Professional Documents
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Michael Williamson
Mr. Norris
English 12
7/28/2017
the 37th vice president of John F. Kennedy. He was sworn into office after the tragic
assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963. Lyndon B. Johnson was president for most of the
duration of the Vietnam War, a war in which the U.S. entered to stop the spread of communism
in South East Asia. The biggest controversy surrounding his legacy is that of the Vietnam War. It
left a lasting impact on his name and legacy. No doubt the first thing that comes into your mind
when you hear his name is the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War was also his biggest blunder. He
did not start the war, but he did continue the war until the American people despised him and his
The Vietnam War did not begin with the U.S. opposition to the spread of communism. It
began earlier with the French being defeated in the nation. The French defeat in Vietnam ends
with the country being divided into a Communist North and a pro-Western South. (Timeline)
After the French lost Vietnam, the U.S. then sent military advisers to train the South's army. By
1963, President John F Kennedy [above] has increased the number of advisers to 16,000.
(Timeline) In 1964 In the Gulf of Tonkin, a U.S. destroyer was supposedly attacked. Congress
then gave President Lyndon B. Johnson authority to fight in Vietnam without a formal
declaration of war. (Timeline) In 1965, the U.S. sent the first combat troops to Vietnam. By
the end of the year, U.S. troop levels reach 200,000. (Timeline) The U.S. was fighting a bloody
war in Vietnam. Every day, U.S. soldiers were dying in the small country that most Americans
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hadnt heard of before the war. Many people were dying on both sides of the conflict, not just
soldiers, but civilians too. Support for the war back home in the U.S. was not overwhelmingly
negative at this point, but it was still a war that many thought we should not have been fighting.
In 1968, After Years of conflict in war, Communist forces launch the Tet Offensive. It's a
military defeat for the Communists, but grisly TV images intensify pressure in the U.S. to end
the war. (Timeline) Most Americans at this point in the war do not believe the U.S. should be
involved. Popular support for the war was gone, and many people were protesting the war on the
home front. Many years had passed and the war was still raging in Vietnam. A serious majority
of the nation now believed that the war was unjust and needed to be ended. Richard Nixon
vowed to end the war after he was elected President; he kept his word and started the process of
getting American troops out of Vietnam, and by 1973 America was out of Vietnam.
When President Johnson entered office in 1964, the state of world affairs was not
particularly pretty. The governments of Soviet Russia and communist China were trying to
spread communism all over the world, including in Vietnam. John F. Kennedy had been
assassinated in 1963, an act which shocked the nation. After Johnson had been sworn into office
in 1964, the world was still in the ugly state it had been in before his new position as president.
Johnson had, to be fair, inherited a mess. After the French left Vietnam in 1954 and the country
was partitioned, Dwight D. Eisenhower and, after him, John F. Kennedy sent billions in aid and
advisers to support the South Vietnamese government under Ngo Dinh Diem (Updegrove)
Johnson certainly did not start the war, he was however headed down a disastrous path that
would have unforeseen consequences. The Vietnam War had claimed the lives of more than
58,000 U.S. troops and injured an additional 150,000. The total cost to the U.S. was more than
$100 billion. (McCabe) Not only were millions of lives and billions of dollars wasted on this
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pointless and vacuous war, but it divided the U.S. socially. Towards the end of the war, most
Americans were in opposition to the war; however, there was still a strong political divide in the
nation that was worsened because of the war. Even today, there is a massive divide that Johnson
helped cause. Many modern wars have been compared to the Vietnam war because of how
disastrous they all were. The war's echoes can still be felt today in the conflicts in Afghanistan
and Iraq, where mixed results have divided Americans and led many of them to ask, "Is
Afghanistan another Vietnam?" (McCabe) The above quote perfectly shows how the Vietnam
war has had lasting effects on the American people. It divided the nation during the Vietnam
The War in Vietnam did not just affect the American people, it also influenced Johnson
himself. Johnson did not want to enter the U.S. into a war at the beginning of his office, yet
little more than a year later, Johnson's own immense powers became an accomplice of his own
destruction - propelling him into a war that would dissolve his vision and end his hopes.
(Goodwin) The Vietnam War was a product of the ambitions of Eisenhower and Kennedy.
Johnson had the potential to be the best president the U.S. had seen at that point. Not everything
he had done was terrible, he had implemented and given blacks rights that they had been lacking
for generations after the end of the civil war, a feat that many people before him had tried to do
but failed because of lack of support. One of the presidents own assistants witnessed a
transformation in Johnson. the story of that transformation, the beginnings of which I witnessed
as one of the President's assistants, makes it clear that the war in Vietnam was not only a national
tragedy but a personal tragedy for one of the most formidable men ever to occupy the White
House. (Goodwin) There is no question that the President's conduct during 1965 was, on
occasion, markedly, almost frighteningly different from anything I had observed previously. My
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conclusion is that President Johnson experienced certain episodes of what I believe to have been
paranoid behavior. (Goodwin) The above quotes seem to suggest that Johnson had changed for
the worse because of the war in Vietnam. He knew that the war was a tragedy and a grand
mistake. He wanted to continue the war though because had bet everything he had in the war. He
had the ability to at least speak out against the war and admit it was a blunder that should have
never happened, but he kept with it despite knowing that the war was draining the nations
Works Cited
Updegrove, Mark K. "Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam." New York Times, 25 Feb. 2017, p. NA(L).
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=GPS&sw=w&u=va_s_128_0620&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE
Goodwin, Richard N. "President Lyndon Johnson: The War Within." The New York Times
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=GPS&sw=w&u=va_s_128_0620&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE
McCabe, Suzanne. "Vietnam why the war still matters today: America's involvement in the
Vietnam war in the 1960s and early 70s deeply divided the nation. Four decades later, the
war's haunting legacy remains." Junior Scholastic, 23 Apr. 2012, p. 16+. Gale Biography
In Context,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=GPS&sw=w&u=va_s_128_0620&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE
"Timeline: Vietnam & the U.S." Junior Scholastic, 23 Apr. 2012, p. 18+. Gale Biography In
Context,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=GPS&sw=w&u=va_s_128_0620&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE