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How Did US Involvement In Vietnam

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American involvement in Vietnam was not fully analyzed, and thus caused an escalation in Vietnam to fail. Kissinger writes, “The nightmare of Vietnam was not the way in which America entered the war, but why did so without a more careful assessment of the likely costs and potential outcomes” (Kissinger 659). The United States was unaware of the full extent of the situation in Vietnam so they were unable to make appropriate decisions. The US should have analyzed all aspects of the war, such as public opinion, South Vietnam’s passion to survive, and logistics, and then decide whether it was worth it escalate the conflict, or even if the US could win the war. George W Hopkins writes, “U.S. involvement in Vietnam was not primarily a result of errors of judgment or the personality quirks of the policymakers, although these things existed in …show more content…

It was a logical, if not inevitable, outgrowth of a world view and a policy—the policy of containment” (Hopkins 4). This article contradicts Kissinger’s because it says that America entering the war was a well- thought out action rather than a “careless assessment of outcomes”. This error of judgement in escalating the conflict, although a factor, was not the main factor that caused America to fail. The main factor was that they used an overused policy of America, containment, to make their decisions. This policy was flawed from the beginning, as it views communism like a chain of dominos. But, in reality, it’s a sophisticated political theory that will inevitably happen whether the US gets involved or not. This is inevitable as the people decide whether or not to adapt communism, not wars. This is the main problem with fighting a war against an ideology, it is not something tangible that can be defeated with tanks and

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R. McMaster is an American soldier and a career officer in the U.S army. The purpose of McMaster’s book is to analyze how and why the United States becomes involved in the Vietnam War. During this, the author also explains on what he thinks why the president decided to keep the war going instead and escalate it. McMaster came to a conclusion that Johnson made the mess himself and he chose to escalate the war. The author presents the war as a consequence of specific decisions made by specific men, Lyndon B. Johnson.

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Furthermore, United States’ support in Vietnam was initially supposed to be limited to training support (source A). As even United States president, Lyndon Johnson, was aware of the potential escalation of the war in Vietnam if American military forces were to involve themselves in the Vietnamese conflict. President Johnsons statement that “… we could get tied down in a third world war” (source A) substantiates the idea that America feared the worldwide consequence of American support in Vietnam (Source A). Contrary to this however,

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Many students were taught in their U.S. History class in high school that United States went to war with Vietnam because they wanted to prevent the Vietnam from becoming communists, and if Vietnam were to fall it could result in the whole region of Indochina to become communists (domino theory). In Howard Zinn’s essay gives a different perspective to its readers and he raises questions in minds of his reader such as, “what was the real reason for U.S to invade Vietnam and how come a wealthiest and a powerful country lose war, so miserably against a third world country?” According to Howard Zinn the hidden reason for U.S. entering and supporting French in the Vietnam War was because “Communist had control over all of Southeast Asia, which

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The attack comes without warning and President Harry Truman, with the help of the United Nations, vows to defend democratic South Korea. The Containment Policy stated that the US would support any nation that are being oppressed by communism and cannot protect themselves from it. This became America’s major reason to intervene in the Korean War. However, the policy of containment came under attack due casualties and economic issues that the policy created. One of the major effects that over extended the powers of American foreign policy is that it gave the US a reason to interfere with any war they wanted as long as it involved communism.

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1. What problems did the United States face in the Vietnam War? As the United States struggled against communism in Vietnam, it would face many problems. In the late 1950’s President Eisenhower and later President Kennedy sent military supplies and advisers to South Vietnam. Despite the American aid the Vietcong grew stronger with support from North Vietnam.

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Beginning around 1876, the French occupied Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, naming it “French Indochine Française” or French Indochina. However, one year into World War II, France fell to Nazi Germany, spiraling into a perfect series of events that led the “age of decolonization” (Fogarty). Ho Chi Minh, a communist/nationalist revolutionary leader, declared Vietnam an independent nation after Japan collapsed in the WWII in 1945. His brother, General Vo Nguyen Giap, won the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 that drove the French out of Vietnam. The following Geneva Conference was an attempt to settle the dispute similar to Korea.

