How was the Vietnam War initially sold to the public in the USA?

Factual Questions
1

In a more modern foreign war boondoggle like Iraq it is obvious the hard feelings from 9/11, conflation in the media and outright deception was what sold the public on it initially. I have a sense of this because I lived through it, I wasn’t even alive at the start of the Vietnam War though.

And I’m at a loss to explain how this war gained popular support at least in the beginning, it seems kind of baffling except for the stopping communism/Russia angle. Was that the only point people seized on?

(Please don’t tear me apart for ignorance, I’m asking a real question.)

2

I don’t know the best source but look up Gulf of Tonkin, basically the US claimed that the North Vietnamese fired on some of our ships but it actually never happened,

3

There is the domino theory that if South Vietnam became communist the neighboring South East Asian countries would follow:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domino_theory

4

  1. South Vietnam is a free democratic country. North Vietnam is a communist country that wants to invade and conquer South Vietnam. This is a war between freedom and dictatorship.

  2. Communists all work together. The North Vietnamese, the Chinese, and the Soviets are all plotting together. If we let them win in Vietnam, they’ll attack us next somewhere else like Thailand or Greece or Mexico.

  3. We’re not really in the war. It’s the Vietnamese that are doing all the fighting. We just have a handful of people over there to train them and give them a little assistance behind the front lines.

  4. Those damn North Vietnamese attacked us in international waters! We have to defend ourselves when we’re attacked, don’t we?

5

In addition to what’s been said, one of the arguments was that the war would be short and sweet (or at least could be, if only LBJ would stop dawdling and let the hawks nuke the VC). In 1965, for example, Ronald Reagan said “we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home by Christmas.”

6

Nobody had to sell the war to the public because it took quite a few years for anyone - including the government itself - to realize that they were, in fact, fighting a war; by that point, it wasn’t so much “This is why we have to fight” as it was “Well, so may of our guys have already died, we have to make sure it was worth it.” It was a classic case of throwing good money after bad.

7

All of the above. And it happened so gradually, you really had to be paying attention to realize anything of any importance was going on. And it was going on, in some god-forsaken backwater on the other side of the world. Who cared?

8

I blame Jim Morrison’s dad. :wink:

9

Meh. There had been U.S. “advisers” long before that happened. That was just an excuse to escalate a lot more than we had already been there. It was already kind of a “boiling frog” thing. A little here, a little there in the begining.

It’s almost impossible to explain to someone under 45 about the “red scare” mentality. In reality Muslim extremist have been far more dangerous to Americans than Communist ever have, but in the late 50’s/early 60’s that wasn’t the view of most Americans.

10

It was not a “declared” war-no war, a police action. it also supported lots of jobs (General Dynamics, Raytheon, Boeing, etc.). Even when the absurdity of continuing had been demonstrated (such as Khe Sanh), it kept going. Eventually, all the lies were exposed, and public support collapsed.

11

There was no reason to sell it. War was what we did. Ending the war required a sales effort.

12

The really big thing was that the VC were just proxies for the Chinese (only long after did I read about the enmity between Viets and Chinese) and the Chinese were just proxies for the Russians. Also if Viet Nam fell, then so would Cambodia, Laos, and all SE Asia. And then the political fat would be in the fire for “losing” SE Asia. It is hard to imagine how much blame fell on the Truman government and State Department for losing China. In fact I have speculated that the purge of the Asian hands at State was responsible for a lot of the disaster, e.g., not realizing that the Viets did not like the Chinese and would, in fact, be our allies in resisting China’s taking over of SE Asia. But the Viet Cong was communist and we can never support a communist government no matter how well aligned with our real interests.

Of course, the war was brought to an end as a result of the fact that our middle class kids were being drafted and getting killed over there and we could see no good outcome. And we weren’t mistaken. I think Iraq and Afganistan wars would have ended several years ago if we still had the draft.

As a matter of fact, just yesterday I came on the following quotation: The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions. -Robert Lynd, writer (20 Apr 1879-1949)

The only modern example of a short decisive war I can think of was Iraq I, and Bush I was roundly criticized for not continuing on to Baghdad and Bush II decided to remedy that.

13

I was born during the trailing end of the Vietnam War (actually during Operation Linebacker), so I wasn’t really around to know how it worked back then, but I suspect that considering how strong the anti-communist slant was during the 1980s, and the lengths people were willing to go to and what they were willing to overlook toward that goal (Iran-Contra, arming Mujahideen in Afghanistan, etc…) post-Vietnam, that it must have been considerably stronger and more accepted before and during most of Vietnam. I suspect that the idea of a war to prevent communist/Soviet expansion would have been considered just fine by the population at large- it was fine a decade earlier against N. Korea/China, the military expenditures of the 50s/60s were fine, the space race was fine, so why not a little war as well?

14

This is the saddest part of the whole thing. Our leaders had their heads up their asses and didn’t realize that North Vietnam was backed by the Soviets and not China, and that China and the Soviet Union were at odds. The fear of communism was so great that we were actually strengthening our enemies in this stupid pointless war.

15

That’s an oversell. There have been other short decisive wars in recent decades:

The wars against Grenada and Panama
Falklands War
Arab-Israeli Wars
Indo-Pakistani Wars
Hungarian Uprising
South Ossetia War
Russo-Georgian War
Sino-Vietnamese War
Cyprus War
Sand War
Football War
Libyan-Egyptian War
Uganda Liberation War
Paquisha War
Cenepa War
Ethio-Somali Wars
Agacher Strip War
First Congo War (but not the Second Congo War)

16

Somewhere in my disorganized mess of an office, I have a book, written by a fairly senior retired military guy maybe in 1968ish, that criticizes this argument (among other justifications for the war). The writer says that it was widely believed that advances by one communist entity would ultimately benefit the Soviets. The book argues that this was wrong and that the various communist countries were not all working together. I wish I could find that book now. Dagnabbit! Anyway, the book was interesting to me in that it really dismantled the case for the war when the war was still going full bore.

