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It’s a dirty, vicious war that Americans are [waging] in the swamps of South Vietnam. Men forget about the politics of Saigon when they stand gun to gun with the Communist guerrillas…
‘The Strange War the U.S. Is Not Winning” (United States News, 1963) Read More »
Here is a segment of the letter many historians tend to agree was the one document that lead to the American involvement in the Vietnam War. Written in the Spring of 1954 when the French military was in the throes of losing the Battle of Điện Biên Phủ, President Eisenhower reached out to the former British Prime Minister to express his concerns regarding the place of Vietnam within the strategic structure of the Pacific and openly wondered what a Communist Vietnam would mean in the balance of power.
If I may refer again to history; we failed to halt Hirohito, Mussolini and Hitler by not acting in unity and in time. That marked the beginning of many years of stark tragedy and desperate peril. May it not be that our nations have learned something from that lesson?…
In 1954 the French gave up on Vietnam and the U.S. accepted the challenge – click here to read about it…
Click here to read an article about American public opinion during the early Cold War years
More about Winston Churchill can be read here.
President Eisenhower’s Thoughts on Vietnam (Why Vietnam, 1965) Read More »
In 1951, N.Y. Governor Thomas Dewey (1902 – 1971) made a fact-finding trip to French Indochina (Vietnam), and as impressed as he was with the French command, he wrote urgently in this Collier’s article of his belief in the Domino Theory – Indochina, Thailand and Burma were the Rice Bowl of Southeast Asia:
The Rice Bowl of Southeast Asia is the cornerstone of our Pacific defenses. And Indochina is the cornerstone of the cornerstone.
The Domino Theory (Collier’s Magazine, 1951) Read More »
[Here is] a portrait of the war by those who know it best – the men at the front… In these affecting pages are the unadorned voices of men and women who fought – and, in some cases, fell – in America’s most controversial war. They bring new insights and imagery to a conflict that still haunts our hearts, consciences, and the conduct of our foreign policy.
Letters from Vietnam (Coronet Magazine, 1967) Read More »
This article was published six weeks after 32,000 military personnel landed at Danang and the big unit war began:
A showdown with Communists in Asia is approaching fast. The U.S. offer of peace just got a short shrift from the Reds. Talk is not of peace , but a bigger war. The U.S. is determined to stand firm, no matter what. The strategy is to put more pressure on the enemy – making the cost unbearable. The hope is that the Reds will back off, but top U.S. officials are getting ready for the worst.
American Resolve Made Manifest (U.S. News & World Report, 1965) Read More »
Using a public forum, retired U.S. Air Force General Edward Lansdale (1908 – 1987) proposed a plan for the withdrawal of American and Allied Forces from Vietnam – a plan that came to be known as Vietnamization.
The Search for an Honorable Exit (Pageant Magazine, 1970) Read More »
Events are moving now toward a military showdown in Vietnam – with a decision to be made by combat.
The question at this time is whether the coming crisis will be resolved in South, middle or North Vietnam. As the showdown approaches, the U.S. finds itself involved in three forms of war in Southeast Asia:
• An anti-guerrilla war in southern South Vietnam.
• A base-defense war in northern South Vietnam.
• An anti-logistics war in southern North Vietnam.
The military man who penned this article weighs all these scenarios and also discusses the nuclear option.
Military Choices (U.S. News & World Report, 1965) Read More »
One terrible and overwhelming fact must be faced: Our soldiers and our pilots are being maimed and killed fighting a war that they are not being allowed to win. The Johnson Administration is not keeping faith with the men who must fight this war, with the half-million super-patriots, the half-million anti-Communists, who are fighting and dying in action against the forces of the International Communist Conspiracy.
‘While Brave Men Die” (American Opinion, 1967) Read More »
The National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia was started by the wives of the American military personnel believed to be held by the North Vietnamese Army. It was intended to place pressure on the Communists in order that they live up to their obligations under the Geneva Convention.
American POWs and the Wives They Left Behind (Coronet Magazine, 1971) Read More »
During the earliest days of 1951 many journalists and intelligence analysts in the West thought Ho Chi Minh’s prolonged absence from public view meant a coup d’état had taken place within the Viet Minh hierarchy. These same minds held that the most likely candidate to launch such a power play was Ho’s number two: Dang Xuan Khu (1907 – 1988). This article goes into some detail explaining who he was and what he’d been up to for the past forty years.
Vietminh Power Struggle? (The New Leader Magazine, 1951) Read More »
