Why did the US get involved in Vietnam?
Military Advisers In Public:
“I see light at the end Help France!
of the tunnel.” “After the Communist victory
-Walt W. Rostow, in China in 1949 and the Korean
War the following year,
National Security Adviser
the United States began
1967 giving large amounts of
military aid to the French.”
-Howard Zinn.
The Impossible Victory:Vietnam
Quagmire Theory
“I don’t think its worth fightin
Contain Communism
for, and I don’t think we
can get out.” -LBJ “Communist control of
all of Southeast Asia
would render the U.S.
position in the Pacific
4144,444.ik offshore island chain precarious
I ir and would seriously jeopardize
Economic InterestAre fundamental U.S. security interests
in the Far East.”
“the specific value of a locality -from a secret memo of the
in its production of materials National Security Council 1952
that the world needs” The Impossible Victory: Vietnam
-Eisenhower 1954
Secretly: Domino Theory
You have a row of dominos set up:
you knock over the first one, and
what will happen to the last one is
the certainty that it will go over very
quickly.” -Eisenhower
outheast Asia,
especially Malaya and Indonesia, “It was important. therefore,
is the principal world source of to keep the first one from falling.”
natural rubber and tin, -Howard Zinn.
and a producer of petroleum The Impossible Victory: Vietnam
and other strategically
important commodities…”
-from a secret memo
of the National Security Council 1952
he Impossible Victory: Vietnam
‘