Evidence 1: “Well, I spend all my days with Rusk and McNamara and Bundy and Harriman and Vance. . . and I would say that it pretty well adds up to them now that we have got to show some power and some force and that they do not—they are kind of like MacArthur in Korea—they don’t believe that the Chinese Communists will come into this thing. But they don’t know, and nobody can really be sure, but their feeling is that they won’t, and in any event, we haven’t got much choice.”—Document 26.1: Telephone Conversations between Lyndon Johnson and Senator Richard Russell

Evidence 2: “Why are these realities our concern? Why are we in South Viet-Nam? We are there because we have a promise to keep. Since 1954 every American President has offered support to the people of South Viet-Nam. We have helped to build, and we have helped to defend. Thus, over many years, we have made a national pledge to help South Viet-Nam defend its independence. And I intend to keep that promise.”—Document 26.2: Lyndon Johnson, “Peace without Conquest” Speech at Johns Hopkins University

Evidence 3: “We therefore encourage those Americans who prefer to use their energy in building democratic forms within this country. We believe that work in the civil rights movement and with other human relations organizations is a valid alternative to the draft. We urge all Americans to seek this alternative, knowing full well that it may cost them their lives—as painfully as in Vietnam.”—Document 26.4: Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Statement on Vietnam

Evidence 4: “There is an American interest in South Vietnam. We have an interest in maintaining the strength of our commitments—and surely we have demonstrated that. With all the lives and resources we have poured into Vietnam, is there anyone to argue that a government with any support from its people, with any competence to rule, with any determination to defend itself, would not long ago have been victorious over any insurgent movement, however assisted from outside its borders?”—Document 26.5: Robert F. Kennedy, Vietnam Illusions

Evidence 1: “Well, frankly, Mr. President, if you were to tell me that I was authorized to settle as I saw fit, I would respectfully decline to undertake it. It’s the damn worse mess that I ever saw, and I don’t like to brag and I never have been right many times in my life, but I knew that we were gone [sic] to get into this sort of mess when we went in there. And I don’t see how we’re ever going to get out of it without fighting a major war with the Chinese and all of them down there in those rice paddies and jungles. I just don’t see it.”—Document 26.1: Telephone Conversations between Lyndon Johnson and Senator Richard Russell

Evidence 2: “There are those who wonder why we have a responsibility there. Well, we have it there for the same reason that we have a responsibility for the defense of Europe. World War II was fought in both Europe and Asia, and when it ended with found ourselves with continued responsibility for the defense of freedom.”—Document 26.2: Lyndon Johnson, “Peace without Conquest” Speech at Johns Hopkins University

Evidence 3: Document 26.3: Herbert Block, “Our Position Hasn’t Changed at All,” Washington Post

Evidence 4: “We believe the United States government has been deceptive in its claims of concern for the freedom of the Vietnamese people, just as the government has been deceptive in claiming concern for the freedom of colored people in other countries as the Dominican Republic, the Congo, South Africa, Rhodesia, and in the United States itself.”—Document Document 26.4: Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Statement on Vietnam

Evidence 1: “[My advisers say that] we are treaty bound, that we are there, this will be a domino that will kick off a whole list of others, and that we have just got to prepare for the worst. Now I have avoided that for a few days. I don’t think the American people are for it.”—Document 26.1: Telephone Conversations between Lyndon Johnson and Senator Richard Russell

Evidence 2: “There are those who say that all our effort there will be futile—that China’s power is such that it is bound to dominate all southeast Asia. . . Our objective is the independence of South Viet-Nam, and its freedom from attack. We want nothing for ourselves—only that the people of South Viet-Nam be allowed to guide their own country in their own way. We will do everything necessary to reach that objective. And we will do only what is absolutely necessary.”—Document 26.2: Lyndon Johnson, “Peace without Conquest” Speech at Johns Hopkins University

Evidence 3: “We are in sympathy with, and support, the men in this country who are unwilling to respond to a military draft which would compel them to contribute their lives to United States aggression in Vietnam in the name of the ‘freedom’ we find so false in this country.We recoil with horror at the inconsistency of a supposedly ‘free’ society where responsibility to freedom is equated with the responsibility to lend oneself to military aggression. We take note of the fact that 16% of the draftees from this country are Negroes called on to stifle the liberation of Vietnam, to preserve a ‘democracy’ which does not exist for them at home.”—Document 26.4: Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Statement on Vietnam

Evidence 4: “For twenty years, first the French and then the United States have been predicting victory in Vietnam. . . . Once, in 1962, I participated in such predictions myself. But for twenty years we have been wrong.The history of conflict among nations does not record another such lengthy and consistent chronicle of error as we have shown in Vietnam. It is time to discard so proven a fallacy and face the reality that a military victory is not in sight and that it probably will never come.”—Document 26.5: Robert F. Kennedy, Vietnam Illusions