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Have you ever wondered if the Vietnam War was justified? Should America really have invaded them just to stop communism? This enthralling question has been disputed since the long and disastrous conflict in Vietnam. The Vietnam War started as a result of American containment during the Cold War, which was meant to prevent the spread of communism throughout the world by the Soviet Union, among other countries. Neither the U.S. nor the Soviet Union could risk an actual war against each other, such was the nuclear military might of both. Previously, the Soviet union was a client country. This means that they had countries that would fight for them, although the Americans actually did participate. Be that as it may, the Soviet Union equipped China with artillery, who in turn supplied North Vietnam with the weapons that
In the article "Was American Involvement in the Vietnam War Justified?" it explains, "When Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the independence ... he did ask President Truman and the US for assistance and recognition. Upon being blatantly rejected by the US… Ho had no choice but to seek assistance from Russia and China- the Communist side, to gain independence from the French colonial rule." Obviously, Ho Chi Minh (the leader of Vietnam at the time) had to find some escape from France if they wanted to achieve their end goal (becoming an actual, independant country).Vietnam had already asked America for help and they declined, so then they had to turn to communist countries, like China and Russia and going against communism was the only reason America joined. In the end, their only reason for joining the blood fest that was this war, ended up being because of America. Overall, America should not have joined the war just because Vietnam asked for help from communist
After World War II, the French began a fight for their former colony of Indochina, which included Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The French and other countries failed to see at that time the will and desire of the Vietnamese people to gain independence from foreign rule and to have their country unified. Ho Chi Minh, a Vietnamese nationalist, fought the French and overtook the North Vietnam capital of Hanoi with his followers, the Viet Minh, declaring the area the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. (Anderson, 2002) The French were unwilling to give up their colony and drove the Vietminh from many of the larger cities in the south. The United States entered the Vietnam struggle in 1950 when $15 million in aid was pledged to France in order to fight the Vietminh. (Anderson, 2002) The rationale was to align with France and keep the Soviet Union from expanding in Europe and to keep another country from falling into communist rule.
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.
JOHN F. KENNEDY IN VIETNAM There are many critical questions surrounding United States involvement in Vietnam. American entry to Vietnam was a series of many choices made by five successive presidents during these years of 1945-1975. The policies of John F. Kennedy during the years of 1961-1963 were ones of military action, diplomacy, and liberalism. Each of his decision was on its merits at the time the decision was made. The belief that Vietnam was a test of the Americas ability to defeat communists in Vietnam lay at the center of Kennedy¡¦s policy. Kennedy promised in his inaugural address, Let every nation know...that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty. From the 1880s until World War II, France governed Vietnam as part of French Indochina, which also included Cambodia and Laos. The country was under the formal control of an emperor, Bao Dai. From 1946 until 1954, the Vietnamese struggled for their independence from France during the first Indochina War. At the end of this war, the country was temporarily divided into North and South Vietnam. 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 was known as the domino theory. The decision to enter Vietnam reflected America¡¦s idea of its global role-U.S. could not recoil from world leadership. The U.S. government supported the South Vietnamese government. The U.S. government wanted to establish the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), which extended protection to South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos in case of Communist subversion. SEATO, which came into force in 1955, became the way which Washington justified its support for South Vietnam; this support eventually became direct involvement of U.S. troops. In 1955, the United States picked Ngo Dinh Diem to replace Bao Dai as head of the anti-Communist regime in South Vietnam. Eisenhower chose to support Ngo Dinh Diem. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born in Brookline, Mass., on May 29, 1917. Kennedy graduated from Harvard University in 1940 and joined the Navy the next year.
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.
When Vietnamese revolutionary Ho Chi Minh and his political organization, the Vietminh, seized control of their independence from France United States Politicians saw it as another communist take over. When really Ho was more a nationalist than a communist. All Minh wanted was for the United States to recognize its independence from France and to send aid to help it reach its nationalistic goals. "Before the Cold War Ho and the Vietmin...
