re: Why did Americans put up with the Vietnam War?

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I am not vouching for JFKs purity - only that LBJ was the PRIME MOVER in getting us involved in Vietnam.

JFK had been long murdered (by lbj) and the ball was in LBJ's court. He WANTED a 'war' to enhance his election chances. He longed to be a "wartime POTUS",.

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Spot on!
There is a lot of speculation that JFK was cooling on our involvement in Vietnam. He'd been lied to by the CIA and Joint Chiefs of Staff about the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and had been informed about Operation Northwoods. He didn't have a lot of trust in the military at this time.

The Australians were very good at fighting guerillas, because of their Malaysia experience. We could have learned a lot from them .

Don't remember

The war was popular until February 68, when Cronkite starting speaking out against it. This led to LBJ famously expressing, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America."

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Just saying I had the opportunity to help stop the spread of communism

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From what I’ve learned, Ho Chi Minh wanted help from the US at first to fight off France but of course the US was allied with the French (and he was at least loosely communist) so he turned to China solely instead

And unsurprisingly (given how a lot of China’s neighbors feel about them and of course their own conflicts), the Vietnamese hate China just as much if not even more

Media begun to lose faith in the government starting after Tet in 1968. By 1971 the media was in open hostility to the government. But we were neck deep in SE Asia. Nixon gets a lot of flack for expanding the war, but if you pay attention he begins to reduce the US role in Vietnam, but by 1971 our involvement had been reduced to about 1/4 of what it was in 1968. About 160K in 1971 as opposed to almost 540K in 1968.

Cronkite , if not in opposition actively,, had lost faith in just about anything that the government was saying as it pertained to the war. NBC as well, just not as prominently. You had the publication of The Pentagon Papers during this time. Nixon took a more responsible view in that you had to incrementally reduce the troop #'s or you would create chaos as you continue the withdrawal. By 1972 there were only 45,000 US troops there.

I think from the beginning of Nixon's Admin he was under no illusions about the situation. He deserves more credit than he gets for being a responsible peacemaker. He significantly reduced US troop involvement every year in office.

Name a war since the War of 1812 in which the USA was threatened.

General Patton knew. They killed him before he could talk.
Gen. Eisenhower told us. But No one listened.

Sure, I agree. I'm not sure that our leaders decided American lives were cheap or not worth their time to think about. Sending troops in is always a hard call.

The idea though was why we put up with it. I'd say it was a popular war for most of the country until 1968 and after that it was still widely supported by huge chucks of the coutry.

The cold war seems like ancient history and much of what people say, under 50 believe is based on what they learned from others who were actually there, as in adults during that time.

There is an idea that international communism was just some myth that we in the west were crazy for thinking that communism was going to take over. Yet the actual words of most communist government leaders showed this was in fact what they were trying to do. So, you had Bush Wars, in Africa, the various wars around revolutions and counter revolutions in south American/central America and Europe was locked in a face off at the iron curtain.

Vietnam played into this. The Soviets backed the north and we supported the south. The south was corrupt as frick but it was not communist. We inched our way in and did the same with Laos and supported Burma and Thailand etc. We had airbases in Taiwan for most of that time as well and there was actually a mini-hot war in Korea during the 60s.

To me we fight these wars because we believe in ideas and will stand for them...but we lose them due to our wanting the enemy to act like we want them to and are afraid to go all in and do what it takes to win quickly.

Most Americans are far removed. They don't care. They don't care about the troops or the loss of life on the ground at all. They are too busy working, spending time with the family, getting high, drunk, engorged and titillated and are far far from the front. They are prone to be against war more than act to support them unless they feel threatened due to how littler being against war asks of people. IMO, Vietnam was a waste because we did not win it quickly.

Only the soldiers, sailors and airmen. They were noble.

The screwup was in backing the French. The Vietnamese people saw India getting Independence and the Philippines getting Independence. They wanted it too. Ho Chi Minh wanted what we got in 1776. In the past we had supported such efforts. But in the case of Vietnam, we back the French and made an enemy in Ho Chi Minh. In the communists. They would have been no war if we had backed independence. We would have a strong ally today in Vietnam.