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American Involvement In Vietnam War

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o let's start with the basics, in the 1800's France had colonize and govern what was known as French Indochina, which included Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam itself. France was definitely getting the most out of Vietnam for itself, nevertheless, exploited Vietnamese workers and people grew tired of this and grew tired of this. They were in extremely poor conditions, their life was practically miserable. Until one man decided to do something about it, during WWII a Vietnamese man named Ho Chi Minh, a communist leader, founded what was known as the ‘Viet Minh Army' to fight against France. This started worrying America and it's allies, see they feared the worst, American legislators thought that the rest of Asia would become communist as well if …show more content…

At this point United Sates wasn't fully into the war, the U.S made sure to help France by providing them financial aid. In 1954, France and Vietnam signed a treaty, consequently ended up dividing Vietnam into North Communist Vietnam and Anti-Communist South Vietnam. This made matters worse actually, in way, North Vietnam was receiving money and armory from Communist countries such as the Soviet Union and China, while South Vietnam was aided with financial manners and political advisors by the United States. In the South, things were pretty complicated, uprising communist soldiers and infiltrated ones from the North, wanted the south become one with them. Things are now starting to get pretty ugly. In August 2, 1964 Vietnamese fired torpedos on an American boat patrolling on the gulf of Tonkin. President Lyndon B. Johnson got congress to pass the "Gulf of Tonkin resolution" this allowed the U.S to exercise military force in Vietnam. This was a smart move at some point, they declared war through the collective Asia treaty in order to preserve it's benefits and well being without officially declaring war to …show more content…

They just couldn't understand why United States was willing to go to war with just a small meaningless country. It is until today's date, very delicate or controversial manner to talk about for those who lived it. Anyways, by the end of 1965 there were nearly 184,000 American troops in Vietnam, and over 500,000 by the end of 1968. At first, many thought this was going to be an easy job for the U.S, it wasn't. The U.S may have had incredible air force, a powerful military force, and an effective navy force, but they actually weren't counting on the fact that Vietnam's battlefield was mainly a jungle, yes that's right. They just weren't used to it. Not to mention the Viet Cong, a bunch of communist infiltrated soldiers located in the South. They were very suicidal, they actually didn't care if they died or not, they were just focused on killing U.S. soldiers. The cruel part was when American press started showing evidence and photos of innocent Vietnamese people getting killed by American soldiers. President Johnson said he was going to stop sending troops, and refused to run for an electoral campaign due to the Vietnam manner. He was succeeded by President Richard Nixon, who at first promised to stop the Vietnam war, but he actually didn't ended up doing so until 1973. By the time the war was over about 1.2 million

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