Vietnam-Path+to+War

American involvement dates back to World War II when the United States wanted to end the Japenese Occupation of southeast Asia includung Vietnam. From late 1800s to World War II, France ruled Vietnam. France increased its wealth by exporting rice and rubber from Vietnam, but the Vietnamese lost their land and became poor. Many Vietnamese groups started revolts against the French because they wanted Vietnam to become its own independent nation. In 1949, Communists gained control of China and it started to make American leaders worry about the spread of Communism in Asia. A revolutionary leader named Ho Chi Minh united three communist groups and formed the Indochinese Communist Party. They organized protests by peasants against the French government. Ho Chi Minh and the Communists controlled North Vietnam. Anti-Communist, Ngo Dinh Diem, became president of South Vietnam. Thousands of anti-Communists from the North fled to the South. Kennedy sent 400 military advisors to South Vietnam to teach them how to fight the Viet Cong. There were problems in South Vietnam, however, because their were religious arguements. Ngo Dinh Diem's Buddhist opposers started putting themselves on fire to oppose his iron-handed rule. The U.S. started backing a military branch to overthrow Ngo Dinh Diem because they didnt think he could win them a war. Soon the military branch assassinated Ngo Dinh Diem. This was not part of the U.S.'s plan. Soon President Kennedy was also assassinated. Lyndon B. Johnson became the president. He believed in the "domino effect". After the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem, South Vietnam was not a very good place to live. Soon, North Vietnam controlled a lot of South Vietnam. In 1964, the President's military advisors made plans to bomb North Vietnam. This was supposed to pressure Ho Chi Minh into stopping his support of the Viet Cong. A U.S. destroyer was in the Gulf of Tonkin when it was fired on by torpedo boats. Their was another report of an attack but no one could positively identify it as actually happening. President Johnson asked Congress to pass the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which would give him power to use military assets in Vietnam. He started bombing North Vietnam in 1965. At the end of 1968 there were more than 536,000 Americans fighting in South Vietnam.



Ngo Dinh Diem meeting with President Eisenhower