Containment and Credibility
The Ideology and Deception That Plunged America into the Vietnam War
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- $26.99
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- $26.99
Publisher Description
Is it possible that a president and his administration would purposefully mislead the American public so that they could commit the United States to a war that is not theirs to fight? Anyone with even a remote memory of the phrase “weapons of mass destruction” probably finds such a question naive.
On the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of the Vietnam War, those with longer memories would consider the unquestioning acceptance of Saddam Hussein’s “gathering threat” even more naive. Providing historical context that highlights how the decision to use force is made, as well as how it is “sold,” Containment and Credibility explores how the half-truths and outright lies of both the Johnson and Nixon administrations brought us into a conflict that cost more than fifty thousand American lives over eight years. As we consider how best to confront the growing threat of ISIS, it is increasingly important for the public to understand how we were convinced to go to war in the past.
In the 1960s, the domino theory warning of the spread of communism provided the rationale for war, followed by the deception of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident and the resulting resolution that essentially gave LBJ a blank check. This book will show how this deception ultimately led to the unraveling of the Johnson presidency and will explore the credibility gap that led to the public political debate of that time. Containment and Credibility applies the lessons of the sixties to today’s similar debates regarding military involvement.
Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Proctor, a U.S. Army veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, focuses on two aspects of American Vietnam War policy making in this long, detailed examination of why the U.S. greatly escalated the war in 1964 and why the war ended the way it did in 1975. His theory which is not altogether new is that President Johnson led the nation into the war by selling the American public on the simplistic and disingenuous idea that the U.S. had to stem the tide of advancing worldwide communism (containment), and that the antiwar movement's attack on President Johnson's and Nixon's truthfulness in explaining their war-making strategies (credibility) was primarily responsible for ending the war. Proctor pays a good deal of attention to the 1964 Tonkin Gulf incident and the resulting congressional resolution that gave L.B.J. the authority to escalate the war. He sees L.B.J.'s actions as the ultimate presidential deception. What is new is Proctor's sound conclusion that the Vietnam War containment and credibility framework has had a lasting influence on U.S. foreign policy. Today's "War on Terror," he says, is still being fought with a Cold War-era foreign policy ideology, which could be a recipe for "a century of costly and fruitless warfare across the globe."
