Bay Of Pigs

When John F. Kennedy became President of the United States in 1961, his first few months in office were not the greatest. After the “Bay of Pigs” incident, JFK felt that he had to get his credibility back and Vietnam was his way to do so. This war tore the United States into two sides; The “Hawks” and the “Doves”. People argued whether the United States should stay involved in Vietnam throughout the entirety John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency. There was no official start to the war, however, the United States had been invested in Vietnamese affairs for many years beforehand. According to the video shown in class, JFK supported limited war. He didn’t necessarily want to send in more troops in to Vietnam to fight this war. Instead, he used special forces trained in guerilla warfare and the “Green Berets” whom trained South Vietnamese people to fight against the North Vietnamese. Another new military strategy JFK used was called “Counterinsurgency”. According to the textbook, Counterinsurgency consisted of trying to convince the citizens of Vietnam to give up members that were conducting guerilla war tactics. By the end of JFK’s first year in office, the outlook on the war was good. Kennedy was advised that the United States was winning the war. The video that was shown in class mentioned that the United

Johnson became president in November of 1963, het met with his foreign policy advisors to discuss the course of American involvement in Vietnam. They advised him to stay on the same path that JFK was on. Later, in the summer of 1964, at the Gulf of Tonkin, three North Vietnamese torpedo boats rushed an American destroyer. The Americans fired first. In the end, two North Vietnamese torpedo boats were destroyed. LBJ announced a counter attack on the North Vietnamese, even though he doubted what he was told versus the events that actually occurred. This caused the tensions between the United States and the North Vietnamese to