American History II classes have started studying U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. We finished watching "Dear America:Letters Home from Vietnam" to start the unit. We are now going to discuss the rationales for US involvement. The following link is a video of the various rationales that we will be discussing: https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&ns=1&video_id=UtURmmEPIFo There is a second video on Our View of Communism after WWII. http://youtu.be/yb4oFPeRMYA
EXTRA CREDIT: Of all the rationales that were given for US involvement in Vietnam, which rationale do you think is the most credible and why? Conversely, which rationale do you think is the weakest and why?
I feel that containment was the most credible rationale for US involvement in Vietnam because it made the most sense in my mind. If communism wasn't contained there would be a good chance that it would spread much farther than southeastern Asia and eventually the whole world.
ReplyDeleteThe weakest rationale in my mind was Red Scare Politics because it doesn't seem very ethical to me.
-Tristin Lihme
I think the most credible rationale is containment. All the other rationales are about something more specific but containment is keeping in check anything that is or has the potential to be very influential or powerful. This could apply to any of the other rationales. We could have gone to fight in Vietnam for other reasons as well but containment applies to almost anything. I think the weakest rationale would be the domino theory. The domino theory describes how the countries will fall but we need something to make them crash first.
ReplyDeleteI believe that communism was the big thing along with the domino theory. Communism was the reason we were at war but it was the domino theory that scared us. Communism would've taken the world by storm but it would of been possible through the domino theory. I believe the weakest link would've been the red scare politics because we had no real fear of the spread of communism like it was always in the back of our mind but because of the amount of troops we were sending and the amount of Vietnamese killed we thought we had it under control. Through the munich syndrome we didn't have any real fear of the red scare politics. Because we were killing so many more of their troops verses ours why should we of worried about politics.
ReplyDeleteShya Hogan
4th
I believe the most credible rationale was communism. Communism was the reason we were at war with Vietnam. We didn't want communism to spread because that would be a very bad situation. Communism would have take the world over and caused a domino theory.
ReplyDeleteI believe the weakest rationale would have to be the red scare politics because there was no real fear of communism spreading. The only reason was that we sent over a huge amount of U.S. troops that we had enough faith that we could keep it under control. Also we kept a body count of how many Vietnamese we had killed.
Containment had to be the most credible rationale in the Vietnam War. Containment was the most credible because it was the rationale that was trying to stop the communism. Communism was the main reason why went to the war in Vietnam. With the containment and communism also sparked the domino theory. The weakest rationale in the Vietnam War was the red scare politics because people weren't afraid of anything that involved with the red scare politics.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, the most credible rationale for going to Vietnam was the Munich Syndrome. No one wanted another WWII to happen, so it makes sense that we were hesitant in trying to appease Ho Chi Minh. Although appeasement may actually have worked in this situation, I can understand how people must have been feeling because WWII was bad enough, and no one wanted to relive that, so we wanted to avoid that situation all together.
ReplyDeleteI think that the weakest rationale is the Red Scare Politics, because politicians were afraid to oppose the Vietnam War for fear that they might not be reelected. So whether or not they believed in the war, many people were afraid to speak their own opinions because they didn't want to be considered "soft" on communism. In my mind, this is wrong, because the reason we have a democracy is for people to be able to stand up for what they believe, and if people won't stand up for what they believe in, then the other side of the argument won't be heard. People should have been brave enough to oppose the war if they did, and then maybe, we wouldn't have lost so many people during Vietnam.
Kathryn S.
The rationale that i think is the most credible is containment because it was aimed not to fight a war with the communists but to stop the spread of communism which sounds better to me than starting a war.
ReplyDeleteThe rationale that i think is the weakest is the red scare it was the promotion of a fear of the potential rise of communism but there was no fear at all. And it didn't work.
Out of all the rationales, I believe that the most credible would be the credibility rationale. This one seems the most credible to me because I can see why Truman or Johnson wouldn't want to pull out of the war and seem weak to other countries. Also, it would appear to some that they were being "soft on communism" and that made it harder to withdraw from the war. Another reason is that we were already so far in, it would be difficult to just pull out. This is why it's the most credible in my opinion, although I don't believe that any of the rationales were a good enough reason to actually stay in the war for, but this one made the most sense. On the other hand, I think that the Domino Theory is the least credible because, just like in it's name, it is only a theory. There was no way to prove that every country would fall to communism if one did, and I don't think they would. Especially America, since we were afraid of fighting communism on our own soil, but I don't believe it would ever get to that point, hence it is the least reasonable rationale.
ReplyDeleteI feel that the most credable rational for going to war in Vietnam was containment. The main purpose the war started was to stop the spread of communism. We were afraid that eventually it would spread to our home, and at that point we would have to fight at home. I definetly think containment is the main rational. While the others may be important deciding factors, im not sure they are reason enough alone to go to war. I would say in my opinion red scare politics was the weakest reason to go to war. Red scare politics were political turmoil. It was the government being too conserned with their appearance rather than doing the right thing.
ReplyDelete