A Brief Overview of the Vietnam War
The Vietnam War, officially called the Second Indochina War refers to the conflict in which the United States and other members of the SEATO (Southeast Asia Treaty Organization) joined the forces of the Republic of South Vietnam in opposition of North Vietnamese communist forces. The U.S. had the largest foreign military presence and basically directed the war from 1965 to 1968.
The map above illustrates some of the major battles of the Tet Offensive, a key strategy during the Vietnam War.
Other Pictures from Interview
Justifying the War: From the Point of View of a Vietnam Veteran
By Anna Wahl
In an effort to stop the spread of communism during the Cold War, the United States became involved in the Vietnam War. This war spanned more than a decade and resulted in substantial destruction in both Southeast Asia and the American home front. [1] The United States’ involvement in Vietnam ended in defeat and proved significantly costly in both the number of souls lost and their reputation. Up until this point, America’s reputation was that of a defender of democracy and freedom throughout the world. Their involvement in this war diminished this reputation as little to nothing was accomplished. The loss of both people and reputation makes many question if American involvement in the war was even justified. One Vietnam veteran, Thomas John McHale, shared his story about becoming involved, the rigorous training, the positive & negative memories, as well as why the war should have been deemed unnecessary.
Thomas John McHale was born in Fort Myers, Florida on September 25, 1954.[2] After receiving a baseball scholarship to the University of Miami, he was drafted at the young age of 19 two years in Vietnam and work as an instructor for the following three years. Upon entering the army he was asked to take a test, sort of like a placement test commonly seen in schools today. In the first test he finished second out of five hundred participants and in the second he was first out of six hundred. All those who finished in the top five or six of these tests were taken to boot camp to be trained in the Special Forces as rangers. Out of all the men who went to ranger school, just thirsty-eight made it through. McHale said training for Special Forces was extremely rigorous as it was physically difficult, you were given insufficient amounts of rest, and combat training was laborious. He was trained all over the country starting from Florida, to D.C., to Kentucky, and later Louisiana for jungle training. There was nothing they were not prepared for.
McHale viewed this intense training as a positive for he felt much safer having been trained this way in comparison with the regular batch of guys who were simply thrown out in their field with a weapon. Upon entering the war, each man was brainwashed and trained especially rangers and Special Forces to make them feel like they were doing the right thing. Motives by the government were concealed so the government encouraged them through patriotism. Some draftees, however, were ecstatic to be involved in the war. There were people that were Jeep drivers or cooks who simply believed the war was a fun and exciting place. They were often drug addicts and drunks who were considering to always be in a safe area. In Vietnam, only 18-19% of those involved actually fought and were involved in combat.
When trying to justify the war after having fought, McHale looks toward four experiences, two positive and two negative. The positive experiences of the war were slim and the negative impact simply outweighs any good there was. When discussing a few of the positive experiences, there are also several discrepancies. The first positive experience was when a small group, himself and a few other rangers, were cutting through thick foliage with a machete they reached an area where it was clear no one had been in probably fifty years. There was an untouched canopy that led to an incredibly breathtaking waterfall. The men looked toward this as a sign of hope and spent several days there.
The other positive experience was more so an intriguing scenario that led to McHale’s confirmation of government secrecy. One night while on bunker duty (guarding the exterior of the fort) sixty of the rangers observed a metallic flying saucer that stopped itself and hoovered for approximately ten minutes between themselves and the moon. Eventually it zoomed across the sky and flew off. The radios were going wild as rangers questioned if it truly was what they saw or if they were imagining it. For McHale the situation proved very much real when each man on duty was hastily asked to sign a paper saying they would not discuss what they had just seen.[3] This launched the question what they were actually there for. None of them really knew why they were there and why the government was going out of their way to cover certain aspects up.
Questions flew through the heads of the rangers who really had not had time to ponder what their purpose was. These men had been told that what they were doing was right and in every way backed by the country. However, they looked to each other, knowing they should not be there, but had to continue to do what they were doing in order to guarantee they would make it home.
Making it back home became the purpose for fighting for most of these men. Men would be placed in body bags and sent off on helicopters just moments after having had a conversation with them. This is one of the negative aspects of the war that McHale recalls. He said it made you question when you would die not if you would die. You had to rely on your training in hopes that it was enough to get you home safely.
