WHY VIETNAM? What The Government Showed Us In 1966. Was It Convincing?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 ม.ค. 2024
- This propaganda film was distributed widely in 1966 and presented in high schools and colleges, on national TV, and at PTA and other meetings. It's a powerful film, a piece of propaganda that made sense to many Americans who sought. It was made by the US government.
In 1966 government's justification for its involvement in Vietnam was largely based on the policies and justifications that had been established in the earlier years of U.S. involvement. President Lyndon Johnson reiterated the same general reasons that had been used to justify American military involvement in Vietnam since the early 1960s.
The United States framed its involvement as part of the broader Cold War strategy to contain the spread of communism. The Domino Theory, which posited that the fall of one country to communism could lead to the fall of neighboring countries like dominoes, was often cited as a reason for U.S. intervention.
The U.S. argued that it was supporting the government of South Vietnam, which was viewed as the legitimate government, in its struggle against the communist forces of North Vietnam (the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army).
The U.S. government cited its obligations and commitments to its allies and international organizations like the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) as reasons for its military involvement in Vietnam.
President Johnson's statements during this time generally emphasized the need to prevent the spread of communism in Southeast Asia and the importance of supporting South Vietnam. One of the key statements made by Johnson was his address to the American people on July 28, 1965, in which he stated:
"We do this because we believe it is right and not because we believe it will bring us pleasure. We are there because we have a promise to keep. Since 1954, every American President has offered support to the people of South Vietnam. We have helped to build, and we have helped to defend. Thus, over many years, we have made a national pledge to help South Vietnam defend its independence."
This statement reflects the broader policy of U.S. involvement in Vietnam during that time, which was framed as a commitment to supporting South Vietnam's defense against communist aggression. It's important to note that the Vietnam War was a complex and controversial conflict, and the justifications for U.S. involvement evolved over time, leading to a range of opinions and debates.
If you found this of interest, please support my efforts to present more videos like this one by clicking the super thanks button below the video screen or by visiting PayPal at the username paypal.me/Davidhoffmanfilms.
Thank you
David Hoffman Filmmaker
I was there late 60's for 2 tours, Army Rangers 75th, killed a lot of people, lost a lot of buddies, for what? To fuel the military complex, the same thing Eisenhower warned about during his presidency.
It was part of your life journey, man. Every bad ass needs a back story 🫡 🇺🇸
Yeah, I'll never understand people who conflate the individual members of the US military with military industrial complex. Most Vietnam veterans I've met recognize it was a product of Eisenhower's concerns.
vietnam is still one of the few communist countries, like north korea. but an estimated 1.5M vietnamese died in that conflict.
My Dad did 2 tours also .Army 9th maintenance. 7th combat . 67-69
@@carlosgaspar8447 Wait only 1.5 million? Are you sure?
Even thou we went to Vietnam on a lie, I'm glad I spent two years there. I met a wonderful people. I forged many friendships and will never forget them.
And you helped butchered many women and children, don't leave that part out!
Thank you for your service, OG. Your country appreciates you 🫡 🇺🇸
Congratulations. The Free World has a debt with you brave men who fought and even died for Liberty. I admire America and I´m very grateful to this great Country. Thank you a lot. God Bless and Protect America for ever.
@@leonisilva5571 The fight America has today are people from within who want to destroy are freedom. I'm up there in age but if i get one chance to do something to stop them I'll go for it. I've lost to many friends in Vietnam to let these people have their way. Thanks for your kind words and may peace be with you.
@@JPriz416 Thanks, you for your service and sacrifice during the Vietnam conflict and welcome home Sir, I dedicate these two songs from SSgt Barry Sadler 1966 record album "Ballad of the Green Beret." to each and every one of our Vietnam Vets. 🙏
"I'm a Lucky One"
SSgt Barry Sadler
I'm going home my tour is done.
I'm going home I'm a lucky one.
But I left friends behind me.
who won't come home no more.
Yes many friends remain forever.
On that bloody shore.
But at night when I sleep I know my dreams will be.
About my friends I left across the sea.
I'll hear verbal young men harn laugh again out loud.
We'll all be together in a happy crowd.
But then I hear the sound of bullets whining overhead.
Feel the crash of morters and all my firends are dead.
My friends they fought and gave their all.
