Description:

Johnson Lyndon

Single page TLS on The White House, Washington letterhead, 6.75" x 8.75". Dated "April 13, 1965", and boldly signed by President Johnson as "Lyndon B. Johnson". Single center fold, else fine condition.

President John F. Kennedy had sent military advisors and then troops into South Vietnam. After Kennedy's assassination, the burden fell to Lyndon Johnson. Leading up to this was understanding the era and the "Domino Theory" which was the force behind our involvement from the beginning.  In the 1950s and ’60s the dominant idea in foreign policy circles was the Domino Theory, which stated that if one nation fell to the communists, the surrounding countries would fall, too. That is what had happened in Eastern and Central Europe after World War II, and the West was worried that with communist governments already in place in North Korea and North Vietnam, a failure to come to the aid of South Vietnam would mean the collapse of that country as well as all its neighbors—Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, perhaps even Japan. Once the dominoes started to fall, there was no telling where they would stop. In a televised address to the nation on August 4, 1964, LBJ declared, “I shall immediately request the Congress to pass a resolution making it clear that our government is united in its determination to take all necessary measures in support of freedom and in defense of peace in Southeast Asia.”. 

But the war did not go well. No matter how many troops LBJ sent to Vietnam, the North Vietnamese were not defeated. As U.S. casualties mounted and Americans back home began to believe that the war was unwinnable, anti-war protests—some of them violent—erupted across the country, with demonstrators denouncing the president as a war-monger and a murderer of innocent Vietnamese civilians.Johnson’s decision to increase U.S. involvement in Vietnam hamstrung his presidency and ruined his reputation.  By the time the United States withdrew from Vietnam in 1973, more than 1.5 million Vietnamese had died, more than 58,000 U.S. troops had been killed, more than 150,000 were wounded, and 2,000 were missing in action.

This TLS from 1965 written to Mr. Norman Cousins of the Saturday Review displays Johnson who at the time was championing his choices as he writes "I deeply appreciate your kind wire supporting my proposals on Vietnam. What wonders may not lie ahead for us if only man's better nature will prevail ..."

A thought provoking letter, written during the eye of the Vietnam storm.

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