The+Path+to+War+-+Vietnam

=VIETNAM - THE PATH TO WAR =

You all know that the United States was involved in a major military conflict during the Cold War ... but why? What was America's "path to war"? Using the resources below and Creating America, your task this evening is to write a description in YOUR OWN WORDS of the causes of American involvement in Southeast Asia. Pretend you are writing it as a summary for on online encyclopedia or textbook. Your description should ...

Need some help? How about ... //Creating America// [|Into Vietnam (Overview)] from ABC-CLIO [|**Vietnam War** - the **Causes**] [|Timeline of the Vietnam War] [|Vietnam Online Timeline] Causes of the Vietnam War video below media type="custom" key="3877323"

For a very long time, Frace ruled Vietnam, and called it French Indochina. They made money from importing and exporting crops for a lengthy amount of time. However, the Vietnamese soon lost their land and grew poor. Some Vietnamese people were not particularly fond of living in a French-ruled country, and they wanted their freedom. One man, Ho Chi Minh, decided to lead and stage many of the revolts Vietnamese people staged againsted the French. This man started the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP), which was a collection of three communist groups joined together. They wanted a completely independent Vietnam. As protests and riots continued, the French responded by arresting suspected communists and killing communist leaders, including a death sentence for Ho Chi Minh (which was not followed through with).

By 1940, Japan had taken over Indochina, leading to Ho Chi Minh secretly returning to Vietnam and hiding in a jungle camp in 1941. The ICP and other nationalist groups joined together under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh and became known as the Viet Minh. This group trained soldiers to fight so they could fight for their independence against any foreign countries in the Vietnamese territory. Since the US and Japan were not on good terms because of WWII, the US aided the Viet Minh people in their fight for freedom.

The Japanese did end up surrendering to the Allies and Ho Chi Minh announced their victory. However, France soon after tried to regain control. Ho Chi Minh explained that they would not back down, no matter what, and searched for a peaceful way to settle the conflict with France. In 1946, France bombed Haiphong and the Viet Mihn people responded, as promised, by bombing Hanoi. France was trying to hold power.

As that conflict was going on, the US was enduring a cold war between the Soviet Union. Truman was following the containment policy. However, when China became a communist country, the US started to worry big time. They did not want communism to spread throughout Asia. That is why the US agreed to help France in the Vietnam War; they didn't want communism to spread and they also needed help in the race against the Soviet Union.

The US entered the conflict in Vietnam with a $10 million aid for France. When asked why join, the US replied by stating that they had to avoid the domino effect. However, France was not able to defeat Vietnam. Instead, they agreed to split the country into North and South Vietnam temporarliy until elections could be held that would determine the political state in which the country would reunify. North Vietnam was now ruled by communist Ho Chi Minh and South Vietnam now has an anti-communist prime minister, Ngo Dinh Diem. Ho Chi Minh was very popular while Ngo Dinh Diem had almost no support. Because of this, Diem refused to hold elections because he would never recieve enough votes anyways. Eisenhower reacted by sending military advisors to South Vietnam to help the Diem government with "nation-building".

The advisors did little help however, because Diem allowed for his government to become corrupt, even murdering opponents. He called the opponent groups "Viet Cong", or Vietnamese Communists. The Viet Cong tried to overthrow the Diem government and practically succeeded. JFK continued sending troops and supplies, though it was not helping much. Then, in 1963, Diem was assassinated, making room for more unsufficient leaders and Minh's supplies to get to Viet Congs. Johnson was getting impatient and was ready to scare Mihn out of sending supplies to Viet Cong. He planned on doing this by planting a bomb in Vietnam, which Congress hastily agreed to.

The US destroyer Maddox and another were on the Gulf of Tonkin when a North Vietnamese torpedo destroyed them. Though there was no sufficient evidence, the Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which gave the president power to use military force. In March of 1965, Johnson bombed North Vietnam.