An American Stand by Crouse Eric R.;

Author:Crouse, Eric R.; [Crouse, Eric R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2013-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

5

Vietnam War

Responding to a letter written by a Utah junior high school teacher in December 1969, Senator Smith stated: “I feel that the United States is justified in being in Viet Nam, and in my opinion, we are in Viet Nam to stop the communists from conquering the world.” In the aftermath of America’s attack on Cambodia the following year, she made clear her support for Richard Nixon in numerous letters. She opposed any attempts of the Senate “to straight-jacket” Nixon’s decisions on Vietnam and even in her final full year in the Senate, she still claimed that he was doing “an excellent job” with a position on the Vietnam War superior to that of Democratic presidential candidates.1 Public statements and her correspondence sent to ordinary Americans demonstrate her persistent Cold Warrior views when others, including some hawks, were rethinking their positions on American foreign policy.

After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy by an American communist who had lived in Russia, a point that Smith highlighted in a speech to the Women’s National Press Club, the succession of Lyndon Johnson did not alter America’s position to support the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) in its struggle against the communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam).2 Within President Johnson’s first year, the North Vietnamese Army and the guerrilla arm of the communist National Liberation Front (Viet Cong) increased their military operations and most weeks there were 400 to 500 incidents a week of terrorism, sabotage, and propaganda.3 In early August 1964, following the command of Le Duan (a North Vietnamese leader who favored military confrontation with the United States), North Vietnamese PT boats (Soviet built) attacked the USS Maddox, an American destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin that North Vietnamese radar had been tracking for days. After another episode two days later involving the Maddox and the USS C. Turner Joy (another destroyer), Johnson responded by securing congressional approval of the Southeast Asia Resolution better known as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, in essence a blank check for the administration “to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and prevent further aggression.”4 Senate support for the resolution was overwhelming with only two dissenting votes by Democratic Senators Wayne Morse (OR) and Ernest Gruening (AK). Did Senate acceptance reflect American public opinion that embraced a “Cold War Consensus,” particularly the conviction that the defense of South Vietnam was essential to U.S. security?5

Smith went on record in the fifties that America’s “principal world struggle with Communism is in Asia—particularly Southeast Asia” and she considered the Viet Minh “to be hated Communists” attempting to impose a “Communist colonialism far worse than the European colonialism they hate.”6 Although she expressed doubts of the United States getting involved in a ground war in Vietnam, having the communists conquer all of Vietnam was a worse scenario.7 For the pre-1965 period when Vietnam was off the radar for most Americans (almost two-thirds knew little), it is difficult to

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