Us Involvement In The Vietnam War

The Vietnam war did not officially start until the 1950's. This is when the U.S. started sending in troops. Before then the French had been trying to conquer what was then called Indochina. They began their conquest in 1859, by 1888 they had turned the area that is now called Vietnam and Cambodia into the Colony of French Indochina. This was challenged many times by different uprisings but none worked as well as the Viet Minh common front( this was controlled by the Vietnamese communist party). During WWII the French were defeated by the Germans. This severely weakened their authority in Vietnam. In 1940 the Japanese invaded and

The Vietnam War is one of America’s longest lasting wars beginning in 1955, and lasting until 1975. The United States became involved in the Vietnam War because of its efforts to stop communism in Southeast Asia. The United States feared that if communist took over Southeast Asia it would cause a domino effect around the world. The United States began sending financial aid and military advisors to South Vietnam to help stop a communist takeover. North Vietnam was run by communist leader Ho Chi Minh, and the South had a non-communist government. An election to unify Vietnam would be held in 1955, fearing that Ho Chi Minh would win the elections South Vietnam president Ngo Dinh Diem refused to hold an election that would unify the country.

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.

For centuries the Vietnamese people resisted being controlled by their powerful Chinese neighbors. They struggled to unify their country as an independent state. Ultimately they freed themselves from China 's claim for control of political authority and achieved national unity only to fall victim to French imperialism (Anderson 1). French ruled Vietnam and neighboring kingdoms as colonies from the nineteenth century to the twentieth century. Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia during World War II influenced the Vietminh war against the French in 1945. September 2nd, 1945, Ho Chi Minh declares independence from French rule shortly after Japans surrender from World War II (www.history.com). France 's rule over its colony was incredibly brutal and exploitative (Anderson 6). French colonialism deprived the Vietnamese of their political independence, and it impoverished many of the Vietnamese people (Anderson 7). Many villagers lost their lands and became low-paid plantation

Vietnam is a southeastern Asian country that has been occupied by the French since the early 19th Century. During War War II Japanese forces invaded Vietnam. In order for the native Vietnamese to fight off both the French Colonial Administration and the invading Japanese, political leader Ho Chi Minh inspired by Soviet Communism, established the League of Independence of Vietnam. After Japan’s defeat in World War II in 1945, the Japanese withdrew their forces from Vietnam. The French educated Emperor Bao Dai was now back in control of Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh saw this as an opportunity to finally gain control and almost immediately took control of the northern city of Hanoi. Ho Chin Minh declared himself as president. In hopes to regain control of Hanoi, France backed Emperor Bao and created the state of Vietnam in 1949. Although both sides wanted the same goal of uniting Vietnam, their government views were drastically different. Ho and his followers wanted the nation to be modeled after other communist countries. While Bao and his followers wanted their country to be in close ties with democratic countries in the west. These causes led to a civil war for the sole control of Vietnam.

Fighting in Vietnam started well before the actual “Vietnam War”. The Vietnamese people had been under French rule for several decades until Japan invaded in 1940. In 1941, when Ho Chi Minh came back from his travels there were two foreign powers occupying the Vietnam territory, the French and Japanese. Ho Chi Minh established the Viet Minh in hopes to rid Vietnam of these two powers. On September 2, 1945 the Viet Minh established the Democratic Republic of China after getting support in northern Vietnam. This action spawned the French to fight back to keep control of their colony. Ho Chi Minh wanted support from the United States against the French; he went as far as to supply the United States with information about the Japanese during WWII. The United States kept with their Cold War foreign policy of containment as to prevent the spread of Communism, fearing the “Domino Theory” that said “if one country in Asia fell to Communism then surrounding countries would soon fall”.