Another negative experience, and example of government secrecy during the war, is when McHale was on a mission in Laos. According to the government, United States soldiers never entered Laos and they were never supposed to be there. McHale was on a mission to parachute behind enemy lines to scout out one of the camps in order to find out if there were American hostages. Quickly upon landing, he says he could hear the shrieks of Americans crying out in hopeless pain. To this day he is unsure what was happening to them within the camp, but when he reported the occurrence he was told to keep his mouth shut and nothing was ever done in an attempt to save the hostages.
When asked about the pros and cons of war, McHale says he is in limbo with that.[4] If there is a cause I am all for it but I often think the government is A government and not OUR government. McHale is an American citizen and proud to be an Americans and proud to have served as a ranger but sometimes he does not feel we as a country make the best choices.
Living in the jungle allowed him to see the world in a new light. All your possessions are kept in one small ammo box to keep them dry in the wet jungle conditions. Each man was given a camera, yet you would never keep your own camera. In order to have pictures of yourself during war, the men would find a companion and swap so they could take pictures of each other. McHale swapped cameras with Muttly, a man who had become much of a brother to him. Making friends over the common characteristic that you are fighting to stay alive for a reason you do not know was not justified in the minds of these young teens whose lives were just beginning.
The older McHale gets, the more he realizes how unnecessary the war was. He explained that you look back at what you did and realize it wasn’t worth it. Over 58,000 men were said to have been killed in the Vietnam War with the average age at death being just 23 years old.[5] McHale was shot twice throughout his time in combat and feels he is extremely lucky to still have all four limbs. He believes that life is too precious to waste lives on an unjustified battle.
After exiting his time in combat, he was asked to instruct and train Special Forces for the next three years. He did so and at the end of that time they requesting that he reenlist. McHale refused and made his way out of the military and back into everyday life, something he had not experienced since graduating high school. He claims that at that time he felt for the first time as though he was not owned by the military.
When asked if the purpose for war was justified, the response was an immediate and sharp no.[6] It was a waste of time to take part in the Vietnam War. You do not realize it when you are nineteen because you are given very little time to think about it due to the fact you want to live to see another day. When you arrive home and you comprehend how many men were lost and how many were wounded, nothing can justify that. And what was it all for? Nothing changed in Vietnam due to the United States’ participation.
Thomas John McHale has been awarded two purple hearts (for being wounded in combat twice), six bronze stars (four of which have a combat “v” on them for rescuing men from bunkers), as well as countless other awards.
The time spent at war was life changing for McHale both mentally and physically. He arrived back in the United States with some additional metal in his body and a mindset that was simply lost. Why had America gone to war, suffered significant losses, and all for no change in Vietnam? McHale believes intensely that a country needs to have a strong military backing it, but if you do not put it to good use then it is pointless. You do not get involved in a war that risks American lives just to say you are here. As President Nixon said following the war, “No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now. Rarely have so many people been so wrong about so much. Never have the consequences of their misunderstanding been so tragic.”[7]
Works Cited:
[2] "Thomas John McHale." Telephone interview. 5 June 2016.
[3] "Thomas John McHale." Telephone interview. 5 June 2016.
[4] "Thomas John McHale." Telephone interview. 5 June 2016.
[5] Statistics About the Vietnam War. (2008, June 2). In History.com. Retrieved from http://www.vhfcn.org/stat.html
[6] "Thomas John McHale." Telephone interview. 5 June 2016.
[7] Post-Vietnam Intervention. (2005). In PBS. Retrieved June 5, 2016, from http://www.pbs.org/opb/thesixties/topics/war/legacy.html
Thomas John McHale was born in Fort Myers, Florida on September 25, 1954.[2] After receiving a baseball scholarship to the University of Miami, he was drafted at the young age of 19 two years in Vietnam and work as an instructor for the following three years. Upon entering the army he was asked to take a test, sort of like a placement test commonly seen in schools today. In the first test he finished second out of five hundred participants and in the second he was first out of six hundred. All those who finished in the top five or six of these tests were taken to boot camp to be trained in the Special Forces as rangers. Out of all the men who went to ranger school, just thirsty-eight made it through. McHale said training for Special Forces was extremely rigorous as it was physically difficult, you were given insufficient amounts of rest, and combat training was laborious. He was trained all over the country starting from Florida, to D.C., to Kentucky, and later Louisiana for jungle training. There was nothing they were not prepared for.
