Road+to+Vietnam

The Road to War in Vietnam

Matthew Gogan In the early 1930’s Ho Chi Minh leads communist revolts in Vietnam and ten years later it would be taken over by the Japanese in WWII. After the war, the French return to Vietnam, claiming that it is theirs. Ho Chi Minh forms the Vietminh party to liberate Vietnam from France and their Declaration of Independence is signed in 1945.

Under Truman, the United States helped finance France to help them keep their colonies, hoping that democratic France would keep communism from spreading in Asia. A lot of the interest in keeping Asian countries democratic was because of China becoming a communist nation. In 1954, the Vietnamese successfully defeat the French in northern Vietnam and establish a communist government. Vietnam becomes split between the USSR favoring north and the U.S. favoring south. The Geneva Accords split Vietnam at 17 north and free elections would be held to “unite the nation”. Eisenhower believed in the domino effect of communism spreading; if one country became communist, nearby countries would too. Communist Ho Chi Minh was expected to win the election, so the election did not happen. Instead, Ngo Dinh Diem became the leader of South Vietnam, but he was not very popular. President Kennedy supported an overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963, and during the overthrow, Ngo was assassinated. Soon after, Kennedy was assassinated, but not before he sent 16,000 military advisors.

. At the beginning of Johnson’s term as President, he does not support the war. He went so far to say “We are not about to send American boys 10,000 miles away to do what Asian boys ought to do for themselves.”

In 1964 in internation al waters off the coast of the Gulf of Tonkin, a U.S. destroyer was fired on by several North Vietnam boats. As a result, legislation almost unanimously passes through congress that the President can “Take all necessary measures” to protect American forces and “prevent further aggression”. This was like a blank check allowing the President to declare war whenever. He said that “We seek no wider war” but he starts Operation Rolling Thunder, in which we would bomb Northern Vietnam using more bombs than were used on Germany during WWII. .

In 1965, Johnson had sent in 35,000 marines to join the 20,000 advisors. By 1969, Johnson had half a million troops stationed in Vietnam.