• On September 2, 1945, after decades of French colonialism and Japanese occupation, Ho Chi Minh, a Marxist revolutionary and North Vietnam’s prime minister, read Vietnam’s Declaration of Independence to a Hanoi audience. It would be thirty more years, however, before all of Vietnam would be united and independent. For the last ten of those years the United States waged war against Ho and his fellow Communists. On August 5, 1964, U.S. president Lyndon Johnson asked Congress to pass the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized U.S. military action against North Vietnam. Seven months later the first U.S. ground forces were sent in, marking the beginning of the Vietnam War.
Ho Chi Minh, Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, 1945
“All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense, this means: All the peoples on the earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and free.
The Declaration of the French Revolution made in 1791 on the Rights of Man and the Citizen also states: “All men are born free and with equal rights and must always remain free and have equal rights.” Those are undeniable truths.
Nevertheless, for more than eighty years, the French imperialists, abusing the standard of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, have violated our Fatherland and oppressed our fellow-
They have enforced inhuman laws. . . . They have built more prisons than schools. They have mercilessly slain our patriots, they have drowned our uprisings in rivers of blood. . . . To weaken our race they have forced us to use opium and alcohol. In the fields of economics, they have fleeced us to the backbone, impoverished our people, and devastated our land. They have robbed us of our rice fields, our mines, our forests, and our raw materials. . . . They have invented numerous unjustifiable taxes and reduced our people, especially our peasantry, to a state of extreme poverty. . . .
A people who have courageously opposed French domination for more than eighty years, a people who have fought side by side with the Allies against the Fascists during these last years, such a people must be free and independent. For these reasons, we . . . solemnly declare to the world that Vietnam has the right to be a free and independent country.”
Lyndon Johnson, Address to Congress Regarding the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, 1964
“I . . . ask the Congress for a resolution expressing the unity and determination of the United States in supporting freedom and in protecting peace in southeast Asia.
Our policy in southeast Asia has been consistent and unchanged since 1954. [It has] four simple propositions:
The North Vietnamese regime has constantly sought to take over South Vietnam and Laos . . . violat[ing] the Geneva accords for Vietnam. It has systematically conducted a campaign of subversion, which includes the direction, training, and supply of personnel and arms for the conduct of guerrilla warfare in South Vietnamese territory. In Laos, the North Vietnamese regime has maintained military forces, used Laotian territory for infiltration into South Vietnam, and most recently carried out combat operations.
As President of the United States I . . . now ask the Congress, to join in affirming the national determination . . . that the United States will continue in its basic policy of assisting the free nations of the area to defend their freedom.”
Sources: Ho Chi Minh, Selected Works (Hanoi, 1960–
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