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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Who does Halberstam say was making the case for bombing after the 1964 election?

2. What evidence does Halberstam say the President was presented with to make the case for bombing?

3. What does Halberstam say became clear by the time Rolling Thunder had been in effect for six weeks?

4. Who traveled to Vietnam after the 1965 inauguration?

5. What position did Maxwell Taylor begin to support as a result of his late 1964 trip to Vietnam?

Short Essay Questions

1. What were the questions people were asking on the issue of bombing the North?

2. What does Halberstam say was Johnson's approach to paying for the war?

3. What does Halberstam say began to change in early 1964?

4. What does Halberstam say McNamara found in Vietnam when the Johnson administration took over?

5. What was the result of the Spring Offensive?

6. What was President Johnson's position regarding Vietnam in the early days of his presidency?

7. What did the Johnson administration tell America as it committed more troops to Vietnam?

8. What was the public story of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and what was the truth?

9. What does Halberstam say Maxwell Taylor said were the three issues confronting the U.S. in its Vietnam planning?

10. How did the reality of the war become public information?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What must McGeorge Bundy or Robert McNamara or President Johnson have thought about the Vietnam war? Write a journal entry as if you were them.

Essay Topic 2

Using the hindsight gained by "The Best and the Brightest", would you say that the war in Vietnam was a local conflict that could have been left to resolve itself, or would you say that if left unaddressed, Vietnam would have been one of the dominoes in a string of nations the Communists took over? Put another way: would the internal tensions in Vietnam have dogged the Communists just as badly as they dogged the Americans and the American-backed South Vietnamese government, if the Vietcong had ever acquired power there?

Essay Topic 3

How does the containment of the 1960s differ from the preemptive foreign policy of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. How has American foreign policy changed since the 1960s?

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