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Causes of vietnam war essay
Americas role in Vietnam
The us used as justification for their involvement within vietnam
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“It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder,” Albert Einstein. The Vietnam War was a war that America did not need. America believed they were doing good. They believed that they were protecting the people of Vietnam. America did not realise that they were only making a bad situation worse. America stopped nothing. They didn’t stop communism; they didn’t save the people of Vietnam. America caused the number of casualties in Vietnam to increase and had their own people killed. They caused diseases and destroyed the environment with the help of Agent Orange. America sent soldiers on a mission with a result of hundreds of civilians murdered. America did not help anyone. America sent people out to murder others and to be killed in the line of duty.
The French were forced out of Vietnam and Vietnam was divided between communists and anti-communists. The communist regime controlled North Vietnam. Those that supported the French and were against communism controlled South Vietnam. Then trained Communist supporters from the North, the Vietcong, started coming to the South. America decided that they wanted to stop the spread of communism by stopping communism in Vietnam. The United States believed in the Domino Theory. The Domino Theory is the theory that communism will continue to spread around the world unless it is stopped. America sent soldiers over to Vietnam to help the South fight against the North. Then American ships were supposedly attacked of the coast of Vietnam. This is when the United States officially entered the war.
The Vietnam War was a war with many unnecessary casualties and injuries. The United States entered the Vietnam War and increased the stakes. Now South Vietna...
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.... They believe that they must fight to save others. Their fighting can lead to many grave circumstances. Their belief in saving can lead to casualties, diseases, and the murdering of innocent lives. America needs to look at their definition of saving because they didn’t save the people of Vietnam.
Works Cited
Agent Orange. (n.d.). Retrieved March 12, 2014, from http://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/agent-orange
English Online. (n.d.). Retrieved March 12, 2014, from http://www.english-online.at/history/vietnam-war/vietnam-war-background.htm
General Statistics Vietnam War. (n.d.). Retrieved March 12, 2014, from http://www.103fieldbatteryraa.net/documents/74.html
Public Health. (n.d.). Retrieved March 12, 2014, from http://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/agentorange/
Vietnam War Statistics. (n.d.). Retrieved March 11, 2014, from http://www.mrfa.org/vnstats.htm
The Vietnam War: A Concise International History is a strong book that portrays a vivid picture of both sides of the war. By getting access to new information and using valid sources, Lawrence’s study deserves credibility. After reading this book, a new light and understanding of the Vietnam war exists.
In conclusion, I think that the United States became increasingly involved in the Vietnamese War because of the policies they had made as a promise to fight communism, and because they had sorely underestimated Vietcong’s ability to fight back using Guerrilla warfare. They refused to pull out of the war in fear of losing face before the world, but this pride factor scored them massive losses in the war. In the end, with both side sustaining heavy losses, the US were still seen as mutilators in the war, with advanced showing what their intervention had costed, and Vietnam was still fully taken over by Communism – they had achieved nothing and lost a lot.
North Vietnam came under the control of the Vietnamese Communists who had opposed France and aimed for a unified Vietnam under Communist rule. Vietnamese who had collaborated with the French controlled the South. For this reason the United States became involved in Vietnam because it believed that if all of the country fell under a Communist government, Communism would spread throughout Southeast Asia and further. This belief is known as the domino theory. The decision to enter Vietnam reflected Americas idea of its global role - the U.S. could not recoil from world leadership.
The Vietnam War took place in between 1947- 1975. It consisted of North Vietnam trying to make South Vietnam a communism government. The United States later joined this conflict because of the stress North Vietnam was putting to South Vietnam to become a government that America did not want. The main reason why America joined was because of a theory called the Domino Effect. America and Russia were going through what has been dubbed the Cold War. The Domino Effect is the theory that communism will spread form one country to another. United states does not want this because our government is a democracy and communism opposes everything we stand for. America fearing communism was growing, stepped into Vietnam with America’s interest in mind, instead of Vietnam’s. There are several reason why American should have not gotten involved with this war. The most important reason was that America government officials made to much of a big deal about communism. This might sound cynical, but America to a certain degree did over react. Let it be said that it is much easier to say this after the fact. By looking back at McCarthyism, we can see the silliness of this fear. There is a serious side though. Thousands of people dies for a government that has no impact of their daily life. What regime Vietnam was going to change over to had no effect on the every day cycle of the United States. So truly, one can say, this can not one thing to do with America, its government and people.
It was a very bloody war, with more than 58,000 American soldiers having perished in combat. Also, during the decade of direct U.S Military participation in Vietnam, during early times of the year, 1964 the U.S treasury spent over 140 billion dollars on this war. “This was enough money to fund urban projects in every major American city” (history.com). As this war affected the American’s, it affected the Vietnamese people too. This war affected both the American’s and the Vietnamese, because in the year 1973 the United States began withdrawing troops.
The Americans entered the war in 1964 because they believed in the domino theory, that if one nation fell into communism then other nations would follow. Soon America found it almost impossible to fight against people who were so determined to win, so America pulled its troops out of Vietnam in 1973. Withdrawing the American troops resulted in the South Vietnamese forces being defeated by the communists who then took over the country.
