America's War with Vietnam

Vietnam US marines capture Vietnamese soldiersis a small country to the south of China (‘Vietnamese’ means “non-Chinese people of the south”). There were a lot of reasons for the US to enter into this war, of course all of them were considered ‘moral’ and ‘correct’. One long term reason was America’s fear of Communism. The USA is a primarily Christian population, they as well as people of some other religions felt that Communism was “godless” because they were atheists. America was also a democracy where everyone had the right to vote. Communists had a dictator, the Americans were opposed to it. A second reason was the cold war, the Soviets were taking many countries in Europe and South America and turning them into communist states or satellite nations. Despite having worked as allies in WW2 the US was opposed to this and started the cold war with Russia. Remember it was the French who first colonised Vietnam, Laos and Combodia in 1868. It was part of French empire, as it was the age of colonialism and British had India as part of their empire by that time (1857 – 1947). Economic reasons for invading and conquering the region were simple. Vietnam became profitable for the French. Vietnam had good supplies of coal, tin, zinc and rubber. Much of this was sent to France. Vietnam also provided a good market for French manufactured goods. In 1902 Ho Chi Minh was a student in the university built by the French and resented the foreign occupation of his land and their forced conversion to Catholic christianity. He was inspired by the Russian Revolution. And in 1924 he visited the Soviet Union. While in Moscow, Ho wrote to a friend that it was the duty of all communists to return to their own country to: “make contact with the masses to awaken, organise, unite and train them, and lead them to fight for freedom and independence.” In those days it was not in vogue to call the freedom fighters as terrorists otherwise Ho would have been easily been labeled as Ben Laden or