My friends they died for freedoms call.
As my dream is ending they'll come and say goodbye.
Though I'm sound asleep a tear I'll cry
And they say something which fills my heart with pain.
Tell them about us Sadler don't let us die in vain.
I'm going home my tour is done.
I'm going home I'm a lucky one
"Salute to the Nurses"
SSgt Barry Sadler
After the battle after the fight
many owe their lives to the ladies and men in white
And all of the men in this war torn land
salute the nurses of Vietnam
They know the awful toll of war each day
they know more than any the price we pay
A soldier his hands too burned to write
a nurse takes down his words through the lonely night
They have gone to the front where men fought
in the night from Pleiku to Qui Nhon
where war these men fight
Many a wounded soldier pain is eased for a while
by opening his eyes to see a nurses smile
To each of the wounded on the operating shelf
these nurses give a part of themselves
I know every soldier to the last man will
sometimes say a prayer for the nurses of Vietnam
After the battle after the fight
many owe their lives to the ladies and men in white
And all of the men in this war torn land
salute the nurses of Vietnam
Thank you for sharing love these historical videos 👌🏼
There should be a Constitutional Amendment which states that if a President or any member of Congress would like to engage in a war or armed conflict of any kind, their military service age children must be the first to be drafted and they must be placed in an actual fighting unit on the front lines. I'm sure if this were the law we would have far less Korea's and Vietnam's and Persian Gulf wars.
Your 'logic' is not logic...
@@dezirae1619Concepts such as "leading by example", "eating your own dogfood", "putting your own skin in the game" are long recognized logical principles known to sort out con-artists... If anything, it doesn't go far enough. We should be including mega-donors in their myriad forms, as well as their children. They should indeed go first, before any "volunteer" forces. Yes, I understand it's a complex thing, but after a 20 year conflict in the middle east, the average US citizen is done with foreign conflicts.
@@MedoryK This isolationism breeds instability abroad as we now see.
That would be highly unconstitutional.
@@johnnotrealname8168 Constitution is made to be modified!
What a brainwash.
It didn't sound like a good reason to me then, and I haven't changed my mind... thanks David 😎👍
I remember this, and yeah…it didn’t convince me then, and still doesn’t. The parallels he drew were not accurate, neither were they honest. A lot of us knew this was a way to line the pockets of the military industrial complex, and wasn’t posing a threat to America, which had helped to destabilize the politics of that country. Vigilance is always needed.🖤🇨🇦
Why bother with the Vietnamese fighting communism, communism would never affect us. WoW! What logic.
As usual David love the quality of your work. Ive study Vietnam war for long time. Thank you for sharing your viedos with us. What a time to learn.
*_"and it's one, two, three_* /
*_what are we fightin' for?"_* 🎶
Mr. Hoffman. This was a great year for documentaries. I hope you have seen these. I liked "Beyond Utopia", but there are incredibly diverse doc styles this year. I would love to get your thoughts on them as we approach awards season. Your insights are always concise, thoughtful and amazing. Best to you, David. Thanks.
Thanks for sharing this about Why Vietnam. So much to talk about the government involvement of the Vietnam war with president Johnson. 📸👍
Film clips like this one serves as a reminder of the mistakes made in the 1960's over the handling of our Vietnam policy at the time. Our government official at the time commented young guys to a war before the nation was commented sadly our returning Vietnam Vets took the blunt of the ager felt by many of the folks back here in America over the handling of our Vietnam policy.
No matter what situation our politicians and government officials get our country into in the future we must never disrespect those who answer the call of duty when called upon as what happen to our Vietnam Vets.
"The world will never have lasting peace as men reserve for war the finest human qualities.
Peace, no less than war, requires idealism and self-sacrifice and rightest and dynamic faith."
John Foster Dulles
Wasn't he Calvinitst?
American CIA officer for how long?When was the CIA created, and what was the name before it became that?
American history and world histories are important. History often lies with penmanship of the corruption of powers of greed. Therefore, one must search for truth by those of wisdom and intelligence by men and women who stand with courage and commitment over centuries.
Do American presidents lie? Why, of course, they do. If only President Kennedy had not been murdered, the world today may have been a better place for all the world.
Remembering Ghandi, Macolm X, Dr. Martha Luther KingJr, for they were murdered.
