Vietnam DBQ

Handout 1 - Americans Respond to Vietnam: A Document-Based Question
Suggested reading period: 15 minutes

Suggested writing time: 45 minutes
Directions: The following question requires you to construct a coherent essay that integrates your
interpretation of the documents and your knowledge of the time period addressed in the question.
High scores will be earned only by essays that both cite key pieces of evidence from the documents
and draw on outside knowledge of the period.
Question: In what ways and to what extent did the Vietnam War change American culture, society and
values?
Document A: Excerpt from “Ballad of the Green Beret,” by Sgt. Barry Sadler, 1966
“Fighting soldiers from the sky

Fearless men who jump and die
Men who mean just what they say
The brave men of the Green Beret . . .
Put silver wings on my son’s chest
Make him one of America’s best
He’ll be a man they’ll test one day
Have him win the Green Beret.”
Document B: Excerpt from President Lyndon Johnson’s address to the nation, August 5, 1964
“As President and Commander in Chief, it is my duty to the American people to report that renewed
hostile actions against the United States ships on the high seas in the Gulf of Tonkin have today
required me to order the military forces of the United States to take action in reply. . .
Repeated acts of violence against the armed forces of the United States must be met not only with
alert defense but with positive reply . . .
This new act of aggression aimed directly at our own forces again brings home to all of us in the United
States the importance of the struggle for peace and security in Southeast Asia.
Aggression by terror against the peaceful villages of South Vietnam has now been joined by open
aggression on the high seas against the United States of America. . .
The determination of all Americans to carry out our full commitment to the people and to the
Government of South Vietnam will be redoubled by this outrage. . . . We still seek no wider war.”
Document C: Excerpt from “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag,” by Joe McDonald, 1965
“Come on all of you big strong men,

Uncle Sam needs your help again;
He’s got himself in a terrible jam
Way down yonder in Vietnam,
So put down your books and pick up a gun,
We’re gonna have a whole lot of fun.
And it’s one, two, three,

What are we fighting for?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam;
And it’s five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain’t no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! We’re all gonna die! . . .
Come on mothers throughout the land,

Pack your boys off to Vietnam.
Come on fathers, don’t hesitate
Send your sons off before it’s too late.
You can be the first one on your block
To have your boy come home in a box.”
Document D: Excerpt from a speech by Paul Potter, 1965
“Vietnam, we may say, is a laboratory run by a new breed of gamesmen who approached war as a kind
of rational exercise in international power politics. It is the testing ground and staging area for a new
American response to the social revolution that is sweeping through the impoverished downtrodden
areas of the world. It is the beginning of the American counter-revolution . . .
What kind of system is it that justifies the United States or any country seizing the destinies of the
Vietnamese people and using them callously for its own purpose? What kind of system is it that
disenfranchises people in the South, leaves millions upon millions of people throughout the country
impoverished and excluded from the mainstream and promise of American society, that creates
faceless and terrible bureaucracies and makes those the place where people spend their lives and do
their work, that consistently puts material values before human values—and still persists in calling itself
free and still persists in finding itself fit to police the world?”
Document E: Excerpt from Communique #1, Weatherman Underground, 1970
“Hello . . . I’m going to read A DECLARATION OF A STATE OF WAR.
All over the world, people fighting Amerikan imperialism look to Amerika’s youth to use our strategic
position behind enemy lines to join forces in the destruction of empire. . . .
Now we are adapting the classic guerrilla strategy of the Viet Cong and the urban guerrilla strategy of
the Tupamaros to our own situation here in the most technically advanced country in the world . . .
The hundreds and thousands of young people who demonstrated in the Sixties against the war and for
civil rights grew to hundreds of thousands in the past few weeks actively fighting Nixon’s invasion of
Cambodia and the attempted genocide against black people.”
Document F: “Flower Power,” by Bernie Boston, taken at The March on the Pentagon, October 21, 1967
Document G: Excerpt from article reporting on President Richard Nixon’s first inauguration, Washington
Post, January 21, 1969
“He [Richard Nixon] called upon Americans to ‘lower our voices’ and to shun inflated and angry
rhetoric.
‘We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another, until we speak quietly
enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices,’ he declared.
Less than two hours later, however, groups of militant and mostly youthful demonstrators screamed
anti-war slogans and hurled rocks and beer cans at the closely guarded Presidential limousine bearing
Mr. Nixon from the Capitol to the Inaugural Parade reviewing stand at the White House.”
Document H: Excerpt from The New York Times summary of the Pentagon Papers, June 13, 1971
“Though far from a complete history, even at 2.5 million words, the study [the Pentagon Papers] forms
a great archive of government decision-making on Indochina over three decades. The study led its 30
to 40 authors and researchers to many broad conclusions and specific findings including the following:
. . . That the Johnson Administration, though the President was reluctant and hesitant to take the final
decisions, intensified the covert warfare against North Vietnam and began planning in the spring of
1964 to wage overt war, a full year before it publicly revealed the depth of its involvement and its fear
of defeat.”
Document I: Excerpt from James Reston’s analysis of the impact of the War in Vietnam, New York Times,
January 23, 1973
“America is moving out of Vietnam after the longest and most divisive conflict since the War Between
the States. But Vietnam is not moving out of America, for the impact of the war there is likely to
influence American life for many years to come. Though it is probably too early to distinguish between
the temporary and the enduring consequences, one thing is fairly clear. There has been a sharp
decline in respect for authority in the United States as a result of the war—a decline in respect not only
for the civil authority of government but also for the moral authority of the schools, the universities, the
press, the church and even the family.
There was no cease-fire on this front. Vietnam did not start the challenge to authority, but it weakened
respect for the executives who got the nation involved in the war in the first place, for the Congress
that let it go on for more than a decade and for the democratic process of debate, which failed to
influence the course of battle for years and which finally declined into physical combat and sporadic
anarchy.”
Document J: Excerpt from the lyrics of “Okie from Muskogie,” written by Merle Haggard and Roy Burris,
1969
“We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee

We don’t take our trips on LSD
We don’t burn our draft cards down on Main Street
We like livin’ right, and bein’ free
We don’t make a party out of lovin’
We like holdin’ hands and pitchin’ woo
We don’t let our hair grow long and shaggy
Like the hippies out in San Francisco do
I’m proud to be an Okie from Muskogee,
A place where even squares can have a ball
We still wave Old Glory down at the courthouse,
And white lightnin’s still the biggest thrill of all”

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Handout 1 - Americans Respond to Vietnam: A Document-Based Question

Suggested reading period: 15 minutes

“Fighting soldiers from the sky

“Come on all of you big strong men,

And it’s one, two, three,

Come on mothers throughout the land,

Document D: Excerpt from a speech by Paul Potter, 1965

“Hello . . . I’m going to read A DECLARATION OF A STATE OF WAR.

“We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee

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