During 1957 and 1965 they have some problems with the government and North Vietnam send their troops to fight against the government. After this the war started. The North Vietnam has the support of other communist countries for example the USSR and the South Vietnam have the support of the US, this because the US was anti-communist. The US sent equipment and troops to South Vietnam, because they were going to help them win this war against the communism. When the war started many American people was against it and want this to end son as possible.
At the same time they tried to create a strong non-communist South Vietnam under the leadership of Diem. By the late 1950s, the communist rebels in South Vietnam declared a revolutionary struggle against Diem, so as to reunify Vietnam under communist rule. In turn, by the 1960s the USA became more and more alarmed at this prospect, leading to further intervention in Vietnam to stop this. When Kennedy was inaugurated he inherited many crises around the globe, the most pertinent was the loss of Cuba. After the well known Bay of Pigs fiasco, he felt he was advised that he needed a foreign policy success.
After that, nation after nation might fall to Communism. Communism is a political and economic system that the United States strongly opposed. Vietnam had been split in half in 1954, after fighting a war to gain independence from France. When French forces withdrew the US felt they needed to take matters into their own hands but the Vietnamese Communists gained control of North Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh was the leader of the North Vietnamese Communists.
The people of Vietnam were not happy about being flung from one countries rule to another. As a result of this Ho Chi Minh, a communist freedom fighter set up his own political party called the Vietminh, he also set up an army to go with this party called the Vietcong in order to fight for his countries freedom. The United States first got involved with Vietnam by giving money, support and aid to Ho Chi Minh to train his army, the Vietcong via OSS (organisation of strategic services) because Ho Chi Minh was a freedom fighter and the people of America are very much into freedom and things such as the American dream. However this support and help from America ended in 1945 after Stalin had Liberated Europe. At the end of World War 2 Stalin and his army had driven the Nazis out of many countries in Eastern Europe but he told his armies to stay in these countries and set up communist governments.
Jozeph Kaddissi EN 102 Composition 2 (1:15-2:30) 21 February 2011 Vietnam War: The Fight against Social Injustice The war in Vietnam occurred at a period when the United States perceived communism as a serious threat to democracy, capitalism, American peace of society, and the civilized world. During this period, the USSR and the United States were deeply engrossed in the cold war. The war in Vietnam is only one among the many proxy wars between the communist countries led by the USSR and the capitalistic countries led by the United States. The communist North Vietnam had embarked on a war campaign against the south. Motivated by the need to deter the spread of communist ideology, America felt obligated to intervene to preserve the sovereignty of South Vietnam and possibly to end any further communist incursions in the north.
It was put in place to allow the French to leave peacefully under a cease fire. The Vietnam War became a long battle between two nationalist groups the North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese. The North Vietnamese wanted Vietnam to have a communist government. The South Vietnamese wanted to elect someone to run the country. This caused the nation to divide into two different nationalist groups.
The documentary, Fog of War, allows some insight into the choices and decisions that were faced by former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. I believe McNamara’s worldview has and continues to persist that America has a duty to act on behalf of the world community and that stability between and within nations is paramount to national security. It is this worldview that was the basis for his strategy throughout the Cold War. Previous administrations had committed the US to assisting Vietnam, but during Kennedy’s years Vietnam fell into further conflict after the coup in 1963. McNamara’s advice to withdraw military personnel prior the coup was no longer an option as instability in Vietnam posed a threat to national security.
In the 1960’s protest, activism and social change started to take over America. Waldo Emerson had part in the art moment and had social and political protests during the great depression. America was deeply involved with waging a neo-colonial war of imperialism. The French colonists had finally withdrawn from Vietnam after centuries that they occupied it. The Anti-Vietnam war moment in the untied states prove that there were people who cared about peace not war, with protesting, sit ins, and the communication to boycott drafting of soldiers so they wouldn’t go to war.
As well as this the fighting itself was filmed and broadcasted in North Vietnam to show that they had successfully attacked and breached the American defences. The information was then relayed back to the United States and shown, through the media and press, to the public. At this time Americans believed that the war was coming to an end and that they had almost total control over Vietnam. This was obviously not the case - as they soon found out. The images that were broadcasted all over America did not please the public and before long riots and protests were being held in the streets to end the war.
But United States leaders had other concerns. No sooner had World War II ended, then a "Cold War," between the forces of democracy and communism began (Schomp The Vietnam War 5). Long years of fighting had devastated the democratic nations of Western Europe, which left the communist Soviet Union as the dominant power in Europe and Asia (Schomp The Vietnam War 5). The Soviet Union had already over run most of Eastern Europe; now they seemed determined to spread communism all around the globe (Schomp The Vietnam War 5). To help counter that threat Truman started secretly sending money as well as supplies to help back the French forces against Ho Chi Minh's forces (Schomp The Vietnam War 5).