Cause Of The Vietnam War

The Vietnam War started off with the backing of the American people. Due to the fear of the spread of communism, the American people believed that defending South Vietnamese from the communist north was necessary. However, this way of thinking did not last throughout the war. As the war dragged on, the American people began to realize how more and more soldiers were being killed and yet there was no end to the war in sight. This negativity towards the war was only further fueled by how the television was covered in the war. As the war progressed, television coverage began to show aspects of the war that were never before seen on television, shocking the American people. Therefore, television’s role in reporting the Vietnam War ultimately caused

During World War II the Japanese occupied Indochina, a French colony which included Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. In 1941, Ho Chi Minh created the Viet Minh to go against the Japanese occupiers. Towards the end of the war, the Japanese began to encourage Vietnamese nationalism. However, after the Japanese surrender the French return to reclaim their colony. The French were allowed to enter under the condition that Vietnam would be independent as part of the French Union. Tensions grew between the French and the Viet Minh and led to the First Indochina War. In 1954, the Geneva Accords ultimately settled the war and split Vietnam into two sections, the north and the

The My Lai massacre occurred in 1968 where American soldiers went to the village of My Lai in search of disguised Viet Cong. Upon their search soldiers found that there were no Viet Cong present. Nevertheless, the soldiers still decided to kill the people in the village including the elderly, women, and their children. Soldiers also raped the women, set fire to their homes and slaughtered the livestock. The first reports claimed that this was an attack on the Viet Cong but these reports did not fool the public for long. Other soldiers decided to tell the true story of what went on in My Lai and the media was livid with how the military censored the information. Soon after, more reports about unreported deaths by the survivors of the My Lai massacre began to surface. As a result of these events, news reports became increasingly negative. Two years after the My Lai Massacre was revealed, the Pentagon Papers published by The New York Times showed that the government lied to the people about the entire war. The percentage of victories reported went from 62% before the Tet Offensive to 44% after, clearly a significant amount. Along with this, the percentage of Americans that felt US involvement in the war was an error increased from 49% to