Thomas Liao
U.S. History
Mr. Magill
February 18, 2010
Word Count 2785
Table of Contents
The Paper 3
Works Cited 12
From 1959 to 1975, America has been engaged in her longest and most disappointing war she has ever been in, the Vietnam War. The war heavily taxed the country’s patience and will of the government. There were several bad decisions which led to the ultimate defeat and retreat of U.S. The Vietnam War had a mostly negative impact on United States, by showing eventual failure of the American government, the collapse of U.S economy, and the loss of trust from the American People.
There was political pressure. There were many presidents who dealt with the Vietnam War. The very first president involved with the Vietnam War was Harry S. Truman. Although he didn’t do too much involving the Vietnam War, he did send some money to help aid the French in their efforts to hush up the small revolutions happening in Vietminh. In 1953, Dwight Eisenhower became the president of the United States. During his term, he came up with the Domino Theory. The theory is that if one of the nations becomes a communist state, all of nations adjacent will soon fall under the ideals of communism as well. He believes that communism can be stop from spreading if it is stopped it at Vietnam. He then sends in 100 military advisors to help the Southern Vietnamese. In addition to aiding South Vietnam with military advisors, he also sent massive economic and political aid to political party leader, Ngo Dinh Diem. He did not, however, start sending the American troops because he has led troops there before and he doubts that U.S would win if they went to direct war with the Vietnamese (Rotter).
In 1960, John F. Kennedy was elected the president. During his time in the office, he secretly sent thousands of military personnel into Vietnam. In the end there were about 16,000 military advisors.