Geneva Conference: Vietnam was partitioned temporaliy into a Northern and Southern zone at the 17th parallel. The North was rued by Ho Chi Minh while the South was under the Emperor Bao Dai. Dinh Diem was a French educated Catholic who discriminated against Bhudists. He was also an elected leader and became hated by just about everyone.
The Geneva Conference of 1954 was set up elections to Unify the country. On December 11, 1961, The United Staes sent 900 military advisors to give support to the troops. At the tme, this rebellion was mostly inspired by the North. The definition of an "enemy" would prove to be fateful for US soldiers ordered to make life and death choices on ground.
The United States and the Army of the Republic of Viet Nam fought as allies. And the viet cong was to the north. US. Involvement increased every year. It started with advisors and worked its way up to commando troops. President Lyndon Johnson was a big criti of the US involvment of the war. He ultimately said however, that if we did not go over there, we would be unable to stop communism from spreading and taking not only Vietnam, but more and more countries.
The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was when congress gave the president permission to fight overseas without declaring it official war. AFter about 100 days they declared war. The Vietnam war was very unpopular, but it did not reach its peak of unpopularity until 1968. Johnson and General Williams kept telling people that we were winning the war and taht we just need more and more troops. The Tet Offensive was a major offensive by the viet cong against every city in the country of vietnam. This was exactly what we wanted them to do. It turned out to be one of the biggest victories for the US. We demolished them militarily.
The newspapers however saw this as a great opportunity to rally against the war and criticize it. They reasoned that if we had nearly won, the viet cong would not have launched a major offensive. From that point on, the war became very very unpopular. Peple felt that the government was lying to the common people. Support suffered. We were never given the go ahead to invade North Vietnam because there was China to the North who would fight us as well. It was a limited war in which there was never quite a definitive way to get the north to surrender.
The Napalm attacks were devastating weapons that swayed public opinion. There were also photographs by journalists of atrocities of South vietnameze military, government, and police. People did many things to get out of fighting the war. They would leave the country, go to college, they got married, got deemed medically unfit for service, they joined the National Guard or Peace Corps, claimed to be homosexual, the list goes on. Nixon promised to end the war which he called Vietnimization which means taht the war is for vietnam and not for us to worry about. After we pulled out, South Vietnam fell to communism in about a year. They are still one of the five communist countries left in the world.
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