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”(Phelps and Lehman, 1) The interference was becoming a habit. Not only did the Central American citizens object to the Reagan administration involvement, but also the U.S. citizens. In addition 50,000 youths had died and billions of dollars had already been spent in the Vietnam war and no one wanted to go through that again in Central

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When political decisions are out of the hands of the public, popular ideas about how those decisions are made are likely to be astoundingly wrong. That so many Americans still believe that this country 's military presence in Vietnam was the consequence only of accidents, miscalculations, and basically benign intentions is the most striking recent example. Such popular misconceptions are strengthened by the mass media 's failure to place contemporary events in a larger historical context. While the forms of American expansionism have changed over the past 200 years, and several major shifts in the ideology surrounding U.S. imperialism have occurred, it is possible to trace this history of change systematically. Each era of expansionism

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In Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s note to the Department of State Bulletin in 1950, America is urged to recognize that the “solution of the Indochina problem depends both upon the restoration of security [through the Third Force led by Diem] and upon the development of genuine nationalism” (Sponsoring). “Restoration” and “development” are words that imply a lack of stability which reveals Dean Acheson’s bias that undermines the credibility of his notes with his condescending statements to Vietnam that parallel with American arrogance in Vietnam because Americans misunderstood the situation in Vietnam. Although one may argue that America is trying to achieve a desirable solution for Vietnam through the Third Force, the means are not justified because they completely ignore the Vietnamese natives in the South, which parallels with Pyle’s actions with the Third Force in the South that ultimately harmed more than it helped. In the novel, after a bomb blows up in a parade and kills dozens of Vietnamese civilians, Fowler realizes that Pyle had scheduled the massacre. Furious, Fowler asks Pyle, “How many dead colonels justify a child’s or a trishaw driver’s death when you are building a democratic front?”

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During the Vietnam conflict, the U.S. government had ordered groups of American soldiers to camp in Vietnam territories. The purpose of the United States sending American troops to foreign soil was to prevent another conflict. However not everyone agreed to this. Many families of these troops saw no real purpose of sending troops to Vietnam to be in a conflict that isn’t theirs. Most American in that time period protested against the U.S. interfering with the conflict because they believed that the U.S. had no right to interfere into a conflict that was not theirs.

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The events leading to the US involvement that comes to be known as the Vietnam War starts mainly with the Chinese and Soviet inspired group of Viet Minh created by Ho Chi Minh, otherwise known as the League for the Independence of Vietnam to fight the forces of the colonizing Japanese and French around 1941. After four years, Japan drew its forces back to its borders in 1945, leaving French influenced Emperor Bao Dai controlling the small nation. Ho Chi Minh didn’t stop at the Japanese’s retreat and quickly seized the moment to capture Hanoi and declaring Vietnam to be Republic of Vietnam.. The French still had interest in Vietnam and backed the Emperor to seize back the region. Around this point, the US starts to notice the issue at hand,

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He and his counselors stressed that excessively luxurious an utilization of U.S. capability may incite the Chinese to enter the contention. It was not expected that the North Vietnamese and the NLF would hold out long against the American military. But then U.S. policymakers never figured out how to fit military system to U.S. objectives in Vietnam. Huge shelling had little impact against a decentralized economy as vietnam North. Kennedy had favored counterinsurgency fighting in the South Vietnamese farmland, and Johnson supported this technique, however the political side of counterinsurgeny- - the push to win the "hearts and brains" of the Vietnamese lower class - was, best case scenario immature and likely damned.

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The Korean and Vietnam War were both wars the U.S seem to have lost and were examples of how scared the U.S was in the spread of communism. Both wars show the example of a theory called the Domino theory, which was a theory that if one country in the region fell into communism then all of them will. After World War 2 the U.S became a superpower and tensions between the Soviet Union started which made the U.S not want any countries fall into communism. The U.S became even more scared and worried when China fell to Communism. With China falling to communism this lead the U.S heavily involved in the region which lead to both Korean and Vietnam Wars, however what would happen if the U.S did not enter both wars.

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The United States believed that it was their responsibility to contain Communism. They wanted to stop the spread of communism across the world. They saw that Vietnam as the start of the spread of Communism so it contributed as one of the reasons of going to war. The Domino theory was a theory that if one country in a region falls to Communism that the surrounding countries would fall to communism as well. The U.S. also saw the Domino Theory in Vietnam.

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