I think that the Vietnam War was justified as the Americans were trying tohelp Vietnam becoming communist country and they though that communism wasa bad thing not realizing that the Vietnamese had it rough to start with.
It was just some of the thing that the Americans did that mad the warunjustified. The war never just started the US just bleed more supplies in to the Frenchthen some CIA to do some work then by 1961 he sent some Green Berets in andby August 1964, he secured from Congress a functional (not actual)declaration of war: the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. Then, in February and March1965, Johnson authorized the sustained bombing, by U. S.
aircraft, oftargets north of the 17th parallel, and on 8 March dispatched 3,500 Marinesto South Vietnam. Legal declaration or not, the United States was now atwar. The multiple starting dates for the war complicate efforts to describe thecauses of U. S. entry. The United States became involved in the war for anumber of reasons, and these evolved and shifted over time.
Primarily,every American president regarded the enemy in Vietnam–the Vietminh; its1960s successor, the National Liberation Front (NLF); and the government ofNorth Vietnam, led by Ho Chi Min as agents of global communism. U. S. policymakers, and most Americans, regarded communism as the antithesis ofall they held dear. Communists scorned democracy, violated human rights,pursued military aggression, and created closed state economies that barelytraded with capitalist countries.
Americans compared communism to acontagious disease. If it took hold in one nation, U. S. policymakersexpected contiguous nations to fall to communism, too, as if nations weredominoes lined up on end.
In 1949, when the Communist Party came to powerin China, Washington feared that Vietnam would become the next Asiandomino. That was one reason for Truman’s 1950 decision to give aid to theFrench who were fighting the Vietminh. Truman also hoped that assisting the French in Vietnam would help to shoreup the developed, non-Communist nations, whose fates were in surprisingways tied to the preservation of Vietnam and, given the domino theory, allof Southeast Asia. Free world dominion over the region would providemarkets for Japan, rebuilding with American help after the Pacific War.
U. S. involvement in Vietnam reassured the British, who linked their postwar recovery to the revival of the rubber and tin industries in theircolony of Malaya, one of Vietnam’s neighbours. And with U. S. aid, theFrench could concentrate on economic recovery at home, and could hopeultimately to recall their Indochina officer corps to oversee therearmament of West Germany, a Cold War measure deemed essential by theAmericans.
These ambitions formed a second set of reasons why the UnitedStates became involved in Vietnam. As presidents committed the United States to conflict bit by bit, many ofthese ambitions were forgotten. Instead, inertia developed againstwithdrawing from Vietnam. Washington believed that U. S. withdrawal wouldresult in a Communist victory–Eisenhower acknowledged that, had electionsbeen held as scheduled in Vietnam in 1956, “Ho Chi Minh would have won 80%of the vote”–and no U.
S. president wanted to lose a country to communism. Democrats in particular, like Kennedy and Johnson, feared a right-wingbacklash should they give up the fight; they remembered vividly theaccusatory tone of the Republicans’ 1950 question, “Who lost China?” Thecommitment to Vietnam itself, passed from administration to administration,took on validity aside from any rational basis it might once have had. Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy all gave their word that the United Stateswould stand by its South Vietnamese allies. If the United States abandonedthe South Vietnamese, its word would be regarded as unreliable by othergovernments, friendly or not.
So U. S. credibility seemed at stake. Along with the larger structural and ideological causes of the war inVietnam, the experience, personality, and temperament of each presidentplayed a role in deepening the U. S.
commitment. Dwight Eisenhowerrestrained U. S. involvement because, having commanded troops in battle, hedoubted the United States could fight a land war in Southeast Asia. Theyouthful John Kennedy, on the other hand, felt he had to prove his resolveto the American people and his Communist adversaries, especially in theaftermath of several foreign policy blunders early in his administration. Lyndon Johnson saw the Vietnam War as a test of his mettle, as a Southernerand as a man.
He exhorted his soldiers to “nail the coonskin to the wall”in Vietnam, likening victory to a successful hunting expedition. When Johnson began bombing North Vietnam and sent the Marines to SouthVietnam in early 1965, he had every intention of fighting a limited war. Heand his advisers worried that too lavish a use of U. S. firepower mightprompt the Chinese to enter the conflict.
It was not expected that theNorth Vietnamese and the NLF would hold out long against the Americanmilitary. And yet U. S. policymakers never managed to fit military strategyto U.
S. goals in Vietnam. Massive bombing had little effect against adecentralized economy like North Vietnam’s. The Vietnam War was just as justified as the First World War; they didn’thave to do anything about it, but they did. People thought that war was aromantic and heroic thing to be involved in.
It wasn’t until TV brought thewar into the lounge rooms of the Families that they started to see howhorrible war is.