17

Quite true. To really understand the mindset of the 1960s, it’s necessary to appreciate the extent to which Communism was seen as a pervasive existential threat. This led to a two-valued logic in which if you did not wholeheartedly support any given effort against Communism, then you must be a Commie.

18

Wrong. The North Vietnamese navy attacked the U.S. Navy on Aug 2, 1964. The NV Navy did not attack the U.S. Navy on Aug 4, 1964. I’ve also noticed that the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution does not reference, or require, an actual date of any attack on U.S. forces.

*The First Attack:

On July 31, 1964, the destroyer USS Maddox commenced a Desoto patrol off North Vietnam. Under the operational control of Captain John J. Herrick, it steamed through the Gulf of Tonkin collecting intelligence. This mission coincided with several 34A attacks, including an August 1 raid on Hon Me and Hon Ngu Islands. Unable to catch the fast South Vietnamese PTFs, the government in Hanoi elected to strike instead at USS Maddox. On the afternoon of

August 2,

three Soviet-built P-4 motor torpedo boats were dispatched to attack the destroyer.

Cruising twenty-eight miles offshore in international waters, Maddox was approached by the North Vietnamese. Alerted to the threat, Herrick requested air support from the carrier USS Ticonderoga. This was granted, and four F-8 Crusaders were vectored towards Maddox’s position. In addition, the destroyer USS Turner Joy began moving to support Maddox. Not reported at the time, Herrick instructed his gun crews to fire three warning shots if the North Vietnamese came within 10,000 yards of the ship. These warning shots were fired and the P-4s launched a torpedo attack.

Returning fire, Maddox scored hits on the P-4s while being struck by a single 14.5-millimeter machine gun bullet. After fifteen minutes of maneuvering, the F-8s arrived and strafed the North Vietnamese boats, damaging two and leaving the third dead in the water. The threat removed, Maddox retired from the area to rejoin friendly forces. Surprised by the North Vietnamese response, Johnson decided that the United States could not back away from the challenge and directed his commanders in the Pacific to continue with the Desoto missions.

The Second Attack:

Reinforced by Turner Joy, Herrick returned to the area on

August 4.

That night and morning, while cruising in heavy weather, the ships received radar, radio, and sonar reports that signaled another North Vietnamese attack. Taking evasive action, they fired on numerous radar targets. After the incident, Herrick was unsure that his ships had been attacked, reporting at 1:27 AM Washington time that “Freak weather effects on radar and overeager sonarmen may have accounted for many reports. No actual visual sightings by Maddox.”

After suggesting a “complete evaluation” of the affair before taking further action, he radioed requesting a “thorough reconnaissance in daylight by aircraft.” American aircraft flying over the scene during the “attack” failed to spot any North Vietnamese boats.

…on August 10, 1964, the Southeast Asia (Gulf of Tonkin) Resolution, gave Johnson the power to use military force in the region without requiring a declaration of war.*

Milestone Documents | National Archives;

19

the commies wanted world domination, it was a core principle. we had become less worried about a full scale nuclear war to achieve that end. they would take over governments by revolution, war or election. any country would attempt to conquer or infiltrate its neighbors.

if we didn’t stop them there then we would be fighting junks in San Francisco Bay eventually.

20

North and South Vietnam were a product of the Geneva Accord of 1954. The Geneva Accord split Vietnam and the Vietnam non-war was a civil war to reunite the country. The real question was, which form of government would be in charge.

Truman, and Eisenhower, had sent guns and money to support the French effort to regain it’s colony of French Indochina. Kennedy sent 16,000 troops to fight communism. Johnson continued Kennedy’s war.

*After World War II, the French tried to re-establish colonial control over a region known as French Indochina—today the countries of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Following the defeat of the French, Vietnam was partitioned by the Geneva Accord of 1954 into Communist North Vietnam and non-Communist South Vietnam. The United States supported a military government in the South and the decision of its leader, Ngo Dinh Diem, to prevent free elections, which might result in the unification of the country under the control of the Communists. Guerilla forces supported by the Communist government of the North initiated a series of attacks in South Vietnam, and the Geneva Accord began to crumble.

The Domino Theory

American foreign policy after World War II was based on the goal of containing Communism and the assumptions of the so-called “domino theory”—if one country fell to Communism, the surrounding countries would fall, like dominoes. In response to that threat, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) was formed in 1955 to prevent Communist expansion, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent some 700 military personnel as well as military and economic aid to the government of South Vietnam. The effort was foundering when John F. Kennedy became president.

Internal Divisions

Corruption, religious differences, and mounting successes by the Vietcong guerrillas weakened the South Vietnamese government of Ngo Dinh Diem. Diem was Catholic, and public protests over the repression of Buddhists threatened the stability of his regime. Kennedy accelerated the flow of American aid and gradually increased U.S. military advisers to more than 16,000. At the same time, he pressed the Diem government to clean house and institute long-overdue political and economic reforms.

The situation did not improve. In September of 1963, President Kennedy declared in an interview, “In the final analysis, it is their war. They are the ones who have to win it or lose it. We can help them, we can give them equipment, we can send our men out there as advisers, but they have to win it, the people of Vietnam, against the Communists. . . . But I don’t agree with those who say we should withdraw. That would be a great mistake. . . . [The United States] made this effort to defend Europe. Now Europe is quite secure. We also have to participate—we may not like it—in the defense of Asia.”*