Us Involvement In The Vietnam War

The United States involvement in Vietnam started out as simply a way to support the new leader of South Vietnam, Ngo Dunh Diem in the late 1950’s. As time passed, the US was drawn deeper into the unstable politics of this unstable new nation. In 1960, the Vietminh started an armed struggle for national unification. Under orders from Hanoi, the Vietminh soldiers created the National LIberation front (NLF) and had both materials and manpower support from North Vietnam to begin military operation in the south. This marked the beginning of what Americans know as the Vietnam War. The US role steadily changed from aid support to intervention with Johnson sending an additional 5,000 military advisers there in 1964. “The Gulf of Tonkin supposed attack on American destroyers was enough of a threat that Congress passed a resolution which authorized the president to “take all necessary measure” to protect American forces and present additional aggression. This was essential an open-ended legal authorization for escalation on the conflict.
In February 1965, after a military base at Pleiku was attacked, Johnson ordered American bombings of the north in an attempt to destroy the depots and transportation lines responsible for the flow of North Vietnamese soldiers and supplies into the South. Four month later, President Johnson announced that American soldiers would now begin playing an active role in the conflict. By the end of 1965, more than 180,000 American combat troops were in Vietnam. IN 1966, that number doubled, and by the end of 1967, over 500,000American soldiers fought there. The war continued to intensified because several American strategies like “attrition, pacification, and hearts and minds” failed