I think the United States entering into Vietnam was justified and also not. The threat of Communism was there but in the end we withdrew and it didn't really spread more than the North Vietnamese taking over South Vietnam. The conflict was a waste of the young men and women's lives of the United States. It was also a waste of lives in Vietnam.
The presidents that the United States went through during the years of the Vietnam War had one thing on their minds, stop the spread of Communism. The United States poured millions of dollars into the Southern Vietnamese government to set it up. Vietnam was justified on the idea of stopping communism's spread. The US sending troops was justified in the beginning, until civilians began to die and 58,000 US soldiers died. With wanting to stop the spread of Communism we sent supplies and supported a coup in the South Vietnamese government.
Vietnam affected both countries' civilians. The Vietnamese civilians got it worse than the United States. The Vietnamese civilians lost their homes, children, husbands, and their lives. Their cities were shelled, losing their homes and becoming homeless. The North Vietnamese killed any Southern Vietnamese man or woman who helped the US. They also got killed by a platoon of American soldiers. The slaughter would have been worse if a helicopter hadn't landed between them to
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The United States promised that they were going to help them keep their country, but we withdrew from Vietnam leaving them to be taken over. Nixon made so many promises to the Southern Vietnamese president that after he resigned the US didn't act on them because of them being made by Nixon. The United States eventually pulled the troops out and only sent supplies. After the United States left the Vietnamese slowly ran out of ammo and parts leaving them to only shoot a certain amount of bullets a month and a certain amount of shells a
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.
The Vietnam War was one of many. One reason some people argue the US should have been in the Vietnam War is because of the belief the US was trying to help establish a democracy there. The Vietnam war helping America win the cold war was another reason people believe the US was justified in the Vietnam war. Others believe that the US should not have been there because they were supporting a corrupt government, another reason is that American warfare was excessive and abusively killed many innocent civilians and ruined the land. While it appeared that the US was trying to spread democracy and win the cold war, but in truth, the US was supporting a mini Hitler, and our strategy had little chance of
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.
The U.S. Involvement in the Vietnam War Was Justified. The Vietnam conflict has been known to be the most unpopular war in the history of the United States. The war of 1812, the Mexican war and the Korean conflict of the early 1950's were also opposed by large groups of the American people, but none of them generated the emotional anxiety and utter hatred that spawned Vietnam. The Vietnam war caused people to ask the question of sending our young people to die in places where they were particularly wanted and for people who did not seem especially grateful.
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.
From the year 1955 when the United States vowed to help support the South Vietnamese fight off the Northern communist, a total of about 60,000 soldiers dead and 300,000 wounded. The soldiers who offered their lives were on average the age of 23 meaning many gave up education and a family to fight for the lives in the bloody massacre we call the Vietnam War. At the beginning the United States only gave minor assistance to South Vietnam, but as the years continued and the Northern Communist began crippling the South, the United States offered more military aid. In 1961 after President John F. Kennedy sent a group of officials to assess the progress of preventing the spread of communism. It became evident that more military support was needed. “Working under the "domino theory," which held that if one Southeast Asian country fell to communism, many would follow, Kennedy increased U.S. aid, though he stopped short of committing to a large-scale military intervention”(History 1). After a group of generals over threw Ngo Dinh Diem the president of the government of the public of Vietnam the South Vietnam government become very unstable. Three weeks later President John F. Kennedy was assassinated befo...
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,
The United States then decided that the only way to solve the problems would be to contain Communism, including in Vietnam. The true answer to why the United States got involved in Vietnam lies in part in the Truman Doctrine. This statement is true for two reasons. First, the Truman Doctrine set forth a policy that was applied to the international spread of Communism. Second, the Truman Doctrine was brought up when the conflict in Vietnam was increasing.
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.
“In July 1965, Lyndon Johnson chose to Americanize the war in Vietnam.” Although Johnson chose to enter America into the war, there were events previous that caused America to enter and take over the war. The South Vietnamese were losing the war against Communism – giving Johnson all the more reason to enter the war, and allowing strong American forces to help stop communism. There were other contributing factors leading up to the entrance of the war; America helped assist the French in the war, Johnson’s politics, the Tonkin Gulf Incident, and the 1954 Geneva Conference. President Johnson stated, “For 10 years three American Presidents-President Eisenhower, President Kennedy, and your present President--and the American people have been actively concerned with threats to the peace and security of the peoples of southeast Asia from the Communist government of North Viet-Nam.”
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.
The Vietnam War was a horrific war between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. There were many causes for the Vietnam War from both the North and South side. There were also many emotions during the war for United States citizens, Vietnam citizens and soldiers of the war for both Americans and Vietnamese. United States couldn’t help but get into the war. They had to intervene which brought tons of good and bad things to the United States. The Vietnam War wasn’t only affecting the North and South Vietnam it also affected the United States and the citizens of the war from both the United States and Vietnam.
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.