Why Was the Vietnam War Fought? Part 1 - U.S. Government Film (1965)

1965 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000UWJA1S?ie=UTF8&tag=doc06-20&link... Watch the full film: http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.com/2010/10/why-vietnam-1965.html

Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ), as he took over the presidency after the death of Kennedy, initially did not consider Vietnam a priority and was more concerned with his "Great Society" and progressive social programs. Presidential aide Jack Valenti recalls, "Vietnam at the time was no bigger than a man's fist on the horizon. We hardly discussed it because it was not worth discussing."

On November 24, 1963, Johnson said, "the battle against communism... must be joined... with strength and determination." The pledge came at a time when Vietnam was deteriorating, especially in places like the Mekong Delta, because of the recent coup against Diem.

Johnson had reversed Kennedy's disengagement policy from Vietnam in withdrawing 1,000 troops by the end of 1963 (NSAM 263 on Oct. 11), with his own NSAM 273 (Nov. 26) to expand the war.

The military revolutionary council, meeting in lieu of a strong South Vietnamese leader, was made up of 12 members headed by General Duong Van Minh—whom Stanley Karnow, a journalist on the ground, later recalled as "a model of lethargy." Lodge, frustrated by the end of the year, cabled home about Minh: "Will he be strong enough to get on top of things?" His regime was overthrown in January 1964 by General Nguyen Khanh.

On 2 August 1964, the USS Maddox, on an intelligence mission along North Vietnam's coast, allegedly fired upon and damaged several torpedo boats that had been stalking it in the Gulf of Tonkin.

A second attack was reported two days later on the USS Turner Joy and Maddox in the same area. The circumstances of the attack were murky. Lyndon Johnson commented to Undersecretary of State George Ball that "those sailors out there may have been shooting at flying fish."

The second attack led to retaliatory air strikes, prompted Congress to approve the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, and gave the president power to conduct military operations in Southeast Asia without declaring war. In the same month, Johnson pledged that he was not "... committing American boys to fighting a war that I think ought to be fought by the boys of Asia to help protect their own land."

An undated NSA publication declassified in 2005, however, revealed that there was no attack on 4 August. It had already been called into question long before this. "The Gulf of Tonkin incident", writes Louise Gerdes, "is an oft-cited example of the way in which Johnson misled the American people to gain support for his foreign policy in Vietnam." George C. Herring argues, however, that McNamara and the Pentagon "did not knowingly lie about the alleged attacks, but they were obviously in a mood to retaliate and they seem to have selected from the evidence available to them those parts that confirmed what they wanted to believe."

"From a strength of approximately 5,000 at the start of 1959 the Viet Cong's ranks grew to about 100,000 at the end of 1964...Between 1961 and 1964 the Army's strength rose from about 850,000 to nearly a million men." The numbers for US troops deployed to Vietnam during the same period were quite different; 2,000 in 1961, rising rapidly to 16,500 in 1964.

The National Security Council recommended a three-stage escalation of the bombing of North Vietnam. On 2 March 1965, following an attack on a U.S. Marine barracks at Pleiku, Operation Flaming Dart, Operation Rolling Thunder and Operation Arc Light commenced. The bombing campaign, which ultimately lasted three years, was intended to force North Vietnam to cease its support for the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF) by threatening to destroy North Vietnam's air defenses and industrial infrastructure. As well, it was aimed at bolstering the morale of the South Vietnamese. Between March 1965 and November 1968, "Rolling Thunder" deluged the north with a million tons of missiles, rockets and bombs.

Bombing was not restricted to North Vietnam. Other aerial campaigns, such as Operation Commando Hunt, targeted different parts of the NLF and Vietnam People's Army (VPA) infrastructure. These included the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which ran through Laos and Cambodia. The objective of forcing North Vietnam to stop its support for the NLF, however, was never reached. As one officer noted "this is a political war and it calls for discriminate killing. The best weapon... would be a knife... The worst is an airplane." The Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force Curtis LeMay, however, had long advocated saturation bombing in Vietnam and wrote of the Communists that "we're going to bomb them back into the Stone Age."

Category:

Education

Tags:

• why
• did
• the
• vietnam
• war
• start
• u.s.
• government
• film
• happened
• propaganda
• footage
• music
• songs
• documentary
• movies
• video
• games
• protests
• conflict
• timeline
• facts
• memorial
• pictures
• wiki
• dates
• draft
• american
• casualties
• and
• media
• activities
• battles
• background
• bombing
• body
• count
• causes
• crimes
• cold
• clips
• controversy
• deaths
• dead
• dogs
• doves
• military
• bollywood
• world war
• trailer
• russia
• politics
• communism
• warfare
• hindi

[reset515]

fight for freedom??? this is the biggest piece of shit film i've ever seen. How could they think that fighting for freedom is too send young kids from america to go kill young kids in another country fighting for freedom? to make the rich richer, like this prick here talking.

I think i'm going to throw up at the barbarity of his speech. Completley heartless

[elnegrobembon]

a fine piece of US propoganda...

[limwang75]

@limwang75 ohh fuk usure i didn know we had the kmt vietnam would have been great if kmt run the country

[TakeBackAmerica2012]

Sec. of Defense Robert McNamara admitted in a book written before his death that the Gulf of Tonkin incident NEVER happened. In other words, the war was started based on a lie. Sound familiar? Wars are begun by financial interests to further those interests, and gain power and control and keep power over the international money supply. You and I are cannon fodder and nothing more.

[skcin7]

Do they seriously expect us to believe this bullshit?

Stupidity Exp. +1

[limwang75]

where is the part jfk a catholic cia help rigg the election help that catholic thug giem into power after they abdicate the king bao dai instead of putting in the vietnamese kmt into power

[kkingcombo12345]

@EatCoffee

This shit is not history. It is propaganda at its finest.

[EatCoffee]

i hate history -.-

but better than reading...

[itsjnham]

free election??  The counting of ballots from bush's election was more fair than the bullshit the bullshit election the US created in vietnam.

[the2222full]

@reset515 basically some big country got they arses up for no reason and went to this other much smaller country to fight it. for no reason just like that, choppers go SHOI SHOI SHOI, the jets go like SHWOOOSH then the napalm goes shhhhhhhhhhhhbhgh then USA lost and that was all there was to it

[TimaRamone69]

Yet another LBJ/Vietnam video that is really really hard to fap to.