In South Vietnam, President Ngo Dinh Diem attempted to consolidate his power through brutal repression of communists, Buddhists and opposition groups. After the Second World War, the US and the Soviet Union emerged as rival superpowers, their opposing ideologies competing for domination on the world stage.
The US saw itself as the guardian of Western democracy, capitalism and freedom, a bastion against the spread of godless, tyrannical communism. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. As the opposing communist and pro-Western factions emerged in Vietnam in the s, the country became a battleground for an ideological proxy war that eventually escalated into a deadly multinational conflict. In , the increasingly unpopular Diem was assassinated by a group of army officers.
In , the Johnson administration approved air strikes on North Vietnam, using a now-disputed attack on two US destroyers as a pretext. He chose the former. The aim was to prevent Communist domination of South-East Asia. In , President John F. Kennedy, convinced that Communist China was actively supporting North Vietnam, approved a US military campaign in Vietnam to help the nationalist government stave off the Communist rebellion.
His successor, President Dwight D. Eisenhower , put forth the Domino Theory that a communist victory in Vietnam would create a domino effect in Southeast Asia… and therefore must be prevented at all costs. His strong anti-communist stance was popular with the Americans who helped him rise to power. In May , eight Buddhist protestors were killed by government officials in Hue. President John F. Kennedy would be assassinated less than three weeks later.
The coup was followed by a chaotic succession of 12 different governments in South Vietnam between and Both sides wanted the same thing: a unified Vietnam. But while Ho and his supporters wanted a nation modeled after other communist countries, Bao and many others wanted a Vietnam with close economic and cultural ties to the West. The Vietnam War and active U. The French loss at the battle ended almost a century of French colonial rule in Indochina. The subsequent treaty signed in July at a Geneva conference split Vietnam along the latitude known as the 17th Parallel 17 degrees north latitude , with Ho in control in the North and Bao in the South.
The treaty also called for nationwide elections for reunification to be held in Eisenhower had pledged his firm support to Diem and South Vietnam.
Though the NLF claimed to be autonomous and that most of its members were not communists, many in Washington assumed it was a puppet of Hanoi. A team sent by President John F. Kennedy in to report on conditions in South Vietnam advised a build-up of American military, economic and technical aid in order to help Diem confront the Viet Cong threat.
By , the U. A coup by some of his own generals succeeded in toppling and killing Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, in November , three weeks before Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Congress soon passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution , which gave Johnson broad war-making powers, and U. The bombing campaign was meant to disrupt the flow of supplies across the Ho Chi Minh trail into Vietnam and to prevent the rise of the Pathet Lao, or Lao communist forces. The U.
In March , Johnson made the decision—with solid support from the American public—to send U. By June, 82, combat troops were stationed in Vietnam, and military leaders were calling for , more by the end of to shore up the struggling South Vietnamese army. Despite the concerns of some of his advisers about this escalation, and about the entire war effort amid a growing anti-war movement , Johnson authorized the immediate dispatch of , troops at the end of July and another , in In contrast to the air attacks on North Vietnam, the U.
Westmoreland pursued a policy of attrition, aiming to kill as many enemy troops as possible rather than trying to secure territory. Heavy bombing by B aircraft or shelling made these zones uninhabitable, as refugees poured into camps in designated safe areas near Saigon and other cities.
Even as the enemy body count at times exaggerated by U. Additionally, supported by aid from China and the Soviet Union, North Vietnam strengthened its air defenses. By November , the number of American troops in Vietnam was approaching ,, and U.
The later years of the war saw increased physical and psychological deterioration among American soldiers—both volunteers and draftees—including drug use , post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD , mutinies and attacks by soldiers against officers and noncommissioned officers.
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