Then there were the Viet Cong, insurgents who were aided by the North Vietnamese. Finally, there was the United States who sent troops to prevent the South Vietnamese government from collapsing. North Vietnam was run by communist Ho Chi Minh. The communists were trying to force South Vietnam into communism and anyone who disagreed was killed. People in South Vietnam were the enemy of North Vietnam because they were
1 The USA was deeply hostile towards the Soviet Union and fearing a spread of communism, adopted a policy of containment. 4 In Vietnam the target of containment was Ho Chi Minh and the Vietminh front he had created in 1941. Ho and his chief lieutenants were communists with long-standing connections to the Soviet Union. 5 Hoping to halt a takeover by the communist North Vietnamese (led by Ho Chi Minh) 6, US officials chose to support the anti-Communist prime minister of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem1,. As opposed to the other superpower, America got directly involved, sending not only financial aid1 but actively participating in the military effort.
For instance, the Cuban missile crises presented some problems for President Kennedy inside the U.S. government. Theorist say that some people inside the U.S. government and the U.S. military were pro war with the Soviet Union and felt that they missed out on an opportunity to go to war with the Soviet Union at the closing of WWII. The Former Soviet Union at that time had a lot of different views with the United States even though we were both considered allies during the war, so it is said that certain people felt that we, being the United States should have went ahead and fought them at the conclusion of WWII. The Cuban Missile crisis to some could have presented the perfect opportunity for the United States to declare war on the Former Soviet Union, some felt. It’s been said that some governmental and military figures felt that President Kennedy portrait America as being weak, by averting a war with the Soviet Union.
The Vietnam war was between North Vietnamese versus the United States and the South Vietnamese army. The United States became involved in the Vietnam war because it believed that if all the country fell under the Communist government, Communism would spread throughout Southeast Asia and beyond. This belief was known as the “domino theory” . The US therefore supported the South Vietnamese because there beliefs where non-communism. The government they set up was failing so in 1965 the United States send in troops to prevent collapse of it.
The Vietnam War is just another event or period of time in American history, or so some think. Wars affect both the people on the battlefield and the society at home. This era of the Vietnam war was no different. The war in Vietnam began in 1957 and ended in 1975. The communist government of the North wished the United States to stop their support of the South Vietnam efforts against communism.
The U.S.A. views this war as a war against communistic aggression, but in reality they viewed it as a civil war struggle. News coverage was biased against the American aggression, which did more to defeat their army than the enemy soldiers. Both sides were glad to have this conflict over and done with, but for different reasons. Vietnam was not a glorious conquest, that the American public was use to obtaining and demanded. It was an early wake-up call for Americans to resolve issues on their home front prior to taking on another country's problems,
This violence led many leaders of the SPD to flee abroad and in June its party was officially banned and the 3000 that remained were arrested and a number were killed. This ultimately portrays the brutality of the Nazis, which effectively contributed to their consolidation of power. After the Reichstag fire the police were given the powers to detain suspects indefinitely without reference to the courts. The decree ‘For the protection of the people and the state’ was used to justify the arrest, imprisonment and often torture of thousands of political opponents, and on 23 March 1933 Hitler presented the Enabling Act to an intimidated Reichstag in order to consolidate Nazi power. The Reichstag passed laws which voted itself out of existence; the communists were barred from voting.
The consequences and the lives lost in the Vietnam War classify as bad judgment by the masterminds of it. McNamara and all the others involved were clueless about Vietnam; all they thought they had to do was use their military superiority in the correct way to keep communism from spreading. The most crucial mistake McNamara made was when he had doubts about the United State’s possibilities of actually winning the war and did nothing about it. He did not want to argue to John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson that we should have withdrew from Vietnam. By doing this, more cities were destroyed, approximately 58,000 dead American causalities, and countless more Vietnamese.
In order for the world to be free, the Truman Administration suggested that Indochina no longer be communist. America getting involved into Indochina ran into its tradition of anticolonialism however, it ignored this somewhat to support France. After the French army won, America then wanted Indochina’s independence. America came up with “Operation Eggshell” in which France was urged to give Indochina independence while continuing the anticommunist war. By 1952, the National Security Council formalized the Domino Theory by describing a military attack on Indochina as being dangerous.
Many American citizens in 1959 viewed the Vietnam War as a righteous battle against communism, similar to the Iraq War today however now many view this war as a necessary battle against terrorism. Looking at America's overall goal in Vietnam, it is evident that we did not come close to keeping South Vietnam from collapsing, who fell to communist rule in 1975 (Frankum 210). America's involvement in the conflicts of Vietnam and Iraq were so discordant that our government, people, and military were constricted. Yet both wars were fought with the knowledge that America may change the invaded nation, which brings a precarious question; what makes the government believe that they have the right to go into a country and change it to the way they