Vietnam War

Vietnam War DBQ The United States attempted to help Ngo Dinh Diem build a new nation in South Vietnam once France withdrew from Vietnam in 1954 by sending military “advisers.” As the United States was helping the south, Ho Chi Minh still had the Vietcong in the south that were getting stronger and more militant. In 1959, the Vietcong guerillas raided throughout the south and controlled most of the area outside of Saigon. When John F. Kennedy took office, the Diem regime was crumbling, so JFK became fully committed to this Vietnam conflict with 16,000 American soldiers in the south by 1963. After Diem and JFK were assassinated, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon came into office and the social, political, and economic tensions began to tremendously rise. The Vietnam War from 1964 to 1975 was an unpopular conflict that failed its goal to defend South Vietnam led by Ngo Dinh Diem from the Communist North Vietnam led by Ho Chi Minh. Over this period of unrest, Americans began to question the United States’ role in their lives and the world. The vast disapproval of the political decisions among people led to social tensions between mostly young people and the government. Political and economic tensions heightened during the office of Johnson and Nixon with political fraud and economic negligence during the time of the Vietnam War from 1964 to 1975. The American people were very wary about the government’s intentions of sending more and more young Americans to Vietnam as tensions grew dramatically. When Lyndon B. Johnson took office in 1963 in place of John F. Kennedy, he instantly put more troops into Vietnam with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of 1964 and “by the end of 1965, 184,000 Americans were in the field; a year later, 385,000; after another year, 485,000” (Carnes 783). People were appalled by the amount of young Americans put into the war effort and spoke out against it. Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee Senator William Fulbright, the

Cited: Carnes, Mark C. and, Garraty, John A. The American Nation A History of the United States. New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2008.