McHale viewed this intense training as a positive for he felt much safer having been trained this way in comparison with the regular batch of guys who were simply thrown out in their field with a weapon. Upon entering the war, each man was brainwashed and trained especially rangers and Special Forces to make them feel like they were doing the right thing. Motives by the government were concealed so the government encouraged them through patriotism. Some draftees, however, were ecstatic to be involved in the war. There were people that were Jeep drivers or cooks who simply believed the war was a fun and exciting place. They were often drug addicts and drunks who were considering to always be in a safe area. In Vietnam, only 18-19% of those involved actually fought and were involved in combat.
When trying to justify the war after having fought, McHale looks toward four experiences, two positive and two negative. The positive experiences of the war were slim and the negative impact simply outweighs any good there was. When discussing a few of the positive experiences, there are also several discrepancies. The first positive experience was when a small group, himself and a few other rangers, were cutting through thick foliage with a machete they reached an area where it was clear no one had been in probably fifty years. There was an untouched canopy that led to an incredibly breathtaking waterfall. The men looked toward this as a sign of hope and spent several days there.
The other positive experience was more so an intriguing scenario that led to McHale’s confirmation of government secrecy. One night while on bunker duty (guarding the exterior of the fort) sixty of the rangers observed a metallic flying saucer that stopped itself and hoovered for approximately ten minutes between themselves and the moon. Eventually it zoomed across the sky and flew off. The radios were going wild as rangers questioned if it truly was what they saw or if they were imagining it. For McHale the situation proved very much real when each man on duty was hastily asked to sign a paper saying they would not discuss what they had just seen.[3] This launched the question what they were actually there for. None of them really knew why they were there and why the government was going out of their way to cover certain aspects up.
Questions flew through the heads of the rangers who really had not had time to ponder what their purpose was. These men had been told that what they were doing was right and in every way backed by the country. However, they looked to each other, knowing they should not be there, but had to continue to do what they were doing in order to guarantee they would make it home.
Making it back home became the purpose for fighting for most of these men. Men would be placed in body bags and sent off on helicopters just moments after having had a conversation with them. This is one of the negative aspects of the war that McHale recalls. He said it made you question when you would die not if you would die. You had to rely on your training in hopes that it was enough to get you home safely.
Another negative experience, and example of government secrecy during the war, is when McHale was on a mission in Laos. According to the government, United States soldiers never entered Laos and they were never supposed to be there. McHale was on a mission to parachute behind enemy lines to scout out one of the camps in order to find out if there were American hostages. Quickly upon landing, he says he could hear the shrieks of Americans crying out in hopeless pain. To this day he is unsure what was happening to them within the camp, but when he reported the occurrence he was told to keep his mouth shut and nothing was ever done in an attempt to save the hostages.
When asked about the pros and cons of war, McHale says he is in limbo with that.[4] If there is a cause I am all for it but I often think the government is A government and not OUR government. McHale is an American citizen and proud to be an Americans and proud to have served as a ranger but sometimes he does not feel we as a country make the best choices.
Living in the jungle allowed him to see the world in a new light. All your possessions are kept in one small ammo box to keep them dry in the wet jungle conditions. Each man was given a camera, yet you would never keep your own camera. In order to have pictures of yourself during war, the men would find a companion and swap so they could take pictures of each other. McHale swapped cameras with Muttly, a man who had become much of a brother to him. Making friends over the common characteristic that you are fighting to stay alive for a reason you do not know was not justified in the minds of these young teens whose lives were just beginning.
The older McHale gets, the more he realizes how unnecessary the war was. He explained that you look back at what you did and realize it wasn’t worth it. Over 58,000 men were said to have been killed in the Vietnam War with the average age at death being just 23 years old.[5] McHale was shot twice throughout his time in combat and feels he is extremely lucky to still have all four limbs. He believes that life is too precious to waste lives on an unjustified battle.
After exiting his time in combat, he was asked to instruct and train Special Forces for the next three years. He did so and at the end of that time they requesting that he reenlist. McHale refused and made his way out of the military and back into everyday life, something he had not experienced since graduating high school. He claims that at that time he felt for the first time as though he was not owned by the military.
When asked if the purpose for war was justified, the response was an immediate and sharp no.[6] It was a waste of time to take part in the Vietnam War. You do not realize it when you are nineteen because you are given very little time to think about it due to the fact you want to live to see another day. When you arrive home and you comprehend how many men were lost and how many were wounded, nothing can justify that. And what was it all for? Nothing changed in Vietnam due to the United States’ participation.
