What Is The Vietnam War Essay

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The Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was by far the most violent and traumatic of America’s three wars in Asia in the fifty years since Pearl Harbor. In August of 1964 two U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin were attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats. President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered the bombing of military targets in North Vietnam as retaliation. By February 1965 the United States had begun regular bombings of North Vietnam (History.com). The war did nothing but cause problems for the soldiers fighting, start protests, and caused our government to set up Vietnamization to try to end our involvement in the Vietnam War.

In the 1960’s this country had a draft that they used to get people into the military. All men between the ages of
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The plan was to build up South Vietnam’s military strength in order to gradually withdrawal of United States troops and would prepare the South Vietnamese to take responsibility for their own defense against a takeover and allow the United States to leave the conflict with honor. Nixon gradually reduced the number of troops in several stages. They went from 549,000 in 1969 to 69,000 in 1972. However, during this same time, North Vietnam launched several attacks that proved the poor performance of the South Vietnamese army and its heavy reliance on U.S. air power to repel the attacks. In January 1973, the Nixon administration came to a peace agreement with North Vietnam. The terms were that the U.S. agreed to withdraw its remaining troops within 60 days, and the Vietnamese immediately stopped gunfire, returned the American prisoners of war, and North Vietnam’s promise to keep peace with South Vietnam and settle any disagreement with them through international commission. United States had fully pulled all of its troops out of Vietnam by 1974. However, South Vietnam fell to the communist forces in 1975 destroying any progress they had made

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