Vietnam
What was going on in the American government when it came to the Vietnam War? ... What did the American Presidency hope to accomplish in getting mixed up in the Vietnam predicament? ... The civil rights movement and the Vietnam War were a small number of of the encounters of that time period. The Vietnam War was something that America shouldn’t have been caught up in and it was the only conflict that America has ever lost. America has always tried to help countries in building up and training their armies and Vietnam was no different. ... In addition, the American government did not even seem like it cared about the Americans that were fighting over in Vietnam. ... America was under the impression that there was no violence in Vietnam. On December 20,1960, the National Liberation Front or Viet Cong was established to try to overthrow Ngo Dinh Diem, an anticommunist leader of South Vietnam (Vassar/docnlf). ... In the so-called white papers of 1961 (Vassar/doc7) America felt like it should help South Vietnam because it felt like if it didn’t, it would not look good to all of its other American allies. ... President Kennedy’s advisors told him to take Americans out of Vietnam saying it was a dead end alley (Vassar/overview). ... In 1963,the National Liberation Front assassinated Ngo Dinh Diem, the South Vietnamese president, with his own generals in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) and help of America in which it was called the generals coup (Vassar/overview). ... Lyndon Johnson stated in private that Vietnam was “a little piss ant country” and did not feel that is “worth fighting for”(American century, pg 111). ... The president then had planes bomb Vietnam. The bombing missions became known as “Operation Rolling Thunder,” a bombing mission aimed at railroad yards, troop camps, and other targets in North Vietnam, which introduced combat troops in the region for the first time (American Century pg 112). ... In reading articles that Lyndon Johnson made, this could possibly be his own individual war where he personally selected where America was going to bomb Vietnam. ... In the years that followed, America was getting tired of the war we were in and Vietnam tried to force the issue and made a lot of major attacks against American troops hoping to get the American President to negotiate.