Vietnam War (1954-1975) is considered as one of those big wars of the modern world that has been acknowledged and studied by countries in the world. Especially, in regard to the United States, starting and ending war in Vietnam was an unforgettable experience that has left a priceless lesson in its foreign policy, and of course a lot of loss, physically, mentally, and property. “The Legacy of Vietnam” article of George Herring basically summarizes how the Vietnam War led to an end in failure of America and what consequences it left behind.
After returning, Minh had help from the Vietminh; an organization of communist that wanted freedom from other countries. Their main goal was to turn Vietnam into a self-governed communist country. France wanted none of this non-sense. In 1945 they had moved back into southern Vietnam and ruled most of the cities. Ho Chi Minh swore to fight France to gain control of the whole country. U.S. promised to aid France, and sent almost $15 million worth of financial aid to France. The French fought for four years, being financially aided by the U.S. the whole time. The U.S. spent nearly one billion dollars in order to help France regain control of the tiny country. The only reason that much effort was put into a small area was the fear of the y. Domino Theory. The Domino Theory first showed it's head during a 1954 news conference by U.S. President Eisenhower. The domino theory is the fear of the spread of communism from one country to the next, and so on. Even with the assistance of the U.S. France could not gain the control it once had on Vietnam.
The Vietnam war has been referred to by many names, one of the longer ones was 'the cornerstone of the free world southeast Asia'. It was called that by John F. Kennedy. He was talking about Vietnam being and essential country in a non-communist world. He believed that if Vietnam became a communist country, all of the surrounding countries would also become communists. This is the main reason America was involved in the Vietnam war. Another reason was that America wanted to spread their “political ideas around the globe”. They wanted to do this so that their anti-communism stance was clear. The public also wanted to keep communism from spreading. To soldiers, the war was like a crusade, a great journey to purge the communists from Vietnam. Sadly, this is not what happened. The Viet Cong (VC) had far better tactics than the US. The VC was told to 'nibble at the enemy' so that he could 'neither eat or sleep'. This worked very well. Another demoralizing tactic the VC used was their landmines; they were designed to blow the limbs off the soldiers without killing them. This tied up hospital beds and meant the soldiers had to carry the wounded back to the base.
The Vietnam War began in 1954 and came to an end in 1975. It was a conflict that set in opposition the communist regime of North Vietnam and the Viet Cong (its southern allies) against South Vietnam and its chief ally, the United States. The war began after Ho Chi Minh’s rise to power along with his communist Viet Minh party. More than 3 million people died in this war, which included over 58,000 Americans. By 1969, the U.S. had reached peak involvement in the war, involving over 500,000 American military personnel. As time went on, there was growing opposition in America to the war. This opposition led to a bitter divide among those in support of the war and those against it. By 1975, the communist Vietnamese forces had gained control of Saigon, ending the Vietnam War (History.com). Most people consider this war a huge loss and a tragic waste of time. The sting of disappointment from this war is still widely felt today among Americans.
The Vietnam War was a war that changed America forever. It was a long, costly war between Communist North Vietnam, with the aid of the Viet Cong, and Capitalist South Vietnam, aided by the United States. It was a controversial war at the time, but today, it remains embedded in America's history as a war to be remembered.
The conflict in Vietnam for the United States started when President Dwight D. Eisenhower went along with the domino theory and sent in military advisors in South Vietnam to stop the communist movement from taking place in South Vietnam. The Vietnam conflict was between the communist’s and the United States. North Vietnam was led by Ho Chi Minh, and Ho Chi Minh led the Viet Cong, a guerilla group to help spread communism. The United States were supporters of the South Vietnam because they wanted them to maintain their government rather than falling to the domino theory of communism. After Eisenhower’s term ended, John F. Kennedy became president and took control of the situation in Vietnam.
“When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw.” Said Nelson Mandela. Despite the Different Opinions on guerrilla warfare against American troops in weaker countries, but these opinions are all based on different perspectives. Some people judge things based on biases and relationship to who is being attacked or to that who is attacking. In comparing the American Revolutionary War, which was the beginning of the great and most powerful country we live in today (America) to the Vietnam War, we see that both of these wars had a lot in common. They both were fought for similar reasons and under similar conditions. Also, same fighting tactics were used in both wars. If Americans had the
Going into the Vietnam War, America didn’t know much of anything about Vietnam, their culture, or their people. We didn’t even speak their language. We didn’t understand what exactly to do. We continued to increase the number of troops to send over, and we continued to get more casualties and fatalities. American methods including a hi-tech war, search and destroy, and strategic hamlets did nothing to help them; it only hurt them and help the Vietcong destroy them (“BBC- GCSE Bitesize: Vietcong and American tactics,” (n.d.). The American tactics were not effective at
Vietnam was a struggle which, in all honesty, the United States should never have been involved in. North Vietnam was battling for ownership of South Vietnam, so that they would be a unified communist nation. To prevent the domino effect and the further spread of communism, the U.S. held on to the Truman Doctrine and stood behind the South Vietnamese leader, Diem.