Another thing the United States lost in Vietnam was their support. Their people supporting them began to question their presence in Vietnam. Many young Americans started to lead a protest on college campuses because they were against the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. This movement was soon noticed and there was a lot of support behind for over three years. These protesters slowly began to turn against the war after they were being drafted. About 100,000 protesters came together on October 21, 1967 at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. They gathered there to share how dissatisfied they were about the war. Since the United States support during the war began to decline in time this was putting pressure on President Richard Nixon to end the war. In 1968 Americans and Vietnamese fightings were being recorded which was known as the Tet Offensive. These fightings were not only just being recorded they were being put on television. Putting this on television was exposing it to the world and changing the way many Americans felt about the war. They started to turn their heads and began to stop giving the United States their support for the war. The United States felt that without having their support for the war there was no way they would be able to win

The United States lost more soldiers fighting in Vietnam than fighting in World War II. The Vietnamese jungle was fraught with danger. Many U.S. soldiers died getting caught in booby traps and ambushes by the Vietcong. Soldiers sometimes lost limbs and had some parts of their body immobilized. Not only were there many American casualties, but there were also a large amount of civilian casualties. The U.S. military targeted civilian villages as well as military targets. Many of our own soldiers died from friendly fire and Napalm strikes.

The Vietnam conflict began long before the U.S. became directly involved. Indochina, which includes Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, was under French colonial rule. The Vietnam communist-nationalist, also known as the Vietminh, fought for their freedom from the French. The French were being slaughtered, and were doing little to keep the communist North Vietnamese out of South Vietnam. The U.S. sent financial aid to France to help them eliminate the communist threat. At the Geneva Conference in 1954, the major powers tried to come to an agreement on Indochina. There would be a temporary division on the 17th parallel in Vietnam. The Vietminh would control North Vietnam, and South Vietnam would be ruled under the emperor Bao Dai. There was to be an election held in two years to set up the permanent

The Vietnam War took place in between 1947- 1975. It consisted of North Vietnam trying to make South Vietnam a communism government. The United States later joined this conflict because of the stress North Vietnam was putting to South Vietnam to become a government that America did not want. The main reason why America joined was because of a theory called the Domino Effect. America and Russia were going through what has been dubbed the Cold War. The Domino Effect is the theory that communism will spread form one country to another. United states does not want this because our

The American involvement in Vietnam War began in 1950 with the first shipment of military supplies to the French. (Graham, 2016) The conflict involved over 2.5 million soldiers while 58,183 US personnel were killed and over a span of twenty-four years. Air Defense systems such as the HAWK, Vulcan, Quad 50, and Duster deployed to Vietnam for the protection of assets as well as providing forward area air defense and fire support to ground forces. These systems provided a strategic advantage and deterred the North Vietnamese while maintaining US air superiority. Air defense Soldiers during the war earned more 450 medals for valor and received over 1000 Purple Hearts for their service during the war. (USC ROTC, n.d.)

First off when America fought in the war they were foreigners. Hardly any of them knew anything about Vietnam, the landscape of it or even how to speak the language itself. They were fighting on a landscape that they were not trained for, also, the intense heat and humidity that they were not used to made it much harder. America was over-confident and planning to stay there for only a few years, not 20. To make it even worse for Americans, they had very easy access to Heroine and about 20% of the people who fought in the war took it as relief from a very stressful war. So with all of that, America was not determined to win the war. On the other end, Vietnam was not going to give up even in such a savage war. In their culture, they fought until the last man died, just as they have done before the Vietnam War. They

The whole conflict in Vietnam started with France’s imperialism. The French took over Vietnam and established Indochina in the 1880s. However, the people of Vietnam wanted to be free from France, and under their communist leader Ho Chi Minh they established a military organization called Viet Minh. This organization took over the capital and declared Vietnam an independent country. Ho asked for aid from the U.S, but the U.S distrusted their communist ideals. Instead, President Truman sent financial aid to their ally, France.

It was a French colony, Indochina (Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia) and was occupied by the Japanese during the war.1941was the formation of the Vietnamese national movement, the Viet Minh, by Ho Chi Minh to resist occupants. And Communism, Ho Chi Minh launched a guerrilla war against the Japanese support of the United States. Near the end of the war, the Japanese began to promote Vietnamese nationalism and returned at the end of the day, the country gained nominal independence.