Do you think think that the United States should have gotten involved in the Vietnam War?

Question

In your answer, be sure to cite specific historical information to support your points.

Answer 1

no

Answer 2

Kennedy was pulling our advisors out of Vietnam. We had no troops there then. There were only officers and senior enlisted men who were advising the SVN army (ARVN).
The Kennedys made a mistake in bringing in Johnson as VP, who was a Texan.
Texas viewed communist expansion as more of a threat than the northeasterners, given that they have a long border with Mexico, and Cuba was a bastion of Soviet Communism.
What Texas was concerned about was the fall of Latin America, bringing Communism to their doorstep.
Johnson ducked down some 20 seconds before the shots were fired in Dealey Plaza ("The Lady In Red" - book).
One of the first things Johnson did was turn around the planes, which were taking our advisors back to the U.S.
Then the war began.
We didn't "get involved" in the Vietnam war.
We created it.
I was there.
So, the answer is no.
The budget was balanced in the Kennedy era.
After that, we became a debtor nation.
During Kennedy's time, our money said "silver certificate" and was backed by bullion.
After the assassination, the money said Federal Reserve Note.
Contrary to popular belief, the Federal Reserve Bank is not owned by the United States, but is only licensed.
Bell Helicopter was just a small company before the war.
It became known as The Helicopter War, and Johnson's War.
Yes. No.

Answer 3

The US, like most of the Western World was paranoid about Communism. The real danger, as always was totalitarianism. Communism doesn't necessarily entail that, although it does seem to have turned that way every time it's tried - because it has the qualities of a religion. The exception was Vietnam, which had a long tradition of a kind of informal communism in the village organisations even under French colonisation. But in Vietnam, as often is the case, it was the organised ideological communists who led the expulsion of the French, as a freedom movement. Perhaps if the US had offered something like the Marshall Plan to the emerging colonised nations in Asia eetc, it might have avoided the Vietnam war, and turned Vietnamese communism into something less totalitarian. But war to avoid totalitarianism did seem reasonable initially. The mistake the US made was under-estimating the power of guerillas, fighting on their own dirt. It should have been apparent from long history (including ancient Britain!) the US couldn't win that fight. Iraq by the way is different - devolving into a de-facto civil war with multiple components - but it won't be solved by external intervention, either.

Answer 4

The Vietnam war was interesting from a historical standpoint because just like Afghanistan we got into something that someone else had already given us a perfect preview of the outcome. We went into Vietnam after seeing the French, who at that time had a long service experienced force get the hell kicked out of them. All of the lessions were spelled out in Falls book Street Without Joy. The US refused to learn from the folly of others.
In Afghanistan we will see a rerun of the Soviet experience. Those people, in that terrain will not stay under control. The US/UN forces will slink out of their with their tails between their legs.
We are to a certain extent breaking ground in Iraq. You have to go back to the fall of the British empire to find an attempt to hold on to an aroused Muslim nation. The French experience in Algiers was close but not quite the same.

Answer 5

In the end I don't think the United States was justified in their involvement in Vietnam. To understand why they should't have been there you need to understand why there were there.

First, George F. Kennan's Long Telegram. I won't go into too much detail, but it was basically a telegram to the Whitehouse that gave what Kennan believed to be the long term aspirations of the USSR/International Communism in general. What the telegram said was that once a couple more nations became communist, other states would fall in a "domino effect". The Whitehouse responded with alarm, and seeing the beginnings of South East Asian communism and apply the "domino effect", formed the South East Asian Treaty Organization - SEATO.

When Ho Chi Minh (who had spend considerable time as a Parisian waiter - he was not merely a backwoods Vietnamese) began his assault on S. Vietnam the US out of respect for SEATO (and a fear of spreading communism) sent military advisors. By 1966 there was a sizeable US combat force in Vietnam. In 1968 with the Tet Offensive US forces were fully involved.

Now, in the 21st century, decades after the fall of Saigon, we know that communism didn't spread very much in South East Asia. Sure, we have N. Korea and Vietnam still, but otherwise communism didn't follow the domino effect.

Don't condemn the Americans for going into the Vietnam War. They did not know, like we know, that communism would fail. But, in retrospect, that was a lot of lives lost for nothing.

Answer 6

At the time of the US involvement, the fear of communism spreading lead into the US actions. Just like Iraq is now, the public is lead into a fear pattern and the patriotism drum beats.
The French could not control North Vietnam's aggressions and we got involved with Eisenhower still in office and Kennedy's mishap in the Bay of Pigs incident. Our hands were tied with selective bombings and non aggressive attacks against North Vietnam itself until Nixon. If we are not united and agree before hand to stick it out and treat a war as just that and not just skirmishes, then we should not go into anyplace in depth.

Answer 7

No, and the historical information I cite to support my point is that I visited the National Vietnam memorial wall in Washington DC, and I saw the tens of thousands of names of soldiers who died there.

Answer 8

No. Other people explain it better that I can. If you want to read something short and interesting try the Vietnam chapter in Barbara Tuchman's book The March of Folly.

Answer 9

David R, you know notthing about Vietnamese when saying the North Vietnamese going to kill every last South Vietnamese. We are Vietnamese anyway, no matter what they are North or South people. How if you were living in the North of the US and your family lived in the South of US, one day, a war would happened between North and South US. Would you go South just in order to kill your family there?
how irgnorance and shallow mind you are!

Answer 10

In your question, you should cite specific historical information to ask about.
I'm not writing your paper, you are.
What do you want to know about Viet Nam?
Dave

Answer 11

I will say yes because if the Noth Vietnameese had won then they would have killed every last South Vietmaneese. And for people to say everything about how we lost so much men concider this. Hannibal in battle killed 54,000 Romans and lost about 4,000 men in ONE DAY!!!!! The Americans in Vietnam lost 48,000. The Romans still wanted to fight and not surrender. But hippies wanted us to give up because of their cowardness