United States Involvement In The Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was a defining moment in American history, due to the fact that the American people where concerned about the war and the actions of President Johnson. The lack of trust kept on growing between the American people and the government, which left a lot of unanswered questions. After the country’s involvement in two world wars and the cold war, America felt the responsibility of imposing its way of life on the world to stop the growth of the communists. War has an impact on all the parties involved, and the Vietnam War was the most expensive and longest war in American history. The country did not just suffer financially, it cost the people involved greatly, physically and mentally. In the early stages of joining the war,
the American government was convinced and led the public to believe in its confidence of a fast and successful war to end the growing treat. However, the government failed to foresee what the war would end up doing to the nation. This war caused distress and confusion in the country. People had unanswered questions like why? Why were we even there in the first place? And why did the United States of America withdraw from Vietnam. The main aim of this paper is to answer the questions, explain the reason why America had to join the war and those reasons that left scars amongst society that are still healing even after so many years since the war ended. The war started as a civil war between the North Vietnam and South Vietnam after France was forced out of South Vietnam in 1954.
The only country in that region that was not controlled by communists at the time was South Vietnam and they where not strong enough to resist the communists. The president of America at the time, Dwight D. Eisenhower came up with domino theory that "If one country becomes communist, the other countries will fall one by one." In the process America developed interest in the Vietnam War for fear that other countries in the free world would fall to communism. He argued that the Communists are gaining in the southwest Pacific threatening Australia and New Zealand, and if they don’t act to protect them, the free world would fall. Therefore, Eisenhower suggested American involvement in Vietnam to protect the interests of the free
world.

In the early 1930’s, the Vietnamese party was wiped out, so the control of the resistance was taken over by Ho Chi Minh who founded the Communist party. About twenty years later he announced, that only his party was in control and any other party was illegal. After so many battles, they decided to divide Vietnam into two regions, the South and North Vietnam. They never held an election to decide the split because the president Ngo Diem did not allow it. In 1957, after the death of Ho Chi Minh, a communist group took over control of the party and started the Guerrilla wars. The fighting went on for some years and North Vietnam’s army claimed parts of the South Vietnam’s territory.
In 1961, America decided to send 100 advisors and funds to help make the South Vietnam army stronger after the departure of the French. North Vietnam was also getting funds and troops from neighboring communist countries like China and Russia. As the war progressed the United States kept sending more troops and funds. In august 1964, a Vietnamese torpedo attacked a US Navy destroyer while it was on patrol, getting information on North Vietnamese and Chinese military. That same year, the American government released the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, where the congress allowed the president to take all necessary actions to repel any attack against the U.S. military and to prevent further attacks. This meant that the president had a reason for further involvement in Vietnam. After the attack, the United States increased funding and sent more troops to South Vietnam. With all the help from the United States, South Vietnam still did not have the strength to defeat North Vietnam’s army. America kept sending more troops to Vietnam and now they had over 21,000 soldiers present on Vietnamese grounds. By June 1965, after several battles the American government started to realize that it is most likely they where going to lose the war because the guerilla forces outnumbered them. With the present development, Johnson did not want to be the first president to lose a country
to communism. So he sent 500,000 more troops to fight in Vietnam. The Vietnam war seemed to be ending by 1973, due to the withdrawal of the American troops and the signing of a peace agreement. The war did not end until North Vietnam’ s successful entry into South Vietnam in 1975. During the war, the death toll and casualties kept increasing and the war wasn’t coming to an end, this made the American population start protesting against the war. Tabloids and press at the time published several of the weekly pages with names of the American soldiers who died during the week.