American Invovment in Vietnam Essay - 881 Words

In American History, the nineteen sixties and the nineteen seventies were extremely turbulent and controversial times. Protest rights were being tested and occasionally suppressed, new moral and political values began to develop, and the Vietnam War dominated the twenty-year period. Vietnam invited many young activist people to begin a huge movement of anti-war protesting denouncing the war, the government, and even the soldiers who were picked against their will to fight. Reasons for American entry into the Vietnam War are controversial, and everyone has a different opinion on why we got into the conflict. Multiple reasons contributed to the entry in Vietnam from support of allies who were fighting their battles, to the fact that the†¦show more content†¦nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;Another reason for American entry into the Vietnam War was the commitment that had formerly been made by the French and the Americans into the fight or the support of the fight in Vietnam for the Fr ench colony. The French had been fighting for an Indochina colony after World War Two to benefit them, but at the same time had been struggling with domestic costs and issues. American support to the French in the form of millions of dollars to support the war failed, but officially committed to Americans to a cause in Vietnam in the American governments eyes. In 1954, at Dienbienphu the French military forces came into conflict with the North Vietnamese forces, called the Vietminh after their leader Ho Chi Minh, being defeated and leaving the Communist Vietnamese the victors. The French negotiations left a border at the 17th parallel making North Vietnam the communist half of the country while the Southern half was the democratic portion. An election was set up to decide whether the government was to become communist or democratic. American officials would not stand for this agreement realizing that it would fall to the communist, so they replaced the French in South Vietnam and began to train the South Vietnamese Army. This would soon lead us into the actual cause