Domino Theory Of Vietnam War

Introduction The Vietnam War changed America forever, being, without question, the most debatable incident in United States history. It lasted from 1955 to 1973, becoming the longest war fought in America’s history. In the words of John F. Kennedy, North Vietnam was only a “raggedy-ass little fourth-rate country”. The US could not permit the loss of Vietnam to the Communists. America used the Domino Theory as an argument pro the Vietnam War. They believed that if South Vietnam became communist, then the same thing would have happened with Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Burma and India. The U.S. did not lose the war in Vietnam as much as they failed to win this war. Their purpose was to bring down communism, but they could not do that. Therefore, ‘pulling out’ or ‘not winning’ is equated with losing the …show more content…
As a result, they dropped thousands of bombs on towns and villages, with the purpose of making the North Vietnamese give up the war and stopping the flow of equipment down the Ho Chi Minh trail, by attacking the North Vietnamese industrial and transportation system (Herring, 1987). Based on estimation, more bombs were dropped in this time than were dropped in all World War II (Grantham, 1998). Furthermore the bombing campaign killed indiscriminately. It was later found that 80% of all casualties were civilians. Despite killing over 1000 civilians per week, morale remained high (Herring, 1987). The people volunteered to repair the damage showing they would not give up. The North overcame the heavy bombing. They organized 90,000 civilians and dug 30,000 miles of tunnels to keep transportation flowing, additionally the predominantly agricultural economy was resistant to bombing (Herring, 1987). Operation Rolling Thunder was a costly operation. It cost the USA vast sums of money and had little impact on both the economy of North Vietnam and the morale of the