Another history thread: How did we get involved in the Vietnam War?

We foolishly backed France in trying to hang on to their Indochinese colony, and it all went south from there.

The US lied about what happened in the Gulf of Tonkin.

Johnson wanted to be a wartime president.

Then he didn't want to abandon his domestic, SJW agenda.

Then we got bogged down in land war in Asia.

THEN we didn't let the military leaders run the war according to tried and true military principles.

THEN we won the war anyway (with Nixon as POTUS).

THEN CONGRESS GAVE AWAY THE VICTORY.

Bc your moms a fat whore.

Viet-fricking-Nam!

Read WEB Griffin's Brotherhood of War series. It lays it out very well and is a fun read.

We were standing against Communism, China went Red, the French were trying to hold on in Indochina and we start playing with our toys, the SF advisors. It all started in WWII with the beginnings of SF and then in Greece and then we fought the Communists in Korea. Africa and India got their freedom from Western colonial powers, Israel was fighting the Arabs, the Suez was in contention, we backed the Shah in Iran, oil was flowing, America was building and driving and expanding cities and suburbs and needed oil and the USSR was threatening Europe and the ME. The idea was that if French Indochina fell to the Communists, then there would be a Domino Effect that would go all the way to India and Communism would sweep through Africa and the ME, isolating the US and cutting us off from oil and a lot of other stuff.

So, the strategy was to stop Communism everywhere. Much of the resistance to the Civil Rights Movement in America was because many establishment whites feared that it was a plot by Communists to destabilize America by appealing to minority angst. Communism was godless, so to oppose the CRM was to side with God against Communism. That was part of it - that and racism.

Kennedy was shot in 1963 and the fear that it was the Communists. Oswald had defected to Russia and was in league with Cuba. We just have the 13 days of the Cuban missile crisis. We forget how close Cuba and the US were before Castro. Losing Cuba was HUGE and in light of Communist gains around the world, it stoked fears.

Russia was winning the space race, kids had atomic drills where they hid under their desks, the U2 had been shot down, and people were afraid. Plus, you had Curtis LeMay and the Military Industrial Complex and the Hawks in Washington pushing for an aggressive foreign policy against Communism around the world.

Britain and France losing their empires that they had held for 200 years affected the psyche of the West greatly. To see many of those colonies go Communist stoked fears even more.

Vietnam was a stupid war, but when you look at the overall mindset of the time, it makes sense. America was in a "never again" mindset and they didn't want to fight another World War. So, smaller wars made more sense.

Yes, Vietnam was a French colony.

2 asides - We wouldn't have been nearly as heavily involved in it had JFK not been assassinated.
The draft made it a lot worse

Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO)

Probably because Bush