Eisenhower to Ngo Dinh Diem

October 23, 1954 Dear Mr. President, I have been following with great interest the course of developments in Vietnam, particularly since the conclusion of the conference at Geneva. The implications of the agreement concerning Vietnam have caused grave concern regarding the future of the country temporarily divided by an artificial military grouping, weakened by a long and exhausting war, and faced with enemies without and by their subversive collaborators within. Your recent requests for aid to assist in the formidable project of the movement of several hundred thousand loyal Vietnamese citizens away from areas which are passing under a de facto rule and political ideology which they abhor, are being fulfilled. I am glad that the United States is able to assist in this humanitarian effort. We have been exploring ways and means to permit our aid to Vietnam to be more effective and to make a greater contribution to the welfare and stability of the Government of Vietnam. I am, accordingly, instructing the American Ambassador to Vietnam [Donald R. Heath] to examine with you in your capacity as Chief of Government, how an intelligent program of American aid given directly to your Government can serve to assist Vietnam in its present hour of trial, provided that your Government is prepared to give assurances as to the standards of performance it would be able to maintain in the event such aid were supplied. The purpose of this offer is to assist the Government of Vietnam in developing and maintaining a strong, viable state, capable of resisting attempted subversion or aggression through military means. The Government of the United States expects that this aid will be met by performance on the part of the Government of Vietnam in undertaking needed reforms. It hopes that such aid, combined with your own continuing efforts, will contribute effectively toward an independent Vietnam endowed with a strong Government. Such a Government would, I hope, be so responsive to the nationalist aspirations of its people, so enlightened in purpose and effective in performance, that it will be respected at home and abroad and discourage any who might wish to impose a foreign ideology on your free people. Source: Department of State Bulletin, November 15, 1954 ^ "Facts about the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Collection". nps.gov. (citing The first American ground combat troops landed in South Vietnam during March 1965, specifically the U.S. Third Marine Regiment, Third Marine Division, deployed to Vietnam from Okinawa to defend the Da Nang, Vietnam, airfield. During the height of U.S. military involvement, 31 December 1968, the breakdown of allied forces were as follows: 536,100 U.S. military personnel, with 30,610 U.S. military having been killed to date; 65,000 Free World Forces personnel; 820,000 South Vietnam Armed Forces (SVNAF) with 88,343 having been killed to date. At the war's end, there were approximately 2,200 U.S. missing in action (MIA) and prisoner of war (POW). Source: Harry G. Summers, Jr. Vietnam War Almanac, Facts on File Publishing, 1985.) ^ Karnow 1991, p. 339 talking about the Mekong Delta, that, "At a place called Hoa Phu, for example, the strategic hamlet built during the previous summer now looked like it had been hit by a hurricane.... Speaking through an interpreter, a local guard explained to me that a handful of Vietcong agents had entered the hamlet one night and told the peasants to tear it down and return to their native villages. The peasants complied without question." Source: US Congress House Committee on Internal Security, Travel to Hostile Areas, HR 16742, 19-25 September, 1972, page 7671 This is Jane Fonda. During my two week visit in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, I've had the opportunity to visit a great many places and speak to a large number of people from all walks of life-workers, peasants, students, artists and dancers, historians, journalists, film actresses, soldiers, militia girls, members of the women's union, writers. I visited the (Dam Xuac) agricultural coop, where the silk worms are also raised and thread is made. I visited a textile factory, a kindergarten in Hanoi. The beautiful Temple of Literature was where I saw traditional dances and heard songs of resistance. I also saw unforgettable ballet about the guerrillas training bees in the south to attack enemy soldiers. The bees were danced by women, and they did their job well

