History Of Vietnam Essay Research Paper History

The United States refused to sign the Accords, however, because Eisenhower felt that the free elections would be useless since Northern Vietnam was plagued by Communism, which made up over half the voters. The President’s Secretary of State, Dulles, however, created S.E.A.T.O., which stands for Southeast Asia Treaty Organization. This was an attempt to stop communistic aggression in the free states of Southern Asia.

In accordance to the provisioned Accords, Minh withdrew 100,000 of his soldiers. He only abided by these guidelines because was so sure that he could win the upcoming election and he didn’t want the western countries to cancel the agreements if rules were broken. Ngo Dinh Diem, a premier of South Vietnam who was to join the race for President of South Vietnam, was avidly supported by the United States because of his Democratic beliefs, would only grow sour and corrupt because of his disbelief of winning the upcoming election. Instead of abiding by the Accords, Diem felt he had nothing to lose so he abused what power he had and imprisoned his own people to strike fear in them so that he might rise as dictator. The United States then realized that they had created a monster so they withdrew funds towards his campaign. But little to their surprise, Diem won the election with 94 % of South Vietnam’s votes. Diem also had his ties broken with S.E.A.T.O. because he broke the regulations of the Accords. If Diem was as Democratic as he and the United States believed, then why did he alienate himself from his own supporters with concentration camps; and why did he try to break ties with his democratic supporters? It makes me nautious that we, as Americans, could lose 44,475 of our own people for this so-called democrat who wanted nothing to do with usto begin with. Americans should be ashamed that we defended a ruler who was hated by the free democratic nations who sided with the communists on attempts to overthrow that corrupt regime. The NLF (National Liberation Front) was these such people who despised Diem and tried to use whatever political power they had to overthrow this soon to be tyrant.

President Kennedy, like many Presidents who followed him, believed that in order to protect democracy, communism would have to be put to a definitive end. Even though Kennedy took a firm stand against Communism, he highly opposed the war in Vietnam. After 1,500 CIA trained Cubans lost their life after a failed raid on Cuba (known as the Bay of Pigs) to stop Fidel Castro and his reign of Communism, Kennedy completely opposed losing American lives for the purpose of ending Communism. Kennedy was assassinated before he could even begin peace talks in 1963. His successor was Lyndon Johnson, who was a firm believer in Kennedy’s foreign policy. He aimed at getting our boys out of Vietnam but still give financial aid to the South Vietnamese. Johnson, however, was in a constant mind set that if he lightened up too much in Vietnam, then it would look like the Americans had given up against the Communists. Thus, a certain loss of the next presidential election would be inevitable. Then it was August 4, 1964, that Johnson would pass the Gulf Tonkin Resolution, ordering the military to use whatever U.S. resources to end the war. This was passed because two U.S. destroyers were allegedly put under attack by Vietnamese torpedoes. There is speculation that these torpedoes were never actually confirmed and that there was possible sonar error in the reading of these torpedoes. This means that our government continued a meaningless war due to possible pentagon error (Gerald Kurland, p.24). Senseless bombing was then underway on North Vietnam, which only destroyed America’s Budget because, the Vietnamese learned to avoid the bombs. Johnson realized that our help was useless and decided not to run in the upcoming election.

Richard Nixon, who preceded Johnson in 1969, had his own ideas toward the problem in Vietnam. He had the idea of “Vietnamization” which was basically a plan to get our troops out while we still funded South Vietnam with money so that they could carry on the military burden that we had done for so long. The U.S troop levels would soon decrease from half a million to 50,000 and would then rise again and then sharply decrease once again. Nixon’s Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, was the person who finally admitted defeat and pulled our troops out in 1973. Nearly 20 years of intervention and what did we have to show for? The embarrassment of being defeated by untrained North Vietnamese soldiers? Or was it the fact that so many soldiers had to die for an unjust cause and were even abandoned by their own people by the lack of applauding and echoing “booing” at the parades that were supposed to show our gratitude towards what they had accomplished.

After what was all said and done, the U.S. gained nothing from this war except a little over 50,000 dead servicemen, internal turmoil in the U.S., our first military defeat, distrust of the military and government. This leaves the question, should this war have involved the United States? The answer America should have said to themselves nearly fifty years ago is, no!