Thomas John McHale has been awarded two purple hearts (for being wounded in combat twice), six bronze stars (four of which have a combat “v” on them for rescuing men from bunkers), as well as countless other awards.
The time spent at war was life changing for McHale both mentally and physically. He arrived back in the United States with some additional metal in his body and a mindset that was simply lost. Why had America gone to war, suffered significant losses, and all for no change in Vietnam? McHale believes intensely that a country needs to have a strong military backing it, but if you do not put it to good use then it is pointless. You do not get involved in a war that risks American lives just to say you are here. As President Nixon said following the war, “No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now. Rarely have so many people been so wrong about so much. Never have the consequences of their misunderstanding been so tragic.”[7]
Works Cited:
- Tucker, Spencer C. (2016). Vietnam War. In American History. Retrieved June 4, 2016, from http://americanhistory.abc-clio.com/
- Statistics About the Vietnam War. (2008, June 2). In History.com. Retrieved from http://www.vhfcn.org/stat.html
- "Thomas John McHale." Telephone interview. 5 June 2016.
- Post-Vietnam Intervention. (2005). In PBS. Retrieved June 5, 2016, from http://www.pbs.org/opb/thesixties/topics/war/legacy.html
[2] "Thomas John McHale." Telephone interview. 5 June 2016.
[3] "Thomas John McHale." Telephone interview. 5 June 2016.
[4] "Thomas John McHale." Telephone interview. 5 June 2016.
[5] Statistics About the Vietnam War. (2008, June 2). In History.com. Retrieved from http://www.vhfcn.org/stat.html
[6] "Thomas John McHale." Telephone interview. 5 June 2016.
[7] Post-Vietnam Intervention. (2005). In PBS. Retrieved June 5, 2016, from http://www.pbs.org/opb/thesixties/topics/war/legacy.html
Vietnam War: Propaganda and Deceit
By Emilee Eastman
America’s involvement in the Vietnam War took place between 1964 and 1975. Many lives were sacrificed on both sides. The American government sided with the South Vietnamese against the Communist North. Communist North Vietnamese forces made incursions into South Vietnam as early as 1957. To the American people, however, this was not enough of a reason to go to war and because of that the United States government needed to instill in its people a rational fear of the times. That fear was of Communism. In order to ingrain fear in the American people and consequently gain their support for war, the United States government relied on propaganda. A series of purposeful lies and exaggerations were used to gain the support of the American public. The Vietnam war propaganda, although influential at the beginning of the war, began to fail altogether as the war dragged on because the true actions of the U.S. government, military, and allies were revealed by witnesses, reporters, and returning soldiers looking to get the truth out to the American public.
One example of propaganda that influenced public support for the war was called the “Domino Theory”. The theory itself was a term coined by President Eisenhower in 1954. The thought was that if South Vietnam was to fall to Communism, then other countries would fall around it as the political ideology gained power, like dominos collapsing upon one another. In a political cartoon from the time of war, Nixon and an army officer are depicted walking past a graveyard, which is named ‘Viet War Dead’. Each of the gravestones are dominoes and the officer is saying " ... and, of course, if Cambodia fell then Laos would fall, and if Laos fell ...”. The cartoon is important in that it expresses the paranoid view that if one country fell, the next would fall and if that one fell, the next one would and so on until the entire world was consumed by Communism. Although the Domino Theory was proposed 10 years before any actual American troop involvement in Vietnam, it set out to establish the support of the American people and a lasting fear of Communism. Zinn asserts that there were two more realistic reasons why the United States government wanted to protect their interests in the region of Vietnam. He reports that in a secret memo of the National Security Council in June 1952, evidence is revealed that the government was worried about maintaining their chain of important military bases in the Pacific. Also, Zinn claims the United States government was concerned about protecting the principal world source of some very important natural resources that came from that region including rubber, tin, coal, iron ore, and petroleum.
