Why Was The Vietnam War Justified

The United States saw any communist country as a direct threat even, though Vietnam had no political tension with the US. The invasion of Vietnam was purely about making the US seem more powerful but was disguised as an attack on the spread of communism. Before the US became involved in Vietnam, the country was mainly ruled by the French, but after a few riots the French were forced out.. The French had to leave because the Vietnamese people did not want another country running them so it didn 't help when the U.S. went over and tried to fight against them (Anderson). In 1945 a man named Ho Chi Minh was a political leader who was running in the election in Vietnam and was predicted to win by a landslide. His political views threatened United …show more content…
The total costs of the Vietnam war were so extensive that the costs alone are enough to show the Vietnam war was not justified. All of the money was spent on war that was not necessary. In fact the only wars more expensive were world war two and the Iraq war.. In the end it was all wasted because Vietnam fell to communism shortly after the US pulled its last troops out (Tucker). Money isn’t the only thing the US lost during the war, they also lost many soldiers. The number of Vietnam War-related American deaths totaled to 90,220. The Vietnam war has one of the highest number of total war-related deaths the US has ever had (Tucker). Many families and lives were changed because all of these soldiers, mostly young men, were pulled into a war they couldn 't win in the first place. For example, in The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien talks about his life before the war when he says “I’d come to this war a quiet, thoughtful sort of person, a college grad, Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude, all the credentials, but after seven months in the bush I realized that those high, civilized trappings had somehow been crushed under the weight of the simple daily realities. I’d turned mean inside” (O’Brien). Before the war Tim had it all. He had amazing achievements in college and in high school but ever since he received his draft notice nothing was the same. He lost it all. He went over to …show more content…
This is the main point the US had for being involved in Vietnam but even though they went over to help, it was ineffective. Nixon decided to pull most of the United States 's troops out of Vietnam but agreed to train their soldiers to fight. After the US let south Vietnam be independent, it fell in less than two years, so even though our goal was to stop the spread of communism, in the end the United States failed (Anderson). The US tried everything they could but South Vietnam did not want the help. They thought they could defend themselves but in the end in less than two years the were overrun by the Vietcong, and Vietnam became communist