Question

What justifications did America give for going to war in Vietnam? Were those reasons justifiable? Why or why not?

Answer 1

• John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson used the credibility and domino theories to justify American involvement in Vietnam. Kennedy and Johnson were both apprehensive of the spread of communism and willing to use force to counter it. Kennedy and his advisers applied the domino theory, first articulated during the Eisenhower administration, to the countries of Southeast Asia. The fall of one nation to communism, it was feared, would lead to further losses.
• Kennedy employed the rhetoric of idealism to try to convince the American public that the U.S. had a moral responsibility to help governments and political movements that were trying to resist communist insurgencies.
• Johnson justified that South Vietnam was the victim of communist aggression from and directed by North Vietnam. If the U.S. failed to step in and help South Vietnam, it would send a message to the rest of Southeast Asia and the world that the U.S. was not truly committed to containing communism.
• The region mattered to the U.S. because in communist hands, this area would pose a most serious threat to the security of the United States and to the family of free-world nations. Vietnam was America’s test case to prove that it could meet the global challenge of communist wars of liberation.
• The US got involved in the Vietnam War because it did not want another country going to communism (and therefore the Soviet sphere of influence) after what happened in China.
• On the one hand, many believe that the U.S. should not have involved in Vietnam in the first place.American involvement in Vietnam could be considered highly politically motivated. Vietnam was just a “proxy” in the Cold War between the U.S. and Soviet Union.
  
• U.S. army destroyed about 7,700 square miles of forests — six percent of Vietnam’s total land area, which also caused adverse health effects on millions of people. Many question U.S. policy of saving Vietnam (from the communist) by destroying it.
• The undeclared war cost the United States some 58,000 lives, impeded many welfare programs and brought down its economy to the crisis.Those severe consequences put a big question mark over American benefits of its deep involvement in Vietnam.