Vietnam Was a Situation That Term Paper

Given the prevailing view today, though, that the war was an error and achieved nothing except to destroy a lot of lives on both sides, Lind's belief that his view will one day prevail seems disingenuous at best. The biases of the time are not as strong today as they were 30 years ago, and yet no real change in how the war is viewed has taken place. The idea that Vietnam was a morass into which the United States should not have ventured is strongly held by millions of Americans today, and the idea is reinforced through repetition so that it seems unlikely that one or two generations more will make that much difference. Many of the people repeating this idea today do not really remember the Vietnam War at all except as a history lesson, and the lesson is not being given as Lind predicts it will.

3. The war had been under way for some time when Johnson inherited it upon the death of President Kennedy. Johnson had to decide whether to commit large number of American troops to this war, and he decided to do so and expanded the war greatly. This decision was the closest thing to a declaration of war that occurred with respect to this war. This began the process of Americanizing the war, whicuh until then had been fought largely by the South Vietnamese with some American advisors offering assistance. The war had been going on for more than a decade when Johnson made his decision.Johnson had approval for conducting the war in the form of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. By 1965, Johnson feared that South Vietnam would lose the war. Johnson could have abandoned the South Vietnamese, but he decided that this would hurt him politically at home and also might lead to the fulfillment of the domino theory. Still, the situation weas deteriorating, and Johnson deicded it was necessary to help the people of the south and that the way to do this was to Americanize the war, sending in troops that could do the job the South Vietnamese clearly could not. This was considered the only way to save South Vietnam. Johnson first expanded the air war, and this served as the excuse to follow with an expansion of ground forces. Further expansion followed as the initial thrust failed to end the war, leading to the deployment of thousands more forces in higher and higher numbers as a way of bringing all power to bear on the North Vietnamese in order to force an end to the war. Clearly, this also did not work, and the war simply got bigger and bigger. Once the Americanization process was started, it had to continue and draw in more and more troops. Troops were indeed sent in waves over the next several years, and more and more the war was about saving America's face instead of saving the people of South….....