Excerpt from her memoir When Heaven and Earth Changed Places Published in 1989 "I had a terrible dream of ghosts floating through the village and into our house and into my mouth and nose and I couldn't breathe. I woke up to find my father's hand over my face and his voice whispering to me to lie still." In many ways the Vietnam War was a fight to control the countryside of South Vietnam and the loyalty of its people. Before the war most of the people in South Vietnam lived in small, rural villages and supported their families by farming. They tended to be quite poor, and few of them could read or write. They lived simple lives that emphasized the importance of family ties and cultural traditions. They did not know or care much about politics. But when the war began, the South Vietnamese peasants were caught in the middle. The Geneva Accords of 1954, which ended the... Source: Vietnam War: Primary Sources, 2001 Gale Cengage. All Rights Reserved Excerpt from his antiwar speech "Beyond Vietnam" Delivered April 4, 1967, at Riverside Church in New York City "[The world] demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam." When the United States sent ground troops into Vietnam in 1964, one out of every seven (about 14 percent) of those soldiers was African American. In the time leading up to the Vietnam War, blacks tended to view military service as a very positive thing. Many African Americans joined the armed forces out of high school in order to receive training, career opportunities, and wages that were not readily available to them in civilian (non-military) society due to segregation. At that time in American history, there were laws that segregated (separated) people by race. For example, white people and people of color were required to use separate restrooms, drinking... Source: Vietnam War: Primary Sources, 2001 Gale Cengage. "Come you masters of war / You that build all the guns / You that build the death planes / You that build all the bombs / You that hide behind walls / You that hide behind desks / I just want you to know / I can see through your masks."85 Singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, lyrics from "Masters of War," 1963

"Before closing my eyes to Buddha, I respectfully plead to President Ngo Dinh Diem, asking him to be kind and tolerant toward his people and to enforce a policy of religious equality." The last written words of Thich Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk who burned himself to death to protest the regime in South Vietnam, 1963

"I was too shocked to cry, too confused to take notes or ask questions, too bewildered to even think." New York Times correspondent David Halberstam, a witness to the self-immolation of a Buddhist monk in Saigon, 196387

"If I left [the war in Vietnam] and let the Communists take over South Vietnam, then I would be seen as a coward and my nation would be seen as an appeaser, and we would both find it impossible to accomplish anything for anybody anywhere on the entire globe."88

President Lyndon B. Johnson, 1964

"The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one." Time magazine editorial about Roger Allen LaPorte, an American pacifist who set himself on fire in protest of American policies in Vietnam, 1965

"Everything depends on the Americans. If they want to make war for 20 years then we shall make war for 20 years. If they want to make peace, we shall make peace and invite them to tea afterwards." North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, December 1969

"Who is the enemy? How can you distinguish between the civilians and the noncivilians? The same people who come and work in the bases at daytime, they just want to shoot and kill you at nighttime. So how can you distinguish between the two? The good or the bad? All of them look the same." Private Varnado Simpson, a U.S. soldier from Charlie Company of the 23rd Infantry Division, 1969

"I was ordered to go in there and destroy the enemy...That was my job on that day. That was the mission I was given. I did not sit down and think in terms of men, women and children." Lieutenant William Calley, testifying at Court-Martial in defense of his actions in My Lai, 1970

"The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as the Westerner. Life is plentiful, life is cheap in the Orient, and as the philosophy of the Orient expresses it, life is not important." General William Westmoreland, interviewed for the documentary Hearts and Minds, 1974

The Americans won't win. They're not fighting for their homeland. They just want to be good. In order to be good, they just have to fight awhile and then leave. Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it." -- An American major after the destruction of the Vietnamese Village Ben Tre

Much of my early career was spent working with two of the most toxic chemicals ever discovered, dioxin and aflatoxin. I initially worked at MIT, where I was assigned a chicken feed puzzle. Millions of chicks a year were dying from an unknown toxic chemical in their feed, and I had the responsibility of isolating and determining the structure of this chemical. After two and a half years, I helped discover dioxin, arguably the most toxic chemical ever found. This chemical has since received widespread attention, especially because it was part of the herbicide 2,4,5-T, or Agent Orange, then being used to defoliate forests in the Vietnam War." T.Colin Campbell Lyndon B. Johnson Our purpose in Vietnam is to prevent the success of aggression. It is not conquest, it is not empire, it is not foreign bases, it is not domination. It is, simply put, just to prevent the forceful conquest of South Vietnam by North Vietnam.

Gerald R. Ford As I rejected amnesty, so I reject revenge. I ask all Americans who ever asked for goodness and mercy in their lives, who ever sought forgiveness for their trespasses, to join in rehabilitating all the casualties of the tragic conflict of the past. (On Americans who avoided conscription during the Vietnam War, to Veterans of Foreign Wars) FRANCIS CARDINAL SPELLMAN, speech, 1966 North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.Vietnam was the first war ever fought without any censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind. WILLIAM WESTMORELAND, Time magazine, Apr. 5, 1982 Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America -- not on the battlefields of Vietnam. MARSHALL MCLUHAN, Montreal Gazette, May 16, 1975 In Vietnam, they poisoned us with Agent Orange, and now they are poisoning another generation with depleted uranium and other toxins. ~ Dave Curry