Vietnam+Document

//Extract from **President Eisenhowers** Greetings to Vietnam on the Anniversary of Independance, October 25, 1960.//
 * Source A**

During the years of your independence it has been refreshing for us to observe how clearly the Government and the citizens of Viet-Nam have faced the fact that the greatest danger to their independence was Communism. You and your countrymen have used your strength well in accepting the double challenge of building your country and resisting Communist imperialism. In five short years since the founding of the Republic, the Vietnamese people have developed their country in almost every sector. I was particularly impressed by one example. I am informed that last year over 1,200,000 Vietnamese children were able to go to elementary school; three times as many as were enrolled five years earlier. This is certainly a heartening development for Viet-Nam's future. At the same time Viet-Nam's ability to defend itself from the Communists has grown immeasurably since its successful struggle to become an independent Republic.

Viet-Nam's very success as well as its potential wealth and its strategic location have led the Communists of Hanoi, goaded by the bitterness of their failure to enslave all Viet-Nam, to use increasing violence in their attempts to destroy your country's freedom. This grave threat, added to the strains and fatigues of the long struggle to achieve and strengthen independence, must be a burden that would cause moments of tension and concern in almost any human heart. Yet from long observation I sense how deeply the Vietnamese value their country's independence and strength and I know how well you used your boldness when you led your countrymen in winning it. I also know that your determination has been a vital factor in guarding that independence while steadily advancing the economic development of your country. I am confident that these same qualities of determination and boldness will meet the renewed threat as well as the needs and desires of your countrymen for further progress on all fronts.

Although the main responsibility for guarding that independence will always, as it has in the past, belong to the Vietnamese people and their government, I want to assure you that for so long as our strength can be useful, the United States will continue to assist Viet-Nam in the difficult yet hopeful struggle ahead.

//Picture of Vietnam War **protestors**, 1967, Wichita, Kansas//
 * Source B**



//The interpretations of the Vietnam War by **Michael Lind**; "The Necessary War"//
 * Source C**

Having sought to avoid this outcome, the United States found itself at war.

The place was an impoverished peninsula near a major industrial region, to which the United States was committed by a long-standing military alliance. The enemy was a communist dictator who skillfully manipulated the nationalism of his people in an attempt to unite all members of his ethnic group into a single enlarged state under communist-nationalist rule. The dictator's regime, ignoring an ultimatum by the United States and its allies, persisted in sponsoring a low-intensity war against the inhabitants of a neighboring territory that the communist-nationalists sought to bring under their control.

The terrain, wooded and mountainous, favored the communist-nationalists. Throughout history, the region had been invaded many times, by external powers that had often come to grief. The president of the United States and his advisers, stunned by the number of troops that Pentagon estimates called for, repeatedly shelved plans for sending in ground forces.

//"So Much Goes In-So Little Comes Out" by **John Collins,** 1965//
 * Source D**

//Extract from **Ho Chi Minh's** letter to Lyndon Johnson on February 10, 1967// Vietnam is thousands of miles away from the United States. The Vietnamese people have never done any harm to the United States. But contrary to the pledges made by its representative at the 1954 Geneva conference, the U.S. has ceaselessly intervened in Vietnam, it has unleashed and intensified the war of aggression in North Vietnam with a view to prolonging the partition of Vietnam and turning South Vietnam into a neocolony and a military base of the United States. For over two years now, the U.S. government has, with its air and naval forces, carried the war to the Democratic Republic of (North) Vietnam, an independent and sovereign country.
 * Source E**

The U.S. government has committed war crimes, crimes against peace and against mankind. In South Vietnam, half a million U.S. and satellite troops have resorted to the most inhuman weapons and most barbarous methods of warfare, such as napalm, toxic chemicals and gases, to massacre our compatriots, destroy crops, and raze villages to the ground. In North Vietnam, thousands of U.S. aircraft have dropped hundreds of thousands of tons of bombs, destroying towns, villages, factories, schools. In your message, hyou apparently deplore the sufferings and destruction in Vietnam. May I ask you: Who has perpetrated these monstrous crimes? It is the United States and satellite troops. The U.S. government is entirely responsible for the extremely serious situation in Vietnam.