HIS404H1 Lecture 9: 9. Vietnam
Document Summary
In korea as in vietnam, communism is seen as monolithic. The scale of the earlier decisions to escalate in vietnam was different from that of. Lbj bears the burden in the historical literature and in popular memory for really going to war in the conventional sense in vietnam. There is a concern with america"s image and controlling the story. They didn"t want to project the image of american failure and wanted to maintain the image of america being un-defeat-able. They also wanted to maintain he image of spreading their city- on-the-hill ideology. This is a laboratory experience (we also see this with berlin in the postwar period). There is evidence behind the scenes, viz. with george ball, that the u. s. cannot win. They all must have realized that it was a lost cause, but no one was willing to act on this impulse and shoved it in the background.