The “Passage of Freedom Operation” was another important piece of propaganda used by the U.S. Government in the early days before the Vietnamese conflict. This idea, introduced in 1954 by the Eisenhower administration, and led by Col. Edward Lansdale, chief of covert action, was an attempt to undermine the North Vietnamese population. The primary goal of the operation was to encourage the relocation of as many North Vietnamese citizens to South Vietnam as possible. In doing this, the U.S. government would be able to reduce the number of citizens that could be recruited into the North Vietnamese army and therefore lower resistance. This was done mainly in two ways. First, South Vietnamese soldiers would enter the North in civilian clothing and spread the word of a Chinese attempt at invasion. This would push the North Vietnamese citizens into a state of paranoia and scare them into moving to the south. The second technique used in the operation was specifically aimed at North Vietnamese Catholics. The U.S. and French governments distributed leaflets with slogans telling Northern Vietnamese Catholics that “The Virgin Mary Has Gone to the South”. The idea played on fears that if Communism took over, then the option to practice Catholicism would disappear leaving only the Communist Dictatorship to control all religious beliefs. Frankum reports that between 1954 and 1955 approximately 310,000 North Vietnamese had immigrated to the South. Thus, the Passage to Freedom program was deemed successful.
Another important use of propaganda by the U.S. Government in gaining public support for the Vietnam War is what has become known as the Tonkin incident. The incident happened in two confrontations between the U.S. and the Vietnamese on the Tonkin Gulf waters off the coast of North Vietnam. On August 2, 1964 in the Gulf of Tonkin, the U.S. destroyer Maddox exchanged fire with several North Vietnamese ships. On August 4, the Maddox was allegedly attacked again. After the incident, Johnson and his advisors used the media as a vehicle of propaganda distribution to give the American public the sense that there were multiple violent attacks by the North Vietnamese. However, as it was to be discovered years later, the second attack on August 4th had never actually occurred. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara made an official statement regarding the incident saying “While on routine patrol in international waters the U.S. destroyer Maddox underwent an unprovoked attack” (McNamara). However, the Maddox was not on any ordinary mission. The point of the mission was electronic spying. The attack was far from being “unprovoked” as the CIA had engaged in a secret operation in which they attacked the North Vietnamese coastal installations. The incident brought about the Tonkin Resolution, giving President Johnson the power to “initiate hostilities without the declaration of war by Congress that the Constitution required” (Zinn 467). By purposefully deceiving the public, the incident became the validation for Lyndon B. Johnson to send troops to Vietnam in 1964 in order to aid the French in their fight against the North Vietnamese. Naval Commander Stockdale of the ship Ticonderoga states in his memoir that “We were about to launch a war under false pretenses in the face of the on-scene military commander’s advice to the contrary” (Stockdale 25). In this quote, Stockdale makes it clear that he and others understood that the claim of an August 4th attack was completely false. The true nature and extent of the war was not revealed until the Pentagon Papers were published in 1971.
Starting in June of 1971, the New York Times published a series of leaked government documents which were referred to as the Pentagon Papers. While the official government line had been telling the American public that all was well in Vietnam and goals were being achieved, the Pentagon Papers revealed that atrocities were being committed by American troops and allies and there were also many covert operations occurring. James Hirsch states that it was common practice for the pro-American government in South Vietnam to torture suspected Communists. They would then either be shot or sentenced to a concentration camp. In South Vietnamese prisons, inmates were often beat and whipped. Women who were arrested were routinely raped and tortured. Also revealed in the Pentagon Papers was a program implemented by the CIA called Operation Phoenix. This program executed at least 20,000 civilians in South Vietnam who were suspected of being members of the Communist underground. One of the more infamous cases revealed in the Pentagon Papers has come to be known as the My Lai incident. This incident occurred on March 16, 1968. A company of American Soldiers entered the village of My Lai and corralled all of the people within it, including men, women, the elderly and children. The American soldiers ordered the people into a ditch and shot and killed every soul in sight. It was estimated that 450-500 were killed. When this was published in the papers, the American people were appalled and realized how much the government was censoring what was really happening in the war. The publication of the papers was a key event because it overrode the propaganda which was being injected into the public’s understanding of the war as the government had told it. The event also widened what is referred to as the credibility gap. These revelations resulted in a serious decline in relations between the U.S. people and their government and became precursors for massive protests from the Anti-war “doves”.
It is clear from the evidence that the United States government acted to deceive the American public though the use of propaganda to gain their support. As the war continued and more lives were tragically lost, the truth about atrocities were revealed to the American Public, and anti-war sentiment grew. The propaganda, which had been manufactured to support the war, eventually failed. With a web of lies and continued deceit, the American public was bound to eventually discover the truth, and they did, especially after the Pentagon papers were released and demonstrated the degree of government cover up. The war was indeed not going well for the Americans, who had virtually no purpose in the fight. Persistent reporters and stories of atrocity told by American soldiers returning from war further bolstered the American people’s distrust in their government. The war ended for the U.S. in 1973 with the withdrawal of American troops and the fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese in 1975 ended the war itself. Propaganda continues to be used by our government to encourage support for war. For example, in more recent times, it was used by George W. Bush’s administration to declare war on Saddam Hussain’s rule of Iraq. The Bush government accused Hussain of having weapons of mass destruction. These claims were proved to be completely false. No weapons of mass destruction were ever found despite thousands of lives that were lost trying.