The human race has long been assumed to have a warlike nature, involving itself in many violent endeavors. Philosophers such as Hobbs firmly asserted such an ideal throughout their teachings, their theories revolving around said notion. Yet some occasions throughout history point to the contrary, specifically those in which war was the unpopular choice. Perhaps the most exemplary of unpopular wars was the Vietnam War, which spurred a myriad of anti-war sentiment. These ideals manifested themselves in a wide variety of protests and draft evasion. Despite its unpopularity, the government pushed forward with its efforts to remain involved for a number of years, drawing more negative attention to the divide that existed between the popular opinion
Why did the United States get involved in the Vietnam War? Ask this question to a cross section of Americans, a housewife like Bobbie Lee Pendergrass who wrote a moving letter to President Kennedy looking for answers not about the death of her brother, but the reason why he fighting in Vietnam. Most Americans couldn’t even tell you where Vietnam was on a map much less why we sent so many soldiers to fight a civil war half way around the world because most Americans did not think that communism was not an immediate threat. The United States government’s reason was that they wanted to stop the spread of Communism and the expansion of nuclear weapons so they supported a military government in South Vietnam which was under the leadership of Ngo Dinh Diem who was not in favor of free elections because this might unify the country under communist rule. Looking back it is easy to say that the decision may have been wrong, but what is the pint now, except to learn from the mistakes made during the Vietnam War,
It is understandable that some Americans strongly opposed the United States getting involved in the Vietnam War. It had not been a long time since the end of World War II and simply put, most Americans were tired of fighting. Mark Atwood Lawrence is one of the people who opposed our involvement in the Vietnam War. In his essay, “Vietnam: A Mistake of Western Alliance”, Lawrence argues that the Vietnam War was unnecessary and that it went against our democratic policies, but that there were a lot of things that influenced our involvement.
The speech that I chose to analyze and critique is from John Forbes Kerry “Vietnam Veterans Against the War” to the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. In this speech he did not represent himself, he represented the group of 1000 veterans that feels the same way he does about the war.
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 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.
President Harry Truman authorized economic and military aid to the French who were fighting to regain control of Laos and Cambodia along with Vietnam. The United States refused to accept the agreement the French had made to the creation of communist Vietnam North and South. President Eisenhower dispatched military advisors to train South Vietnamese Army and the CIA to conduct psychological warfare against the North.
The Vietnam War was one of the longest and most expensive wars in American history. It started from 1955 till April 30, 1975. This war lasted for almost 20 years. According to the article "How the U.S Got Involved In Vietnam" by Jeff Drake the U.S attacked Vietman and this wasn't supposed to happen. This war could have been avoidable. The 58,000 Americans didn’t have to die, nor did the 2,000,000 Vietnamese. The U.S government was responsible for their deaths. What the government told the public from the very beginning was that they were going to war because they had to stop the communist menace in Vietnam or other countries would follow suit; that they had to defend the democratic South Vietnamese government against the gathering Red hordes. While other people say it was an attempt by the U.S to suppress a heroic Vietnamese national liberation movement that had driven French colonialism out of its country (Drake, 1993).
The reasons for the Vietnam War took place long before the war even began. For years, the Vietnamese had been under French colonial rule. But, when Communist revolutionary Ho Chi Minh came back to Vietnam, he established a group called the Viet Minh, the goal of which was to remove all French occupation from Vietnam. So, the fighting started, and Ho Chi Minh tried to get the US to support them. But, being true to their policies of containment, the US started supporting France. The United States' thoughts about Communism's potential growth can be summed up in one basic idea: the Domino Theory. This theory stated that if one country in a region fell to Communism, the surrounding countries would soon follow. Because of this, the US committed to keeping the North Vietnamese contained once the French withdrew from Vietnam. But, the thing that really pushed the US into sending troops into Vietnam was the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. On August 2nd and 4th, 1964, the North Vietnamese fired upon two US ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. Following this, Congress approved the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on August 7, 1964, which gave the president authority to send military troops into Vietnam without declaring war. So, President Johnson sent troops into Vietnam, which had already erupted into civil war, to aid the South Vietnamese.
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.