1) Tell me what president Johnson's "War on Poverty" and the Great society were?

2) Why did the United States enter into the Vietnam conflict?

3) Why was 1968 a difficult year for America overall?

 

1.War on Poverty and the Great Society

War on Poverty

This is the unofficial name for the legislation first introduced by United States President Lyndon during his state of the union address on January 8, 1964. This legislation was proposed by Johnson in response to a national poverty rate of round nineteen percent. The speech led the United States Congress to pass the Economic Opportunity Act, which established the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) to administer the local application of federal funds targeted against poverty The forty programs established by the Act were collectively aimed at eliminating poverty by improving living conditions for residents of low income neighborhoods and b1y helping the poor access economic opportunities long denied them.

Great society

The Great Society was a set of domestic programs in the United States launched by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 to 1965. It was coined during a 1964 speech by President Johnson at the University of Michigan and came to represent his agenda . The main goal was the total elimination of poverty and racial injustice.

During this period, new major spending programs that addressed education, medical care, urban problems, rural poverty, and transportation were launched during this period. The program and its initiatives were subsequently promoted by him and fellow Democrats in Congress in the 1960s and years following. The great Society in scope and sweep resembled the New Deal domestic agenda of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Some Great Society proposals were stalled initiatives from John .F Kennedy's New Frontier. Johnson success depended on hi skills of persuasion, coupled with the Democratic landslide victory in the 2964 elections that brought in many new liberals to Congress making the House of Representatives in 1965 the most liberal House since 1938.

Anti-war Democrats complained that spending on the Vietnam War choked off the Great Society. While some of the programs have been eliminated or had their funding reduced, many of them , including Medicare, Medicaid, the Older Americans Act and federal education funding , continue to the present

2.Why the United States entered into the Vietnam conflict

The U.S. entered the Vietnam War in an attempt to prevent the spread of communism, but foreign policy, economic interests, national fears, and geopolitical strategies also played vital roles. This is discussed below in details.

The Domino Theory

Starting from the mid 1950s, the American foreign policy establishment tended to view the situation in Southeast Asia in terms of the Domino Theory. The basic principle was that if French Indochina (Viet was still a French colony) fell to the communist insurgency, which had been battling the French, the expansion of communism throughout Asia would be likely to continue unchecked.

President Dwight invoked the Domino Theory in a press conference held in Washington on April 7, 1954. His reference to Southeast Asia becoming communist was major news the following day. The New York Times headlined a page one story about his press conference. Given Eisenhower's credibility on military matters, his prominent endorsement of the Domino Theory placed it at the forefront of how many Americans for years would view the unfolding situation in Southeast Asia.

Political Reasons: Anti-communist Fervor

Fear of domestic communists gripped America since 1949. Led by anti-communist Senator McCarthy in 1950s, the country was under the influence of the Red Scare. McCarthy saw communists everywhere in America and encouraged an atmosphere of hysteria and distrust. The trend of countries falling under communist rule was increasing even to nations in Latin America, Africa and Asia. The U.S felt like it was losing the Cold War and needed to "contain" communism.

It was against this backdrop that the first U.S. military advisers were sent to help the French battle the communists of Northern Vietnam in 1950. That same year, pitting Communist Nortg Korean and Chinese forces against U.S and its UN allies

French Indochina War

The French were fighting to maintain their colonial power and maintain their colonial power and to regain their national pride after the humiliation of World War II. The U.S government had an interest in the conflict of Indochina from the end of World War II until the mid 1950s when France found itself fighting against a communist insurgency led by Ho Chi Minh.

French suffered military defeat at Dien Bien Phu ad negotiations began to end the conflict. Following this withdrawal, the solution put in place established a communist government in North Vietnam and a democratic government in South Vietnam. The Americans started supporting the South Vietnamese with political and military advisers in the 1950s.

3.Why 1968 was a difficult year for America overall

This was a very tough year for America with a number of events and or occurrences taking place. These included:

The Tet Offensive

The Vietcong attacked American and South Vietnamese forces across every major city in South Vietnam and briefly occupied the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. Although they were crushed, the US war effort took a serious public relations blow from which it never recovered.

Major Assassinations

Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in Memphis. A little over two months later presidential candidate and brother of slain US President John F. Kennedy was himself murdered in Los Angeles.

President Lyndon Johnson decline to run for office

The presumptive Democratic frontrunner and then President Lyndon Johnson declared that he would not seek nor accept the nomination as president. This left the Democratic field wide open and may have cost the Democrats the White House that election.

Collapse of the Cold War consensus on Foreign Policy

1968 was the high water mark of the New Left, which was soon to descend into nihilistic radicalism. It was the year that the Cold War consensus on foreign policy collapsed, a development sealed in 1972 with the Democratic Party's nomination for president of senator George McGovern,a progressive and an isolationist. It was, in short, the culmination of all the baneful trends of that low, dishonest decade, the sixties. A bad year for America and the world.