U.s. Military And Political Relations With Vietnam

The French were highly involved with Indochina (Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia) due to the abundant harvesting riches that were favorable with their own economy. Historically, Vietnam first established the communist party through the influence of China after their conversion into a Communist country in 1949. Ho Chi Min, a nationalist leader, had

North Vietnam had its southern allies known as the Viet Cong: a network of communist agents and subversives supplied and controlled by North Vietnam that began with the Geneva Accords of 1954. After the Viet Minh party rose to power in North Vietnam with leader Ho Chi Minh, who formed the Viet Minh party to fight Japan after they invaded and occupied Vietnam during World War II and to fight the French colonial administration since they had been controlling Vietnam since the late 19th century. The Viet Minh forces quickly seized control of the northern city of Hanoi and declared Ho Chi Minh president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. France, in attempt to

The American involvement in the Vietnam War was a very controversial decision, with many people being for the war, however many people in the United States were also against the war. The Vietnam War was the longest lasting war in the United States history, before the Afghanistan War, in which most people felt strongly about, be them United States citizens, Vietnamese citizens, or just the global population. In order to better understand the ideas of those American citizens that are either for or against the war, one would have to look at the reasons that the United States was involved in the war, the impact of the Vietnam war on the American society, and the impact on the United States foreign policy.

During the Indochina war, the United States aided the French, but if we inspect France

Andrew J. Bacevich was born 1947 in Normal, Illinois. In 1969, he graduated from the U.S. Military Academy and served in the Vietnam War for a year from 1970 to 1971. He retired in the early 1990’s with the rank of Colonel after also holding posts in Germany, Persian Gulf, and the United States. He later earned his Ph.D. in American Diplomatic History from Princeton University. He is a professor at Boston University, currently teaching international relations. He is also a retired career officer of the U.S. Army and one of the former directors of Boston University’s Center for International Relations. In 2007, his son, First Lieutenant Andrew Bacevich Jr., who also served in the U.S. Army, was killed in action at the age of 27.

Regarded as one of the most controversial and polarizing military conflicts in U.S. history, the Vietnam War has left a deep and lasting impact on American culture, politics, and foreign policy. From 1964 to the present day, the Vietnam War redefined the scope of U.S. influence both at home and abroad, and caused a fundamental shift in American society that dramatically changed the way in which Americans viewed their government and the role of the United States as a world power. For an entire generation of Americans, who watched as the horrors of the war in Vietnam unfold before the spotlight of the national media, the Vietnam War directly challenged the superiority of the American way and the infallibility of U.S military dominance. In truth, the U.S government, U.S. military, and the American people as a whole struggled to accept the lessons of America’s greatest military failure and the sobering reality of the war’s consequences. To this day, the legacy of this so-called “American War” continues to resonate throughout the fabric of American society as a cautionary tale of U.S foreign intervention and blind acceptance of open-ended conflict.

US should not have been involved in the Vietnam War. For one, the US should not have been involved in the Vietnam war because protest were turning violent. They started peaceful and then they turned violent. Movements and protest are now violent because the American Society feels as if their opinions are being ignored or do not matter. Another reason that people don't trust the government now is because of the propaganda and false advertising. The president is telling the people of the US that everything is okay and the war is almost over when it is nowhere near being over. Lastly, war is very costly. The money going to cover the cost of war could be given to innovations, welfare, housing, and many other beneficial things to the people of the US.

The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era conflict that started in 1946 and ended in 1974, taking nearly 30 years to resolve. The war was fundamentally a conflict between North Vietnam and South Vietnam, where the North was communist and South was not. The United States, France, the United Kingdom and other non-communist allies supported the non-communist South Vietnam. China, Russia (USSR), Cuba, Cambodia and other Communist allies supported the regime in the north. North Vietnam saw the United States involvement in the North as foreign aggression, so they fought guerilla wars against the anti-communist forces in the region. Guerilla forces (the Viet Cong) and the regular North Vietnamese Army were responsible for fighting the anticommunist forces. The conflict mainly consisted of small battles until the onset of air attacks -- part of an overall strategy of massive bombing and search-and-destroy operations, which South Vietnam and the Americans hoped would win the war.

