November 1st 1955-April 30 1975
The United States entered the war under the view that American involvement was necessary to prevent communism to take over Southern Vietnam. The United States had a domino theory where they believed if one state turned communist, then the states around it would follow. The U.S. policy ruled that communism in all of Vietnam was unacceptable. The war costed vast amounts of money for the U.S. and was very unpopular at home. The war was drawn out and the Viet Cong’s guerrilla warfare made it hard for American troops to gain a foothold in North Vietnam. The communists launched a counterattack called the Tet Offensive that was aimed to overthrow the South Vietnam government. They failed but it was a turning point in where the U.S. people realized that they where losing the war and the government had been deceiving them. This led to gradual withdrawal of the troops while trying to remove American involvement in Vietnam. Under President Nixon in the early 1970s the U.S. transferred the task of fighting communism in Vietnam to South Vietnam.
This war was the longest war in American history. We were involved in some way for close to 20 years. There was a lot of anti-war movement on the home front for this war because many people where against it. I feel that the U.S. should have withdrawn its troops a lot earlier due to the anti-war protests throughout the nation. Although I understand the containment of communism, it is also important that the government listen to the people at home. The war wasted a lot of money and did not accomplish as much as they had hoped. I also do not understand how South Vietnam were to deal with the situation themselves after the U.S. withdrew their troops. The U.S. was a stronger nation than South Vietnam and still could not defeat the North, how did the U.S. expect the South to do it without their support.
http://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/vietnam-war-history
![Battle of Hamo Village During the Tet Offensiv... Battle of Hamo Village During the Tet Offensiv...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cc/Tet1968.jpg/350px-Tet1968.jpg)
Andrew Powers • Feb 6, 2015 at 8:16 pm
We could have won Vietnam we just didn’t because we were afraid. afraid of creating a martyr out of North Vietnam that would encourage communists world round. afraid of the number of deaths it might take. and afraid of war with china. You cant fight a war with these fears. you have to weigh the possibilities against what you hope to achieve and either commit or back off. what America did was try to fight a half war. if we wanted to win this is what we would have to do, draft to raise the military to 6-7 million men, deploy 2-3 million in the war, invade northern Vietnam preventing them from supplying the viet cong while still supporting the south against the vietcong, if china wants to fight we can take them we’ll carpet bomb Beijing Nanjing Shanghai and Guangzhou and dozens of other cities. If you truly believe in a cause then no amount of causalities should keep you from winning. The North and the Vietcong knew this that (along with a few stratigic reasons) is why they won…..
Now just to be clear I disagree with us getting involved at all and by no means actually beleive we should have done the things i wrote above.
EMV • Feb 6, 2015 at 2:12 pm
United State’s ideology on containment and their thought process of apparent heroism has always been to contain or destroy evil, or so they say so. Yes the war with Vietnam was unnecessary and brutal, it outraged people all around the world specially Americans themselves and it made the government to pull back the soldiers. But that was never the end of it, their involvement in the middle east has ruined entire countries futures destroyed many lives and for what? Oil?
WolfgangPow • Feb 6, 2015 at 1:20 pm
I dont want to be a hater but we (the U.S.) never even tried to send ground forces into North Vietnam.
also in my opinion communism would be a vast improvement over the cruel and corrupt government of south Vietnam. We should have forced the south to participate in the elections that were demanded by the Geneva Conference (1954) and by the people of north and south vietnam. if we had done this Vietnam could have been united as one communist country without anybody dying.
Jacob Duncan • Feb 6, 2015 at 8:44 am
The war in Vietnam was wrong to begin with. We lost almost 18,000 young men who were drafted against their will to fight in a country that had nothing to do with them. While the U.S. government said it was to prevent the spread of communism, it was inevitable. The U.S. ended up losing thousands of American and Vietnamese lives, costing hundreds of thousands dollars, and destroying land that wasn’t ours.
oceanmtnsky • Feb 4, 2015 at 5:21 pm
I know what seb meant to say in his comment was stopping the spread of com
munism…like Eisenhowrs dominos theory…. the Domino of Vietnam was falling and we couldn’t stop it.
NewsmanJim • Feb 4, 2015 at 1:24 pm
I agree that the United States should have pulled out of Vietnam earlier. From the beginning, the Vietnam War was going to end like Korea, except that North Vietnam took over South Vietnam. The war was a waste of time and effort regarding supplies and casualties. Many civilians were killed under the suspicion that they were VietCong.
SEb_dELGADO • Feb 4, 2015 at 11:48 am
I strongly agree that the United States should have definitely backed off of the war, at the first sight of not accomplishing they’re goal of the spread of communist in Vietnam