Works Cited
Frankum, Ronald. Operation Passage to Freedom: The United States Navy in Vietnam. Lubbock: Texas Tech University, 2007.
Hirsch, James S. Two Souls Indivisible. Boston, Mass: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2004.
Marlette, Doug. Charlotte Observer, 1972.
McNamara, Robert. "LBJ Tapes on the Gulf of Tonkin Incident." In The White House Tapes, edited by John Prodos, New York City: The New Press, 2003.
Sass, Erik, Will Pearson, and Mangesh Hattikudor. The Mental Floss History of the United States. New York City: William Morrow Paperbacks, 2001.
Stockdale, Jim, and Sybil Stockdale. In Love and War: The Story of a Family's Ordeal and Sacrifice During the Vietnam Years. New York City: Bantam Books, 1984.
Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States. New York City: HarperCollins, 1980.
One example of propaganda that influenced public support for the war was called the “Domino Theory”. The theory itself was a term coined by President Eisenhower in 1954. The thought was that if South Vietnam was to fall to Communism, then other countries would fall around it as the political ideology gained power, like dominos collapsing upon one another. In a political cartoon from the time of war, Nixon and an army officer are depicted walking past a graveyard, which is named ‘Viet War Dead’. Each of the gravestones are dominoes and the officer is saying " ... and, of course, if Cambodia fell then Laos would fall, and if Laos fell ...”. The cartoon is important in that it expresses the paranoid view that if one country fell, the next would fall and if that one fell, the next one would and so on until the entire world was consumed by Communism. Although the Domino Theory was proposed 10 years before any actual American troop involvement in Vietnam, it set out to establish the support of the American people and a lasting fear of Communism. Zinn asserts that there were two more realistic reasons why the United States government wanted to protect their interests in the region of Vietnam. He reports that in a secret memo of the National Security Council in June 1952, evidence is revealed that the government was worried about maintaining their chain of important military bases in the Pacific. Also, Zinn claims the United States government was concerned about protecting the principal world source of some very important natural resources that came from that region including rubber, tin, coal, iron ore, and petroleum.
The “Passage of Freedom Operation” was another important piece of propaganda used by the U.S. Government in the early days before the Vietnamese conflict. This idea, introduced in 1954 by the Eisenhower administration, and led by Col. Edward Lansdale, chief of covert action, was an attempt to undermine the North Vietnamese population. The primary goal of the operation was to encourage the relocation of as many North Vietnamese citizens to South Vietnam as possible. In doing this, the U.S. government would be able to reduce the number of citizens that could be recruited into the North Vietnamese army and therefore lower resistance. This was done mainly in two ways. First, South Vietnamese soldiers would enter the North in civilian clothing and spread the word of a Chinese attempt at invasion. This would push the North Vietnamese citizens into a state of paranoia and scare them into moving to the south. The second technique used in the operation was specifically aimed at North Vietnamese Catholics. The U.S. and French governments distributed leaflets with slogans telling Northern Vietnamese Catholics that “The Virgin Mary Has Gone to the South”. The idea played on fears that if Communism took over, then the option to practice Catholicism would disappear leaving only the Communist Dictatorship to control all religious beliefs. Frankum reports that between 1954 and 1955 approximately 310,000 North Vietnamese had immigrated to the South. Thus, the Passage to Freedom program was deemed successful.
