The United States, especially the National Security Council (NSC) had warned that Geneva had been a disaster. Although this happened under Republican Eisenhower, JFK believed it when he became president in 1961. A. True B. False ANSWER: A Sec of State John Foster Dulles created the SEATO (Southeast Asian Treaty Organization) as a Nato-like organization to deter Communist aggression in the region. He also believed it gave the United States a legal basis for intervention in Indochina, something which was officially prevented in the Geneva agreement. A. True B. False ANSWER: A The Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations both violated the spirit, and sometimes the letter of the Geneva Accords after 1954. A. True B. False ANSWER: A It would be more true to say that historian George Herring’s account of the Ho Chi Minh as the best-known nationalist leader in all of Vietnam, and his depiction of a chaotic South Vietnam with the government of Ngo Dinh Diem lacking the broad support of the people, especially the peasants, more closely resembles the point of view of creators of the Accuracy in Media video clip, rather than the creators of the PBS documentary. A. True B. False ANSWER: B Even in 1954, official national intelligence reports estimated chances of establishing a stable government in South Vietnam were “poor”, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) argued that it would be “hopeless” to Communists in North Vietnam to build an army without a “reasonably strong, stable civil government in control.” A. True B. False ANSWER: B Foreign policy successes in Iran and Guatemala (topling unfriendly governments) led President Eisenhower to believe that the United States could achieve the same success in Vietnam as well. Therefore, Eisenhower opposed his Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in his view that the United States should withdraw and abandon South Vietnam. A. True B. False ANSWER: B Both France and the United States agreed to support Ngo Dinh Diem and that he was the best choice for leader of South Vietnam following the Geneva Agreements of 1954 A. True B. False ANSWER: B After successfully defending his administration in the sect crisis of 1955, Diem quickly consolidated his power. With assurance of American support, voters in South Vietnam overwhelmingly supported Diem, who secured 98.2% of the votes cast in South Vietnam’s first legitimate free elections following the Geneva Agreements. This made Diem confident in defeating Ho Chi Minh in the upcoming 1956 unifying election. A. True B. False ANSWER: B U.S. aid did little to promote economic development or improve conditions in the villages where more than 90% of South Vietnam’s population lived. Moreover, the commercial-import program was enormously wasteful and actually did more to hamper the successful implementation of a financial program in Vietnam in the 1950’s. It fostered dependancy rather than laying a foundation for genuine independence. A. True B. False ANSWER: A To the United States, Diem’s vigorous anticommunism more than conpensated for his shortcomings. A. True B. False ANSWER: A Herring states that there are two origins of the insurgency against Ngo Dinh Diem that swept through South Vietnam. One focuses on the aggression from and determination of North Vietnam to impose communism on the South. The other is that the revolution sprang up in response to Diem’s oppressiveness and grew in strength without significant support or direction from the north. Herring concludes that the truth is probably far more complex than either of these extremes. A. True B. False ANSWER: A The communist leader in the North experienced few differences when enacting their two goals: building socialism in the north and carrying out the revolution in the south. A. True B. False ANSWER: B Herring writes that there is evidence that between 3,000 and 15,000 Vietnamese people may have been executed by Ho Chi Minh’s Hanoi government in North Vietnam during the 1950’s. He also states that more than 2,000 suspected communists were executed by Diem’s government in the south. A. True B. False ANSWER: A Because he won such a narrow election victory in 1960, John Kennedy was sensitive to Republican charges of weakness or appeasement. According to Herring, Kennedy was less willing than Truman or Eisenhower to permit the fall of Vietnam to communism. In fact, he states that Vietnam was most tragic accident of global activism of the Kennedy era. A. True B. False ANSWER: A During Kennedy's administration, the covert war in Vietnam continued, with operations crossing the 17th parallel, and added a “secret war” in Laos, involving the CIA and the Hmong tribespeople. A. True B. False ANSWER: A Although President Kennedy firmly resisted any proposal to send American combat troops to Vietnam, he still