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Ike had just 500 advisors to assist training for SV.
Your beloved JFK a Democrat if i recall set up the stew. When the CIA bumped him off because LBJ needed a killin' done, that was esculated even more and LBJ was pres for 10 years..... 2 JFK didn't serve because he ended up dead, and 2 terms for himself and last time I checked LBJ the WAR Monger was also a democrat. The funny thing is so was FDR......
Seems to me you democrats are killers.
What was your point anyway? or didn't you really have one?
South Vietnam fell. And what we had been told would inevitably follow, per the Domino Theory, that the rest of Southeast Asia would then fall ... like dominoes (hence the name) ... never happened.
The Vietnam War did not need to be fought. The strategically important countries of Southeast Asia -- the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand -- did not fall, regardless of the fact that Vietnam did fall.
You're making excuses for a policy that was discredited decades ago. You've learned nothing from history. Absolutely nothing.
You missed my point which was to answer the question about the "why" the US became involved in SE Asia. You are also making assumptions about what I "know" or what I have or have not learned. You also conveniently have ignored Laos and Cambodia, the fall of both were a result of the Viet Nam War. If you really knew what you're pontificating about you'd also know that Kennedy's main concern was not, in fact, Viet Nam but Laos.
A piece of the containment policy was the experience of Korea.
So, what you're saying is that even though we were not attacked by the Viet Cong, the war in Vietnam was a good idea.
And why was it a good idea? Because, of course, of the Domino Theory! We had to stop the communists in Vietnam, or else the rest of Southeast Asia would have fallen to the communists!
And it's a darn good thing we did stop the communists from overrunning all of Vietnam, or else surely the Philippines and Indonesia and Malaysia and Thailand and the rest of Southeast Asia would have been rolled up by the communists!
Oh, wait... we didn't stop the communists in Vietnam, and yet none of the countries we cared about in Southeast Asia, the Asian-Tigers-to-be, became communists.
I'm sorry, what was the point you were so feebly trying to make with your hopelessly irrelevant analogy? (yes, I know what it surely is, I just want to witness the spectacle of you laying out such a pile of trite ridiculousness)
We were attacked by North Vietnam, not by the South Vietnamese Vietcong. The Viet Cong did not have a Navy. Try to understand a little basic history before going off on your "America is wrong" rant.
That being said, the U.S. created as well the NLF or what's derisively referred to as the Viet Cong.
That's an interesting bit of revisionist history that wasn't around in the old antiwar days. I guess the farther from the event the bigger tales can be told. The formation of the Viet Cong resulted in great part from the 95% Bhuddist population of South Vietnam having no representation in the Catholic Saigon Government. You couldn't get above the rank of Captain in the military or police, or serve in the Parliament of South Vietnam unless you were Catholic (Big Minh was a notable exception, and it was a great mistake that he was not put in power to defuse the religious issue much earlier). Those horrifying photos of Bhuddist monks burning themselves to "protest the war" as the US media put it were actually protesting lack of representation for their faith in the Saigon government. After all, you can more easily persuade young Americans to go off to the other side of the world to kill communists than to kill Bhuddists. The VC certainly did become communist through their alliance with and acceptance of aid from the communist North. The notion that the US "created" the Viet Cong is patently absurd. You are quite correct that the most notable military operation undertaken by the Viet Cong was the Tet Offensive of 1968 when the NVA used them as cannon fodder. I was in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive FWIW.
Your beloved JFK a Democrat if i recall set up the stew. When the CIA bumped him off because LBJ needed a killin' done, that was esculated even more and LBJ was pres for 10 years..... 2 JFK didn't serve because he ended up dead, and 2 terms for himself and last time I checked LBJ the WAR Monger was also a democrat. The funny thing is so was FDR......
LBJ was president from November 1963 to January 1969. That doesn't equal 10 years or even 2 full terms... Among other things.
Finally, why did US help South Korea until the end, but not South Vietnam ?
You have asked a difficult question that is painful to answer. For one thing, the American people were disillusioned with the war, and the antiwar leftists had done an effective job of demonizing those that felt an obligation to keep our promises to Vietnam and Cambodia. Nixon was distracted by Watergate and facing impeachment. In the end, the antiwar elements inside the US gave the NVA the victory that they could never have obtained on the battlefield against the US military. Seeing our government turn it's back on promises made broke my heart. As to why Korea was different, I can only offer that there was not an effective antiwar movement at that time, and that the American government and people were different then.
On Aug. 2, 1964, North Vietnamese gunboats attacked the USS Maddox in the Tonkin Gulf. The Maddox was there running intel operations with a group of U.S. backed and trained South Vietnamese commandos. When LBJ heard of the incident, he did nothing in response. On Aug. 4, the Maddox again fell under an attack that we know today never occurred. It was on this basis that LBJ asked for the already prepared Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which was a blank check and authorization to wage war in Vietnam.
Essentialy correct, but don't forget the Turner Joy.
You obviously weren't around at the time. People cared a lot, but it was the antiwar leftists that insulted and humiliated them.
We antiwar leftists like everyone else had friends and family in Vietnam and the protests were against U.S. policy not the soldiers. It was after the first Rambo movie that thousands of vets sttarted telling rediculous tales about being spit on and having drinks thrown in their faces.I have two brothers-in-law who served in Vietnam and when they came home they got jobs,got married and raised their children. They didn`t spend the next 30 years bit*hing about "Hanoi Jane".
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set up the stew. When the CIA bumped him off because LBJ needed a killin' done, that was esculated even more and LBJ was pres for 10 years..... 2 JFK didn't serve because he ended up dead, and 2 terms for himself and last time I checked LBJ the WAR Monger was also a democrat. The funny thing is so was FDR......
