The Origins Of The Vietnam War Essay — страница 2

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then started to concentrate on the communist element of North Vietnam and persuaded the USA to increase the support they were already helping with. The USA using the Domino theory to excuse them started to pour aid and “military advisors” into Vietnam and by 1953, 70 percent of the war was being paid for by the USA. In 1953 General Navarre decided to try and defeat the Vietminh in one huge battle. With 12,000 French troops, two airstrips and what they thought was vastly superior firepower the French were over confident. Their enemy was renowned for guerrilla fighting, not for large-scale open battles, but despite this the Vietminh under the command of General Giap forced through the French strong points and claimed victory. This victory allowed the Vietminh to call peace

talks and in April 1954, it was decided to split the country into two along the seventeenth parallel and among other things there should be a general election held before July 1956. North of the border the country was ruled by a corrupt government. Diem was a French educated Roman Catholic and a strong anti-communist. He practiced nepotism and under his rule 50 percent of the land was owned by only 2 percent of the population (mainly the Roman Catholics). This was understandably very unpopular among the peasants. The Americans decided to ignore this, and instead chose to concentrate on his anti-communist regime and so supplied him with “advisors”, training and helicopter gun ships. Ho Chi Minh was annoyed by the fact that the Americans refused the general election they had

promised and so in response he set up the Communist supported NFL (National Liberation Front), or to the Americans the Vietcong. The peasants realising that their situation was not at all to their benefit started to support the Vietcong. Missions to take out American officials were started and in retaliation the Americans poured more aid into the South Vietnamese army and government and sent in more advisors. When Kennedy was assassinated there were 16,000 US advisors in Vietnam. But just before his death he had agreed to withdraw 1,000 troops, but had not publicly announced this. Linden Johnson took his place, he was a very firm believer of the Domino theory and had a complete hatred of communism. In 1964 there was a choice to be made, the communists were about to win this war

so either America would withdraw from Vietnam, going against their anti-communist ideas or escalate it. Johnson took the latter and under the cover of the Gulf of Tulkin Incident, within one year the amount of troops was escalated to 60,000 from the original 16,000. The Gulf of Tulkin involved two American destroyers, and a supposed unprovoked attack. The truth was that the destroyers were aiding a South Vietnamese attack on North Vietnam. As well as their presence and intentions being questionable the attack was also in question. The submarines were probably nothing more than freak weather conditions. Never the less Johnson used this to persuade Congress to go to war. Without a proper discussion they “Americanised” North Vietnam, the advisors became combat troops and

officially America went to war.