Research Paper: The Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a useless war that took place in 4 different countries North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The war started soon after the Geneva conference which divided Vietnam at the 17th parallel in the year of 1954. This escalated to the Vietnam civil war the Vietcong, the communist north and the south, it started out with the Viet Cong fighting to reunify Vietnam under communist rule. Which was fought initially against forces from France but American was scared of communist rule so then they joined and later South Vietnam joined.
The Vietnam War was a product of the Cold war; it was caused by the consequences of the Cold war. The country was …show more content…
Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Ho Chi Minh, and Lyndon B. Johnson. Dwight D. Eisenhower decided to not get the United States heavily involved in the Vietnam war because he believed that was the last thing the U.S. needed, but he did provide support to the French and anti-communist leader Ngo Dinh Diem. During his years as the president John F. Kennedy increased the amount of economic and military aid to South Vietnam by 3 times. Kennedy also increased the amount of military advisors to Indochina. Kennedy also refused to pull American troops out of the conflict in Vietnam because it would just allow South Vietnam to collapse and also allow all of Southeast Asia to fall too. Ho Chi Minh was a Communist Vietnamese leader who wanted to free his country from colonial influence. Minh was the leader of Vietnamese troops who fought against Japanese, French, and American troops. Under his leadership, they defeated the French and fought the Americans until they left Vietnam. Lyndon B. Johnson was the next president who took over after Kennedy’s assassination. Johnson told the United States that he planned on providing a swift ending to the Vietnam War. Johnson actually planned on ensuring victory in Vietnam by steadily increasing troops being deployed. Johnson’s reasoning for this was that no American president had lost a war yet and he did not want to be remembered as …show more content…
January 30, 1968 Vietcong and North Vietnamese launch a massive surprise attack where guerilla fighters attacked virtually all American airbases in South Vietnam. The importance of this document is that American troops were killed in mass numbers, nearly 3,000 bodies were found. The Pentagon papers, published by New York Times, is another important document which revealed that many government officials during Johnson administration privately questioned the war while publicly defending it. This document is important because it opened up the war to the American public which benefited them greatly to argue against the war they were already against to begin with. Lastly Nixon began to attempt ending the war through a principle named “linkage” which was to better America’s relations with the Soviet Union and China in hopes to get them to stop supplying Vietnamese soldiers. This is important because it was one of the ways to attempt to end the war in