Vietnam: America's Involvement

Vietnam: America's Involvement

Vietnam is a time in American history that most of us would like to forget, but really, we must learn from it. Vietnam is a time where we didn't look at the whole picture, it was "perceived through the lens of Cold War politics." (MP:420) With the new "domino theory," Americans feared for their safety and the safety of the "free world." If they didn't step in, they would inevitably lose the world to communism.

Many Americans believed our involvement in Vietnam began around 1965-the beginning of combat with American boys. In reality, engagement began much earlier, around 1945. The US supported France and rejected to recognize the Vietnamese nationalists as an actually body. The leader of the Vietnamese nationalists was Ho Chi Mihn and he was known as a communist. Our reasons for supporting France, more or less, reflected our foreign policy: containment. Post-WWII, our main focus was to contain Communism, as seen through the Truman. Doctrine. "Truman and his advisors, who saw Communism as a monolithic force, assumed wrongly that Ho took orders from Moscow." (AP:897) Because they believed that Ho had a connection with Communist Russia, the US wanted to support the more democratic side. American showed its support in aiding over 3/4 of the cost of France's war.

In 1954, France's fortress at Dien Bien Phu finally fell to Ho's forces and France asked America to step in. An international conference in Geneva divided Vietnam along the 17th parallel, with elections promised in 1956 to unify the country and determine its political fate. "The United States had taken its first steps toward direct involvement in a ruinous war halfway around the world." (AP:898) American and Eisenhower's mind set was one of the fear of "falling dominoes." The theory itself made everything seem more important that it really was, as one can tell from President Eisenhower: "So, the possible consequences of the loss are just incalculable to the free world."(MP:409) The US sent in around 600 advisors and created a South Vietnamese government, with Diem as the head. And no election was held in 1956, as promised in Geneva. "Without understanding Geneva, and the way we felt about it, you will never understand our side of the war." (MP:421) The elections would have been a turning point and a time where the US could have stepped out.

President John F. Kennedy is elected in 1960 and his commitment to Cold War victory led him to expand the American role in Vietnam. The government set up in South Vietnam was corrupt and it was obvious that Diem had no really interest in setting up a democracy. The National Liberation Front, or Viet Cong, began invading South Vietnam. Kennedy's response was to increase the number of advisors to 16,000. This was the "cornerstone