refused, primarily for political reasons, to abandon the struggle. The number of advisors tripled from 1961 to 1962 and the Kennedy administration went to considerable lengths to deceive the American public. Not only did they refuse to divulge the numbers of advisors, but also the fact that many were actively engaged in combat. A. True B. False ANSWER: B In South Vietnam, the agroville program of the 1950's was essentially the same as the strategic hamlet program of the 1960's. Both were directed at helping the peasants, but both actually made the situation worse because they ended up relocating people away from their sacred and ancestral lands. A. True B. False ANSWER: B Popular myth states that if John F. Kennedy had not been assassinated in 1963, and if he had won the presidential election of 1964, that he would have extricated the U.S. from Vietnam. Historian George Herring states that there is not “a shred of evidence to support the notion”. Moreover, even if there was a secret plan, he chastises Kennedy's leadership for putting re-election politics before the welfare of American soldiers A. True B. False ANSWER: A Following the coup of Ngo Dinh Diem, it is clear from the text that John Kennedy left to his successor Lyndon Johnson, a much more dangerous problem than he had inherited from Dwight Eisenhower. A. True B. False ANSWER: A Lyndon Johnson had considerable domestic accomplishments, but in the area of foreign policy, he was profoundly insecure. As a result, he retained and relied heavily on Kennedy's advisors. Knowing what you read about the conflict in the Herring text, it is safe to say that this reliance on these particular advisors was a problem that came to harm his presidential decision-making from 1963-1969. A. True B. False ANSWER: A Many historians now agree that between 1964 and 1965 was a dramatic period in the escalation of the Vietnam War. President Johnson altered the U.S. commitment to the war by initiating regular bombing of North Vietnam and by sending the first U.S. ground combat troops to South Vietnam. A. True B. False ANSWER: A President Johnson's domestic proposals for civil rights, medicare, and a a host of other items was called the Great Society. His foreign policy was largely devoted to Vietnam. It is clear from the text that decisions made in one of these two realms had little bearing on the decisions made in the other. A. True B. False ANSWER: B The limited success of strategic bombing in WWII and Korea should have raised serious questions about its use in Vietnam. But the traditionalists in the JCS and among the presidential advisors in the 1960's pursued this policy anyway. Even in the 2000's, with victory declared after the aerial bombardment of Iraq, ground troops were needed, and continue to be used to secure the area on the ground. The question remains, can a war be truly won with air power alone, without the sacrifice of the lives of ground soldiers? A. True B. False ANSWER: A The American air bombing campaigns in Vietnam were specifically directed against civilian populations. A. True B. False ANSWER: B China and Russian soldiers and personnel took an active part in the Vietnam War against the United States. American soldiers died at the hands of these communist countries which were also breaking the terms of the Geneva Accords of 1954. According to historians, this aid played a crucial, perhaps even decisive, role in the outcome of the war. A. True B. False ANSWER: A The infiltration of communist soldiers from North Vietnam to South Vietnam actually increased at the same time that the bombing of the north by the United States grew heavier and more destructive. A. True B. False ANSWER: A Without the strong performance of American troops from 1965 to 1967, in operations such as Cedar Falls, most historians agree that South Vietnam would have been defeated at that time, rather than ten years later, in 1975, when it was finally defeated. Even with highly padded estimates, the United States inflicted huge losses on the enemy, and these large figures led the American military command to conclude that it was indeed winning the war. A. True B. False ANSWER: A Hawks were largely right-wing Republicans and conservative Democrats, who viewed the struggle in Vietnam as an essential element in the global struggle with communism. Doves were an extremely heterogeneous and fractious group who opposed the war for a large variety of reasons. Of the two, the doves were the larger percentage of the American population. A. True B. False ANSWER: B Concerning the hawks and the doves, it seems that early in his administration, President Johnson feared the hawks. As time went on and people began to protest the war, Johnson clearly believed and stated to his advisors that “The major threat we have is from the doves.” A. True B. False ANSWER: A