Kennedy), the Communists in Vietnam were supported and guided by the Soviet Union and China. Its object is total conquest.”Įven more disturbing, Johnson quickly added (following a script written by his predecessors Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Johnson put it in 1965, “The first reality is that North Vietnam has attacked the independent nation of South Vietnam. How we name and define this most controversial of American wars is not a narrow scholarly exercise, but profoundly shapes public memory of its meaning and ongoing significance to American national identity and foreign policy.ĭuring the war years, America’s leaders insisted that military force was necessary to defend a sovereign nation - South Vietnam - from external Communist aggression. Was America’s war in Vietnam a noble struggle against Communist aggression, a tragic intervention in a civil conflict, or an imperialist counterrevolution to crush a movement of national liberation? Those competing interpretations ignited fiery debates in the 1960s and remain unresolved today.
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