 2012.
“In July 1965, Lyndon Johnson chose to Americanize the war in Vietnam.” Although Johnson chose to enter America into the war, there were events previous that caused America to enter and take over the war. The South Vietnamese were losing the war against Communism – giving Johnson all the more reason to enter the war, and allowing strong American forces to help stop communism. There were other contributing factors leading up to the entrance of the war; America helped assist the French in the war, Johnson’s politics, the Tonkin Gulf Incident, and the 1954 Geneva Conference. President Johnson stated, “For 10 years three American Presidents-President Eisenhower, President Kennedy, and your present President--and the American people have been actively concerned with threats to the peace and security of the peoples of southeast Asia from the Communist government of North Viet-Nam.”
The reports in this novel are prefaced with a quote by Robert Shaplen, which sums up the feelings of those Americans involved in the Vietnam conflict. He states, "Vietnam, Vietnam . . .. There are no sure answers." In this novel, the author gives a detailed historical account of the happenings in Vietnam between 1950 and 1975. He successfully reports the confusing nature, proximity to the present and the emotions that still surround the conflict in Vietnam. In his journey through the years that America was involved in the Vietnam conflict, Herring "seeks to integrate military, diplomatic, and political factors in such a way as to clarify America's involvement and ultimate failure in Vietnam."
We Shall Overcome Rhetorical Analyses Throughout the history of the United States, racial discrimination has always been around our society. Many civil rights movements and laws have helped to minimize the amount of discrimination towards every single citizen, but discrimination is something that will not ever disappear. On March 15, 1965, Lyndon Baines Johnson gave a speech that pointed out the racial injustice and human rights problems of America in Washington D.C. He wanted every citizen of the United States to support his ideas to overcome and solve the racial injustice problems as a nation. Throughout the speech, Lyndon Johnson used several rhetorical concepts to persuade the audience.
A change in strategy leads to new perspective over certain matters. During FDR’s tenure many new reforms were adopted as part of the New Deal. Some o...