Vitenam War Blog

The Vietnam War is considered apart Cold War era . It occurred in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Starting on the 1st November 1955  and preceding until April 30^th 1975. This war followed the First Indochina war and was fought between North and South Vietnam. North Vietnam supported by communist allies, and the government of South Vietnam, supported by the U.S.A (Along with other none communist countries). The Viet Cong also known as the NLF, a lightly armed South Vietnamese communist-controlled, fought guerrilla warfare style against non-communist forces in the region.

The U.S. saw their involvement in the war as a way to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam, and as part of their wider strategy of containing  these communist states. The North Vietnamese government and Viet Cong viewed the conflict as a colonial-war, fought against France (dating back to the 1850’s). They felt that France (backed by the United States) were puppets. U.S. involvement escalated in the early 1960s, with troop levels tripling in 1961 and tripling again in 1962. Operations were spanned throughout international borders and Laos and Cambodia were heavily bombed. American involvement in the war peaked in 1968, at the time of the “Tet” Offensive. After this, U.S. ground forces were gradually withdrawn as part of a policy known as Vietnamization. The Paris Peace Accords was signed by all parties in January 1973, despite this fighting continued.
U.S. military involvement ended on 15 August 1973 a result of the Case Church Amendment, which was  passed by the U.S. Congress Estimates of the number of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed vary from less than one million to more than three million and 58,220 U.S. service members also died in the conflict. Some say the U.S involvement in the war was unnecessary and a sign of our meddling ways while others believe that we made the right move and saved the world from yet another communist scare.
The United States 36^th President LBJ (Lyndon Johnson) hit the ground running in 1965.  To avoid the tradeoff between "guns and butter," decisions about the Vietnam War were not highly publicized. But there were several decisions made in 1965 that would "Americanize" the war.
After a Viet Cong attack on American barracks in Pleiku, Johnson ordered reprisal bombings of North Vietnam on February 6, 1965. This was later expanded, on February 21st, into a program of sustained bombing called Rolling Thunder.  In the following month, deliberations led to the decision to escalate the ground war. By June, LBJ gave General William Westmoreland the authority to commit American troops to ground combat operations in Vietnam.