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The Causes Of The Vietnam War

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Officially fought between November 1955 and April 1975 between the North Vietnamese, aided by the Soviet Union, China and various Soviet Allies, and the South Vietnamese, supported by the United States and other anti-communist nations. After the introduction of American military forces into French Indochina in 1960 between 1960 and 1961 under the leadership of John F. Kennedy, American military forces tripled. American intervention escalated drastically following the Gulf of Tonkin Incident in 1964 in which the original report detailed the North Vietnamese as the ones to blame, however it was revealed after much controversy, that the USS Maddox, after firing warning shots and then attacked the North Vietnamese ship. The second incident involved what became known as Tonkin ghosts, rather than North Vietnamese ships, there were false radar images. These two incidences were not only the start of substantial American military involvement but the federal deceit that surrounded the Vietnam War during the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations. The Vietnam War was controversial from the start of American intervention. While the majority American believed that intervention and American military involvement began in the late 1950s, this was not the case. Participation in the Vietnam War was heavily promoted as a war against communism, and at a time where McCarthyism and the Second Red Scare was prominent in people’s minds, Americans were initially accepting of the war effort.

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