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Michael Williamson

Mr. Norris

English 12

7/28/2017

Lyndon B. Johnson: A Colossal Scumbag

Lyndon B. Johnson served as the 36th president of the United States and before that, as

the 37th vice president of John F. Kennedy. He was sworn into office after the tragic

assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963. Lyndon B. Johnson was president for most of the

duration of the Vietnam War, a war in which the U.S. entered to stop the spread of communism

in South East Asia. The biggest controversy surrounding his legacy is that of the Vietnam War. It

left a lasting impact on his name and legacy. No doubt the first thing that comes into your mind

when you hear his name is the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War was also his biggest blunder. He

did not start the war, but he did continue the war until the American people despised him and his

foreign policies regarding the nation of Vietnam.

The Vietnam War did not begin with the U.S. opposition to the spread of communism. It

began earlier with the French being defeated in the nation. The French defeat in Vietnam ends

with the country being divided into a Communist North and a pro-Western South. (Timeline)

After the French lost Vietnam, the U.S. then sent military advisers to train the South's army. By

1963, President John F Kennedy [above] has increased the number of advisers to 16,000.

(Timeline) In 1964 In the Gulf of Tonkin, a U.S. destroyer was supposedly attacked. Congress

then gave President Lyndon B. Johnson authority to fight in Vietnam without a formal

declaration of war. (Timeline) In 1965, the U.S. sent the first combat troops to Vietnam. By

the end of the year, U.S. troop levels reach 200,000. (Timeline) The U.S. was fighting a bloody

war in Vietnam. Every day, U.S. soldiers were dying in the small country that most Americans
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hadnt heard of before the war. Many people were dying on both sides of the conflict, not just

soldiers, but civilians too. Support for the war back home in the U.S. was not overwhelmingly

negative at this point, but it was still a war that many thought we should not have been fighting.

In 1968, After Years of conflict in war, Communist forces launch the Tet Offensive. It's a

military defeat for the Communists, but grisly TV images intensify pressure in the U.S. to end

the war. (Timeline) Most Americans at this point in the war do not believe the U.S. should be

involved. Popular support for the war was gone, and many people were protesting the war on the

home front. Many years had passed and the war was still raging in Vietnam. A serious majority

of the nation now believed that the war was unjust and needed to be ended. Richard Nixon

vowed to end the war after he was elected President; he kept his word and started the process of

getting American troops out of Vietnam, and by 1973 America was out of Vietnam.

When President Johnson entered office in 1964, the state of world affairs was not

particularly pretty. The governments of Soviet Russia and communist China were trying to

spread communism all over the world, including in Vietnam. John F. Kennedy had been

assassinated in 1963, an act which shocked the nation. After Johnson had been sworn into office

in 1964, the world was still in the ugly state it had been in before his new position as president.

Johnson had, to be fair, inherited a mess. After the French left Vietnam in 1954 and the country

was partitioned, Dwight D. Eisenhower and, after him, John F. Kennedy sent billions in aid and

advisers to support the South Vietnamese government under Ngo Dinh Diem (Updegrove)

Johnson certainly did not start the war, he was however headed down a disastrous path that

would have unforeseen consequences. The Vietnam War had claimed the lives of more than

58,000 U.S. troops and injured an additional 150,000. The total cost to the U.S. was more than

$100 billion. (McCabe) Not only were millions of lives and billions of dollars wasted on this
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pointless and vacuous war, but it divided the U.S. socially. Towards the end of the war, most

Americans were in opposition to the war; however, there was still a strong political divide in the

nation that was worsened because of the war. Even today, there is a massive divide that Johnson

helped cause. Many modern wars have been compared to the Vietnam war because of how

disastrous they all were. The war's echoes can still be felt today in the conflicts in Afghanistan

and Iraq, where mixed results have divided Americans and led many of them to ask, "Is

Afghanistan another Vietnam?" (McCabe) The above quote perfectly shows how the Vietnam

war has had lasting effects on the American people. It divided the nation during the Vietnam

War and continues to do so today.

The War in Vietnam did not just affect the American people, it also influenced Johnson

himself. Johnson did not want to enter the U.S. into a war at the beginning of his office, yet

little more than a year later, Johnson's own immense powers became an accomplice of his own

destruction - propelling him into a war that would dissolve his vision and end his hopes.

(Goodwin) The Vietnam War was a product of the ambitions of Eisenhower and Kennedy.

Johnson had the potential to be the best president the U.S. had seen at that point. Not everything

he had done was terrible, he had implemented and given blacks rights that they had been lacking

for generations after the end of the civil war, a feat that many people before him had tried to do

but failed because of lack of support. One of the presidents own assistants witnessed a

transformation in Johnson. the story of that transformation, the beginnings of which I witnessed

as one of the President's assistants, makes it clear that the war in Vietnam was not only a national

tragedy but a personal tragedy for one of the most formidable men ever to occupy the White

House. (Goodwin) There is no question that the President's conduct during 1965 was, on

occasion, markedly, almost frighteningly different from anything I had observed previously. My
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conclusion is that President Johnson experienced certain episodes of what I believe to have been

paranoid behavior. (Goodwin) The above quotes seem to suggest that Johnson had changed for

the worse because of the war in Vietnam. He knew that the war was a tragedy and a grand

mistake. He wanted to continue the war though because had bet everything he had in the war. He

had the ability to at least speak out against the war and admit it was a blunder that should have

never happened, but he kept with it despite knowing that the war was draining the nations

resources and patience for him.

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Works Cited

Updegrove, Mark K. "Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam." New York Times, 25 Feb. 2017, p. NA(L).

Global Issues in Context,

go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=GPS&sw=w&u=va_s_128_0620&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE

7CA482573283&asid=62c852312b1cd80964343598bbcde98b. Accessed 10 July. 2017.

Goodwin, Richard N. "President Lyndon Johnson: The War Within." The New York Times

Magazine, 21 Aug. 1988. Gale Biography In Context,

go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=GPS&sw=w&u=va_s_128_0620&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE

7CA175923058&asid=dc9d7210ce58914215bbf72013526c20. Accessed 10 July. 2017.

McCabe, Suzanne. "Vietnam why the war still matters today: America's involvement in the

Vietnam war in the 1960s and early 70s deeply divided the nation. Four decades later, the

war's haunting legacy remains." Junior Scholastic, 23 Apr. 2012, p. 16+. Gale Biography

In Context,

go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=GPS&sw=w&u=va_s_128_0620&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE

7CA288539213&asid=c24265352e7e225bb0bc02d492a16c3f. Accessed 10 July. 2017.

"Timeline: Vietnam & the U.S." Junior Scholastic, 23 Apr. 2012, p. 18+. Gale Biography In

Context,

go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=GPS&sw=w&u=va_s_128_0620&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE

7CA288539214&asid=c34dd9722ba522ec3bd48d7f074798da. Accessed 10 July. 2017.