Why Was The Vietnam War Justified

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Vietnam War

Location: Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Date: November 1, 1955 – April 30, 1975

Vietnam war: The Vietnam War was the second-longest conflict in United States history, following the war in Afghanistan. Guarantees and promises to the people and power of South Vietnam to retain communist forces from reaching them reached back into the Harry Truman Administration. Dwight Eisenhower set military authorities and CIA operatives in Vietnam, and John F. Kennedy gave American soldiers to Vietnam. Lyndon Johnson directed the first true combat by American troops, and Richard Nixon closed the war. The large American military and strategic involvement in Vietnam was justified, to a huge extent, by the 'domino theory,' a policy placed out by …show more content…

It also served to unite those at home in their dissenting beliefs of the war. The incentive for this US growth in Vietnam was Lyndon Johnson’s election triumph in November 1964. The president allowed a massive bombing campaign against North Vietnam to reduce Hanoi’s supporter for the Viet Cong. The intensification in US combat operations between late 1965 and 1967 also gave a fast rise in fatalities. Most US orders in Vietnam in the mid to late 1960s were ‘seek and destroy’ missions. American troops were transferred into ‘hot zones’ to destroy or force the Viet Cong out of their centers. In America, public support for the war in Vietnam, though originally strong, began to collapse. Vietnamization was the term applied by Richard Nixon to define US policy towards South Vietnam in the following stages of the Vietnam War. Vietnamization was Nixon’s desired policy to allow South Vietnam to take a bigger responsibility for the war while America began a planned departure, while at the same time assisting the government in Saigon in its battle against the NLF. The Fall of Saigon happened in South Vietnam, signifying the end of the Vietnam War. President Gerald Ford, who just seized office in …show more content…

At the beginning of the war, names of each American men in draft-age were handled by the Selective Service System. The Twenty-Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution was a decision of student activism and displays against the Vietnam War. Even though the period to engage in voting was usually twenty-one, some states forced their own qualifications for voting age, establishing the minimum to eighteen. Television, therefore, became the various major source of news for American people through the Vietnam era. With weak government handles, the media was now capable to distribute uncensored pictures and videos exposing the cruelty of the war in Vietnam and greatly affected American public mind in modern balance. Several people in the United States began to talk of a “credibility gap” between what Johnson and the U.S. government were telling the American people and what really was happening on the area. Nixon passed an address to the nation now regarded to as "The Silent Majority Speech". Nixon placed out a plan for the end of the war through the process of diplomatic negotiation and Vietnamization. At