Nelson Mandella, we thank you.
Quote: Peace is a daily, a weekly, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures. And however undramatic the pursuit of peace, the pursuit must go on.
President John F. Kennedy
🙏❤️🌎🌿🕊🎵🎶🎵
Why thank Mandela? A terrorist if ever there was one; who preferred to travel around the world to receive accolades, rather than fix his country?
You could see how other world leaders looked uncomfortable when receiving Mandela YEARS after the elections in 1995. I’m sure they wanted to say to him: “Isn’t your victory tour over now, mate? You surely have a job to do?”
But no, Mandela loved his jet setting and the accolades too much, because a leader he was not. Rather, simply a media invention by the West. A hollow man..
"A Nation which honors its commitment and a people committed to our honor." To a person in that time it inveigled, persuaded, and reassured and to someone who is alive today... the propaganda is immaculent 🤌.
War profiteers are going straight to hell.
To be joined by most politicians, lawyers, and private equity firm profiteers....
Just think about the other horrible stuff that come out of war like buying and selling organs an crazy stuff like that isn’t talked about very often. Sad……
Why Vietnam? Well there was money to be made. Who cares about the human cost.
It’s the same thing today. Look at what happened in Afghanistan after we pulled out. There was never any progress because the entire thing is a money laundering scheme, designed to go on forever as passive income for the elites.
Absolutely, their making money selling organs. All the bankers are making tons of money too! Totally sad!
And military industrial complex got us into this war
The CIA and Johnson. One reason why they killed Kennedy.
It’s so easy now to see how America got embroiled in Vietnam, given the very similar scenario playing out in Ukraine.
I can see the merits of intervening now, that I never understood for decades of my life.
It’s easy to blame everything on the war machine, and that certainly doesn’t help. But the more honest explanation is far more complex and nuanced. It’s about standing up for what we believe in - that being self determination, stated by the much overused ‘freedom’ tag - by supporting those who share our belief.
I do believe self-determination is key to providing the greatest opportunity for widespread human happiness.
The challenge then, is how do we justify the use of force to impose a system of free choice? Simply, we can’t.
It can not be imposed, but it can be offered and supported by force, if necessary. And I think that’s where the Vietnam war went wrong.
America’s ability to deliver a successful outcome was misjudged. And human egos being what they are, once the evidence of failure started to appear, the US only dug in harder and increased its force to try and prove themselves correct.
I fear there is some element of misjudgement involved in our support for Ukraine right now too. The rabid, feral, careless ferociousness of Russian tacticts against the very people they claim will be better off under their rule is astonishing and powerfully effective at eroding popular will to oppose their invasion. We don’t really seem to have any countermeasure to those kinds of attacks.
An honest and humble reassessment of the rules for assisting a struggle such as this, needs to be made quickly.
1- Are the targets of our assistance helping themselves? That one is an easy Yes.
2- Do we agree with their objectives? Also clealry Yes
3- Do we have the ability to provide meaningful assistance? Absolutely
4- Is there a realistic probability of achieving our desired outcome? Ehhhh....?!? Possibly, but likely requiress absolute commitment
5- Does a specific, realistic, and viable strategy exist that would see our assistance come to a timely end? Not really, no.
Vietnam probably failed at points 3, 4, and 5. Lets not repeat that misjudgement, please.
Thank you David
I know not with what weapons World War lll will be fought but World War lV will be fought with sticks and stones. Albert Einstein.
He is wrong. They won't blow up the world. They just want you to live in fear.
Thing's ain't changed much but biger Gov. Bigger fire power Bigger lies innocent peaple dieing on both sides to make rich men richer o ya and for peace don't forget the peace
I wonder how much of the age ndas of those who purposely sow division amongst people across the world were responsible for this war and others...?🤔💜🙏
I remember watching on the tv as a kid. They showed a lot of terrible things going on. So sad just to think back to that. The 60’s& 70’s was a great memory but not WAR !
Thankyou for you
After all this we're watching what's happening in Gaza TODAY and doing NOTHING about it! It's like nothing has changed.
I’m confused. What are you proposing? That we send our troops to fight that war? I
Turn off m s m...
What do you propose to do?
There's a special place in hell for Johnson. A crude, drunken backstabber, without a shred of morality in his lust for power.
