U.S. Involvement in the Vietnam Civil War

While most analysts run away to consider American involvement in Vietnam as very much an artifact of the 1960s and the Cold War, the reality is that American foreign policy had incorporated some degree of intimacy in Vietnam's nationalistic struggle since the 1940s. Roberts and Martin (1989) have pointed out that by the late 1940s, the U.S. had assumed a large part of the approach of France's effort to regain control of its Indochina possessions (i.e., Vietnam) as the force of Ho Chi Minh grew almost exp iodinentially, (915). The price escalated during the early 1950s and by 1952 the U.S. shouldered roughly one-third of the cost of the war; amid 1950 and 1954 American contributed $2.6 billion to France's war effort, (Roberts and Martin 1989). This sum was insufficient: France was ineffectual to defeat Ho's Vietminh, and in 1954 the war reached a crisis stage when the french were soundly defeated at Dien Bien Phu. President Eisenhower refused to supply armed services forethought without the consent of Congress and Great Britain, and then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson openly argue spending America's money (and her boy's lives) to perpetuate colonialism and "White man's exploitation in Asia," (Roberts and Martin 1989, 921). Strangely enough, Johnson would, as President, "inherit" President Kennedy's decision to get out not only money but men to Vietnam to aid the South against the communists; this decision would lead to his failure to seek re-election for a second full term in office

Under John Kennedy's leadership, American supporter to South Vietnam increased and the regimen took an active role in shaping both government policy and military put to death in Vietnam. Kennedy committed more than 16,000 force (and countless millions in dollars) to Vietnam as of 1963 - positioning the troops as "advisors" to South Vietnam's government and military. Lyndon Johnson, as his own remarks discussed above demonstrate, further expanded American involvement and the death toll of American troops grew steadily. In 1965, 636 Americans were killed in Vietnam; in 1968, 30,610 troops of the 536,000 stationed in Vietnam were killed (Roberts and Martin 1989, 927).

as semipublic outcry against what become, over time, and apparently "unwinnable" war grew dramatically, (Lamb 1978, 425).

Lamb (1978) has utter that public support for America's participation in Vietnam was very standardised to that for the war in Korea fifteen years earlier: the initial stages of the ground war generated some enthusiasm, as citizens felt a certain glow of pride in their nation's power, (425). As the months move into years, and the cost in lives in dollars escalated, and no particular remnant was achieve, public support drained away. A student expostulation movement, in which the emerging Civil Rights Movement and anti-war protest unified somewhat, focused attention at home on ontogenesis discontent with America's foreign policy. Johnson's failure to seek re-election is just one indication of how deeply this growing discontent affected American politics. Officials divided into two camps, of "hawks" and "doves," according to their sentiments regarding the war. Every night, the television countersign programs carried footage about the war and America's losses - the "body count" - which do it increasingly clear that the war was "going nowhere," and that American troops were not "winning." Geoffrey Perret (1989), in his analysis of America's participation in this and some other war efforts, has noted that te
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