US Involvement In Vietnam

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,

By the end of 1966, 380,000 estimated troops were sent to Vietnam. The amount of troops was due volunteers plus the draft registration and draft lotteries that selected eligible males would go into Vietnam. The battles were standstill and chaotic until the Tet Offensive, which was an event that would trigger the finales of the war. After a ceasefire by both sides, it was planned to celebrate the lunar festival in peace, but North Vietnam saw it as a chance to strike undetected. US sent more troops into the fray, reaching a 500,000 soldiers in Vietnam. The graphicness and full on hellfire of this war started stirring the anti war movement back at the US to new extremes where the people wanted the government to pull out the war and not sacrifice American lives as the American troops fought off the sneak

This was later dubbed Vietnamization by accident during a meeting of the National Security Council. However, there would be covert bombings of Laos and Cambodia which leads to the growth of the antiwar movement, creating protests and the shooting of students by National Guard and State Police. This led the anti war movement to target many factors of the government involvement to Vietnam, especially the draft. There was much controversy of the drafts, being a major target by the movement, saying that most soldiers would be from lower classes and rural areas, rarely anyone from higher classes would be drafted and sent to war, forcing people to dodge the draft and go to neutral countries for sanctuary. To face this argument, President Nixon signed the pass of the 26th Amendment with the quote “old enough to fight, old enough to vote.” What this did is that it allowed voters be 18 years of age minimally. IN my eyes, this was a way Nixon tried to compensate protesters. Soon after, the Pentagon Papers are published publicly, revealing a secret history of the war, causing the credibility gap to grow exponentially. Despite this, Nixon is reelected for another term in 1971. A few months later, a bombing on North Vietnam