The eternal lefty: Why are we sending our boys to fight against tyrants? Waaa!
The eternal lefty: How dare we stand idly by and not send our boys to fight against tyrants! Waaa!
Please, make it stop!
They were going to send us to prison for cutting down rubber trees
Vietnam is one of the few countries that did benefit from going communist. Its not working so well now but it truly opened there country and started a real economy.
It did not. The country stagnated. It only recovered by allying with the Americans and liberalising their economy. Also you miss out the Cambodians and Laotians.
The most inexplicable thing to me about the America's illegal, immoral, undeclared war on Vietnam is the fact that almost no one in the public eye has either then or since ever talked about America's terrible hypocrisy and betrayal of both the 1941 Atlantic Charter--our rationale for resisting Nazism and totalitarianism, as well as our vision for a postwar world free from war and exploitation by governments and powerful corporations--and our solemn and quite specific WWII promises to our wartime Pacific allies as to their postwar future.
It was supposed to be a guaranteed sovereignty and independence, regardless of what form of government they might choose.
The fact is that the minute that WWII finally ended, America immediately began to help the Brits, the Dutch and even the cowardly fookin' French to regain their prewar colonies in the Pacific. This is when America really lost its moral authority. And then we started overthrowing democratically elected governments the world over and then installing corporate-friendly, utterly ruthless dictators. How is it even possible that almost no Americans alive today have any idea at all about the history that I have just outlined?! How are we not too savage and stupid to survive?
Actually more than a few of us are aware of this, however, you stated it better than I could. Not to mention, there's also the fact that assorted colonies, including Vietnam--Hi Chi Minh, made appeals at the treaty negotiations in Versailles at the end of WWl, and were dismissed.
Yes. It is quite amazing that we haven't yet paid the price for our "leadership's" greed and stupidity. Unfortunately, 2024 is still young....
You think the Americans were willing to allow communism for any country? Especially a South-Vietnam that most definitely did not want communism?
If you “insist that the people of South Vietnam shall have the right of choice, the right to shape their own destiny in pre elections in the south throughout all vietnam under international supervision and they shall not have any gov imposed upon them by force and terror so as long as we can prevent it. Nor will we bluster, bully or flaunt our power” then why are you over there invading their lands? Also stop doing this to other indigenous nations.
What? The U.S. did not invade South-Vietnam. What other countries?
This is a propaganda film
For sure. Not like I say in the description.
David Hoffman Filmmaker
Makes more sense to me than Iraq and Afghanistan. Clearly Communism was a powerful competitor to western dominance and I wonder if the Vietnam war did indeed have an impact in limiting its spread and influence.
I believe it did. Now maybe the anti-War lot would write that domino theory failed but the neighbouring nations did fall and uhh we saw what happened in Cambodia.
The most effective public/private partnership in the history of the world - and the most successful propaganda machine: the United States propaganda machine.
I would’ve served in vietnam in a heartbeat. I would’ve joined the marine corps.
You're stupid. Do you know what the death rate was for untrained kids of 18 against a centuries old trained guerrilla army in their own back yard?
So would I, but only if I got to be the No.1 top gun and also the head Navy Seal, and as well as that I'd want to be known as John Rambo, and every time I'm in action I'd also want either a full orchestra or 60's rock band playing in the background.
No, that's clearly not the point I was making. I'm not here to glorify combat, however given the circumstances of the nation during those turbulent years, I would've served in a heart beat. I can almost guarentee you've never had any combat experience or even been in the service for that matter.@@neilisagum
For what point?
@@operatorlaws6549 Can you guarentee that, well hand over your money and swear out loud, I've got 2 medals , 2 tours and all the photos, paperwork and momentoes to prove it , more than you've got I'm guessing.
All hail the US Empire, the righteous leader of the world!
You mean greatest bully of the world
@@Apebek The greatest murderous corrupt plutocracy with a facade of democracy! The comment was satirical.
@@peterm.eggers520 Okay I didn't catch it. You never know. There are some patriots out there
That was a ridiculous comparison. Biden is a much older version of LBJ. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
I did not make any comparison and have no idea what you are pointing out.
David Hoffman Filmmaker
Rastafari gave the warning.....
What do you think about the way Vietnamese communists defended their homeland from 1945 to 1990?