In the mid-1950s, the Vietnamese people had officially pushed their French colonizers out of their soil so that they may unite and rule as their own country. However, this point in history was in an extremely cautious state; the Red Scare was at its peak and the Cold War was all but getting better. Two political opponents arose in this new Vietnamese regime: the communist backed Ho Chi Minh of North Vietnam, and Southern Vietnam’s Ngo Dinh Diem, who had a more Republican view. Shortly after the Korean War, America saw another communist threat that could lead to the impression of Communism being able to easily rise across Asia, otherwise known as the Domino Theory. Soon, war broke out between the North and South Vietnamese which would lead to …show more content…
War had been escalating between the Vietnamese by the late 50’s. This is where America had to step in. In fear that if one Asian country could fall to Communism, others could as well, known as the Domino Theory, which increased reasoning into further developing US involvement. As stated in the Monroe Doctrine, the United States of America would not get involved in European affairs unless was obliged to do so. President Truman warned Congress that Greece would fall to communism first, then Turkey so he received $338 million to aid Greece against the Soviet Union. The evidence that supported the Domino Theory was the fact that China and Cuba had already fell to communism. At the beginning of the 60’s, Kennedy was in office, but had a different perspective. He supported the idea of continuing advisement to better prepare the South against the North, but not to necessarily aid them with troops or join the war. His policy would continue until his unfortunate assassination in 1963, a year of intensity for the United States with the battle of racism. Lyndon B. Johnson had taken the reigns from that point on, and soon, US involvement had peaked after the Tonkin Gulf Incident, in which supposed US Naval ships were attacked in Vietnamese waters, becoming the start of what Americans called the Vietnam War. Volunteer soldiers show that the American population was eager …show more content…
Tens of thousands of US troops had been lost in a war that seemed nearly impossible to many to be won. On a further note, rise of awareness in racism had put a bad name on the war, which Martin Luther King Jr. had claimed to be racist by sending African American men to fight the white-man’s war. An event known as the March on Washington, that was organized by the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), took place in which hundreds of thousands of civilians came together to protest the state of their nation very early into the war. Students all over America were protesting on their college campuses. In Vietnam, many Buddhist monks set themselves on fire in protest of the war. A group commonly called “hippies” had progressed its way into much of the United States, instituting their ideas of peace and leaving the war because of it being deemed pointless by many. Nixon soon took office and attempted “Vietnamization” in the war by bringing troops back, bombing the North relentlessly, taking aim to Cambodia which would lead to another atrocity known as the Cambodian Genocide, and even threatening the Soviet Union with nuclear missiles by flying them close to Soviet air-space all in attempts to allow the South to stand on its own. Due to the Watergate Scandal, he was eventually removed from