Causes Of The Vietnam War???

Question

Please Help. Im Doing A Research Paper And I Cannot Find The Causes Of The War. Please Keep It Fairly Basic. Thank You. I Will Vote You Best Answer. So Prove To Me That You Deserve It. Thanks!

Answer 1

As I recall, the Vietnam War was not because Vietnam attacked us....like Osama Bin Laden attacked us. It was not because we wanted to invade them and take over, like the Japanese invaded China.
It is because we wanted to prevent the expansion of Chinese communism in Southeast Asia. It was a period of time called the Cold War, in which the US was battling communism, which grew in power following WWII.

Answer 2

Do you mean the vietnam civil war? Because at the time, vietnam were divided into South and North, and the communists wanted to unite them - communists were from the North. But the South didn't want to unite for many reasons, and they tried to stop, which is why they gone to war, kinda like the US. Civil War

Answer 3

We were told that if we did not send troops, that the communists would over run us and destroy America.

It was actually an excuse for the Military Industrial Complex to expand the market for their wares. (I am not singling out America either. The Russians sold a lot of MiG's to the North)

We are being given a similar bill of goods now. "We're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here". The lessons of Viet Nam have been totally lost, hence your question.

IN REPLY TO ED BELOW.

The government of South Viet Nam was a corrupt military dictatorship, NOT a democracy.

The U.S. Armed Forces, and ARVN (Army of the Republic of Viet Nam) were fighting the NVA (North Vietnamese Army) and the Viet Cong (South Vietnamese rebels who had a loose alliance with the NVA).

The majority of the Vietnamese people did not care about communism, or ''democracy''. They just wanted the Americans to leave.

Atrocities like Haditha and Faluja were commonplace, the most famous was Mei Lai.

EDIT. WalterB's is by far the most informative, and accurate answer.

Answer 4

At first the U.S. sent military advisors to advise the So. Vietnames on how to fight the war bet,ween the North and South. The U.S wanted to keep the communism out of yet again another country.

Over time, especially after JFK took office, more and more troops were sent over to engage the North and the Viet Kong.

Because of bad publicity it fell out of favor with the general populace in the U.S. More and more protests started in the U.S.

However the a North Vietnames General states that if we had continued to bomb Hanoi even just two more days they would have surrendered. If we had gone on just a tiny bit harder during the Tet offensive we were winning. The No Vietnames did not win the war. The home media defeated us.

Answer 5

There have been a few answerers with partially accurate answers, although not fully accurate.

The US sent OSS (forerunner of the CIA) troops into Vietnam in 1944 to assist the Viet Minh (Nationalist Vietnamese led by the Communists, Ho Chi Minh and Giap) in the fight against the Japanese during WW-2. The OSS trained and armed the Viet Minh.

The Viet Minh declared independence on September 4, 1945 after the defeat of the Japanese. Ho Chi Minh asked the US to recognise the new Republic of Vietnam, which had been a colony of France for over 150 years. President Truman refused.

The French returned and reclaimed their colony with the support of the British troops.

The Viet Minh tried to sue for Independence through peaceful means but that did not succeed. The Viet Minh then started a military campaign to gain independence and the US gave assistance to the French with arms, and later Airforce personnel to fly supply and bombing missions for the French.

The French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, west of Hanoi in May 1954 and there was a peace conference in Geneva later that month. At that conference, known as "the 1954 Geneva Agreements" a number of things were decided.
1. The Viet Minh were to go north of the 17th parallel and the French were to go south of the 17th parallel.
2. The 17th parallel was to be a TEMPORARY military demarcation line NOT to be taken as a territorial or national or international boundary.
3. That elections were to be held throughout the whole of Vietnam prior to June 1956 to elect a new government.
4. No new arms, military advisors or troops were to be introduced into Vietnam in the intervening period.

As the negotiations were being signed the US sent CIA operatives into the north to destroy the local infrastructure -- oil depots, coal depots, railway tracks, dikes and dams etc. The CIA operatives also carried out a campaign of fear amongst the Catholics saying that the new Viet Minh government, controlled by Communists, would start persecuting the Catholics. This led to a mass exedous of Catholics from the North to the South.

The US installed a Catholic seminary student, Ngo Dien Diem into power, first as Prime Minister, then as the President of the "Republic of South Vietnam", an internationally illegal country and in violation of the 1954 Geneva Agreements. They also sent in arms, ammunition, advisers (both civilian and military), all in violation of the agreements.

Ngo Dien Diem started persecuting the Buddhist Monks (Vietnam was 85% Mahayana Buddhist) and Trade Union officials and others.

Following the non-elections in 1956 a number of people started to protest even more and Diem started an even more extensive persecution campaign.

In December 1959, just outside of Saigon, a conference took place with Buddhist monks, Trade Union officials, Nationalists, Communists and others, and the National Liberation Front of Southern Vietnam (NLF) was formed, and fighting started in mid 1960 with small ambushes of South Vietnamese (ARVN) troops. A few former Viet Minh, who were southerners, who were in the north were sent down south to assist in building up the military force of the NLF.

In 1961 JFK sent more advisers, especially counter-insurgency advisers to Vietnam and the first US soldier was "officially" killed (actually 7 others had been killed from 1957 to 1961).

In 1965 Lyndon Johnson sent the "first combat troops" into Vietnam, US Marines, which landed and set up base in Da Nang.

Shortly after the US troops were sent in into the south of Vietnam, the government in the north started to send a small contingent of "Peoples Liberation Army of Vietnam" (PLAV) [also called NVA] soldiers along with a small amount of arms etc to the south. As the US increased its military aid and the number of US troops in the country, so did the PLAV. China and Russia started sending arms into the North and a large amount of this made it down into the south along the "Ho Chi Minh Trail".

I suggest some reading -- there are several books by an American Academic in Australia, Prof. David Chandler.
'Vietnam' written by Stanley Karnow.
"Vietnam: The ten thousand day war" by Michael Maclear.
"The Pentagon Papers", a New York Times publication of Neil Sheehan.
There are many other good sources for reading, but these are excellent.

Answer 6

The Gulf of Tonkin incident 1964, North Vietnamese Navy attacked US war ship in the gulf, which led to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. Which got me drafted in 1965.

Answer 7

The USA went in when the French retreated. The French wanted to keep its colony the US wanted to keep the communists out.

Answer 8

In 1947, Harry S. Truman, the U.S President, said that the U.S.A would help any country threatened by a communist takeover. for more info go to www.ask.com

Answer 9

We went to Vietnam to aid the South Vietnamese against the communist North. We were trying to prevent the domino effect, which is the spread of communism.

something like that.

Answer 10

The communist North Vietnamese invaded the democratic South Vietnamese. The US intervened as a police action, and as a part of UN troops.