The Vietnam War lasted for two decades and started in 1945. Due to the Vietnam War, it caused the United States to lose a large amount of things by the end of the war in 1975. One thing the United States lost during the Vietnam War was their people (troops and civilians). A total of 15,058 United States troops were killed and as many as 109,527 were wounded. They also lost a lot of their money, by spending billions and billions of dollars every year paying for war they began putting their economy in dept. Another thing the United States lost in Vietnam was all of the support that their American citizens were giving them. There was lack of support for the United States because of their involvement in the Vietnam war. These American supporters

After World War Two, the United States government was very apprehensive about the spread of communism(Nash 592). The post war landscape saw the failing of the colonial powers with many former colonies achieving independence. Communism or socialism appealed to some of these countries and the U.S. worried that communism would spread to neighboring countries and viewed this expansion as a threat to democracy. America responded to this threat of expansion with the policy of containment. A government report in 1950 stated that “the goals of containment were to block further expansion of the soviet union, expose the falsities of soviet pretensions, induce a retraction of the kremlin's control and influence, and foster the seeds of destruction

The United States involvement in Vietnam was the longest war the U.S. has ever took part in and was considered an extended military engagement due to the fact congress never formally declared war with Vietnam (FCNL). The Vietnam War began on November 1, 1955 and lasted for 20 years until April 30, 1975. The war was fought between the communist Northern Vietnamese and the anti-communist Southern Vietnamese after the country was temporarily divided by the Geneva Accords. Americas entering of the Vietnam War proved to be an extremely controversial decision due to citizens belief that the United States reasons for intervention were unnecessary nor justified, and young teens were mainly drafted under the Selective Service Act. The death toll of nearly 3,595,000 people from the war was the result of years of conflict in Vietnam prior to the war (Statistical). The policy of imperialism, division of Vietnam, and American Ideology created circumstances in which the Vietnam War was an inevitable outcome that would forever change the lives of millions of people.

The dilemma of whether Americans were willing to fight in the Vietnam War seems to boil down to the fact that a large group of American men were not willing and sometimes non-compliant. Having been in two World Wars relatively recently (both of which Americans as a whole were not willing to join) it would make sense that the American people largely would not want to fight a war that was not immediately nor in the foreseeable future a threat to our safety and freedoms. On March 31, 1966, 11 members belonging to a group known as the Committee of Non Violent Action publically resisted the draft, burning their draft cards as self-proclaimed “pacifists.” The protesting members of the CNVA were assaulted by a large crowd of over 250 pro-war protestors

Ngo Dinh Diem, the leader of Vietnam at the time, was blamed for worsening the situations of the war. Since he was Catholic and the majority of Vietnam was Buddhist, many South Vietnamese united against the Vietnam leader. In October 1963, a

Vietnam was originally a French colony located in Indochina. After the end of the First Indochina War when the French were defeated by the Vietnamese in 1954, the French persisted to obtain their freedom. They sought to obtain it by signing the Geneva Peace Accords, granting freedom to most of the colonies but left Vietnam divided at the seventeenth parallel into two different states. The northern portion was controlled by the Vietnamese, while the south was controlled by France, later on by the United States. The Viet Minh, governed by Ho Chi Minh, however were determined to rule over all the territory surrounding its borders so elections were scheduled hopefully to reunite the country under a strict Communist government. The Communists had a good probability of winning the elections due to their superiority in organizations, but the United States did as much as possible to keep Communism out of the South and other regions prone to falling into it. As the new Superpowers emerged after the end of World War II, the challenge of maintaining authority over targeted territory remained, but it was completely challenged by getting involved in the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War, being one of the longest wars recorded in American History, was also marked as the first War that made the United States fail with their plans of eradicating Communism to secure land that could be run by an independent government. Additionally, this war was broadcast on television, which allowed people to

The leader of Vietnam during this time was Ngo Dinh Diem. He was Catholic, which triggered a lot of disagreement because the