John F Kennedy's Involvement In The Vietnam War

In a time of drastic change in America, adding such a controversial war to the mix of social issues seemed to many like an inappropriate decision. The Vietnam War, which lasted twenty years, from 1955 and 1975, was the battle for liberation of South Vietnam from North Vietnam. The communist North Vietnam, led by Ho Chi Minh, was backed by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and communist China in an attempt to overtake the South Vietnamese who were led by the Catholic minority, Ngo Dinh Diem. Before 1960, his corrupt and brutal ways were beginning to wear on his people. By 1963, the United States has decided that Diem must go and authorizes and assassination (Osman, 2 October). The controversiality only starts with John F. Kennedy’s decision

Kennedy’s administration — the year after his election. He played an integral role in the Vietnam war because of his expertise in foreign policy. In February 1965, two years after Kennedy’s assassination and two year’s into Lindon B. Johnson’s first presidential term, Bundy released a memo to the president that outlined the goals and costs of the Vietnam War. His idea was of sustained reprisal “in which air and naval action against the North [Vietnam] is justified by and related tot eh whole viet cong campaign of violence and terror in the South [Vietnam].” (Bloom and Brienes, 162) Disorganized and scatterbrained, Bundy’s sketch had its flaws. By 1965, the Gulf of Tonkin incident had occurred where it was claimed that North Vietnam had fired upon two United States Navy ships. This lead to the United States’ first significant attack on North Vietnam followed by the deployment of one hundred and sixty thousand. Bundy’s idea would be extremely costly and would involve sending more foreign (US) troops to Indochina. (Bloom and Brienes, 162) This idea should have been vetoed

(Bloom and Brienes, 162) Bundy gave his plan a dismally wide breadth of accuracy of success, raging from twenty five to seventy five percent. (Bloom and Brienes, 163) With such unsure odds such as that, I would fold immediately on his deal. The quagmire theory comes to mind upon reading into Bundy’s proposition. With a description of “no strategy”, “[stumbling] into unwanted and unintended conflict” (Osman, 2 October), this policy would not have panned out. Bundy’s plan of action, that contained no real strategy, would sink the United States into “quicksand” and would never hold traction in the real