Another important use of propaganda by the U.S. Government in gaining public support for the Vietnam War is what has become known as the Tonkin incident. The incident happened in two confrontations between the U.S. and the Vietnamese on the Tonkin Gulf waters off the coast of North Vietnam. On August 2, 1964 in the Gulf of Tonkin, the U.S. destroyer Maddox exchanged fire with several North Vietnamese ships. On August 4, the Maddox was allegedly attacked again. After the incident, Johnson and his advisors used the media as a vehicle of propaganda distribution to give the American public the sense that there were multiple violent attacks by the North Vietnamese. However, as it was to be discovered years later, the second attack on August 4th had never actually occurred. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara made an official statement regarding the incident saying “While on routine patrol in international waters the U.S. destroyer Maddox underwent an unprovoked attack” (McNamara). However, the Maddox was not on any ordinary mission. The point of the mission was electronic spying. The attack was far from being “unprovoked” as the CIA had engaged in a secret operation in which they attacked the North Vietnamese coastal installations. The incident brought about the Tonkin Resolution, giving President Johnson the power to “initiate hostilities without the declaration of war by Congress that the Constitution required” (Zinn 467). By purposefully deceiving the public, the incident became the validation for Lyndon B. Johnson to send troops to Vietnam in 1964 in order to aid the French in their fight against the North Vietnamese. Naval Commander Stockdale of the ship Ticonderoga states in his memoir that “We were about to launch a war under false pretenses in the face of the on-scene military commander’s advice to the contrary” (Stockdale 25). In this quote, Stockdale makes it clear that he and others understood that the claim of an August 4th attack was completely false. The true nature and extent of the war was not revealed until the Pentagon Papers were published in 1971.
Starting in June of 1971, the New York Times published a series of leaked government documents which were referred to as the Pentagon Papers. While the official government line had been telling the American public that all was well in Vietnam and goals were being achieved, the Pentagon Papers revealed that atrocities were being committed by American troops and allies and there were also many covert operations occurring. James Hirsch states that it was common practice for the pro-American government in South Vietnam to torture suspected Communists. They would then either be shot or sentenced to a concentration camp. In South Vietnamese prisons, inmates were often beat and whipped. Women who were arrested were routinely raped and tortured. Also revealed in the Pentagon Papers was a program implemented by the CIA called Operation Phoenix. This program executed at least 20,000 civilians in South Vietnam who were suspected of being members of the Communist underground. One of the more infamous cases revealed in the Pentagon Papers has come to be known as the My Lai incident. This incident occurred on March 16, 1968. A company of American Soldiers entered the village of My Lai and corralled all of the people within it, including men, women, the elderly and children. The American soldiers ordered the people into a ditch and shot and killed every soul in sight. It was estimated that 450-500 were killed. When this was published in the papers, the American people were appalled and realized how much the government was censoring what was really happening in the war. The publication of the papers was a key event because it overrode the propaganda which was being injected into the public’s understanding of the war as the government had told it. The event also widened what is referred to as the credibility gap. These revelations resulted in a serious decline in relations between the U.S. people and their government and became precursors for massive protests from the Anti-war “doves”.
It is clear from the evidence that the United States government acted to deceive the American public though the use of propaganda to gain their support. As the war continued and more lives were tragically lost, the truth about atrocities were revealed to the American Public, and anti-war sentiment grew. The propaganda, which had been manufactured to support the war, eventually failed. With a web of lies and continued deceit, the American public was bound to eventually discover the truth, and they did, especially after the Pentagon papers were released and demonstrated the degree of government cover up. The war was indeed not going well for the Americans, who had virtually no purpose in the fight. Persistent reporters and stories of atrocity told by American soldiers returning from war further bolstered the American people’s distrust in their government. The war ended for the U.S. in 1973 with the withdrawal of American troops and the fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese in 1975 ended the war itself. Propaganda continues to be used by our government to encourage support for war. For example, in more recent times, it was used by George W. Bush’s administration to declare war on Saddam Hussain’s rule of Iraq. The Bush government accused Hussain of having weapons of mass destruction. These claims were proved to be completely false. No weapons of mass destruction were ever found despite thousands of lives that were lost trying.
Works Cited
Frankum, Ronald. Operation Passage to Freedom: The United States Navy in Vietnam. Lubbock: Texas Tech University, 2007.
Hirsch, James S. Two Souls Indivisible. Boston, Mass: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2004.
Marlette, Doug. Charlotte Observer, 1972.
McNamara, Robert. "LBJ Tapes on the Gulf of Tonkin Incident." In The White House Tapes, edited by John Prodos, New York City: The New Press, 2003.
Sass, Erik, Will Pearson, and Mangesh Hattikudor. The Mental Floss History of the United States. New York City: William Morrow Paperbacks, 2001.
Stockdale, Jim, and Sybil Stockdale. In Love and War: The Story of a Family's Ordeal and Sacrifice During the Vietnam Years. New York City: Bantam Books, 1984.
Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States. New York City: HarperCollins, 1980.