Lyndon B Johnson Role In The Vietnam War Essay Example

In the years 1955 to 1975, a war exploded in Vietnam between the communist North Vietnamese and the democratic South Vietnamese. Alongside Eisenhower, the United States became an aid to the democratic party in South Vietnam, which only grew rampant from there. With the inauguration of Lyndon Johnson in 1963, a new phase of American intervention was brought into action generating a great divide, many casualties in men, and a horrendous act of folly.

Lyndon Johnson had the unfortunate predicament of stepping into office after the death of the previous president, Kennedy. Kennedy held office for three years until 1963 when he was shot in Dallas Texas. South Vietnam also had its own assassination with the death of its leader Diem, organized by the US government. With death in the air, and no real ruling party controlling South Vietnam, it was assumed that the US intervention in Vietnam had ended. However, Johnson had other plans and immediately set into action a new wave of control and power in South Vietnam.

The Americanization of the war was Johnson’s greatest folly since it escalated the role of the US in Vietnam and hence the war. Johnson used the press and the media to convey his message to the people that the Vietnam War was a war against Communism and a war to help democracy for all. Be that as it may, he also lied to the press and hid many things from the public, such as the position of the USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin, the role the US soldiers played in the war, and the number of casualties in the war. These lies and manipulations of the truth Johnson pursued only intensified the great divide between the American public and the president’s interpretation of the truth.

Due to the lack of support and control the South Vietnamese government had, the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong both took South Vietnamese cities and made great advancements. The Vietnamese people themselves did not want democracy for it reeked of American control, a reminder of the once French control. With the South Vietnamese government heading towards an end, Johnson initiated Operation Rolling Thunder which released millions of bombs on North Vietnam. Ultimately, Johnson used violence against violence, which only intensified suffering, and the disapproval of the American people who used this incident, as well as many others, to enact the peace movement, a plea for the removal of soldiers in the war. The American people discovering more and more deception began to shift their thoughts from a war for democracy to a war of death. President Lyndon Johnson continued sending men and pursuing the hopeless war, despite the obvious American opposition to the War.

Though the conventional wisdom and direction of the American people pointed towards an end to the war, President Lyndon Johnson headed in the opposite direction due to the Gospel of the Cold War which stated that communism is all the same and like cancer, spreads. Russia and China were both communists and in close proximity to Vietnam. Johnson feared that these three countries were in communication and perhaps threatened the democratic ways of the United States and the rest of the world. Furthermore, Johnson feared that if Vietnam was to fall into communism, Laos, Cambodia, and all the countries surrounding Vietnam would soon follow. This panic and worry led Johnson to heavily pursue Vietnam as a means to end the spread of communism. The actions of President Johnson to Americanize the war, pursue communist Vietnam, and lie to the American public, led to the greatest demonstration of folly in the Vietnam War, which of course ended in an American loss.