History

Origin of Vietnam War
Vietnam was under French colonialism. For a period of nine years, from 1945 to 1954, the citizens of Vietnam started an anti-colonial war. By this time, United States was already an established state economically and was trying to assert its influence on liberation of other states to gain their independence. Towards this course, the United States gave a financial aid to Vietnam of 2.6 billion. After the defeat of French, a peace conference was held in Geneva, Switzerland and a deliberation to grant Vietnam independence was reached. At this moment, Vietnam was temporarily subdivided into north and south. The north was supporting the communist ideals while the south was non-communist. The Southern Vietnam under President Ngo Dinh Diem enjoyed a strong support from the United States and it was coerced by the United States not to participate in the unification elections of 1956.

This led to Communist led guerrillas from north in the name of Viet Cong staging invasion against the south. The United States government continued to support south by sending military advisors. By 1963, this number had grown to 16,300. However, the south continued to lose heavily to the north. Diems government faced resistance from even within its own administration. With determination to succeed, the United States military doubled its military actions by initiating air strikes on the land of northern Vietnam in 1965. By 1968, the ground forces from United States had reached 536,000 on this same year the Tet offensive by the forces from North Vietnam led many Americans back at home to start anti-war sentiment. The capture and execution of Diem came close to the assassination of President Kennedy in the US.

When President Richard Nixon took office, he campaigned for home based solutions in Vietnam for Vietnamese. He commissioned the withdrawal of American forces which left the South Vietnamese with greater responsibility of fighting their own war. This gave the Northern Vietnam forces a chance to continue overpowering South Vietnam. As a result, Nixon ordered for bombing of their supply bases in Cambodia in 1970 enact that was widely seen as a violation of Cambodian sovereign rights. Cambodia had for long maintained a neutral position throughout the war period. The antiwar sentiments and protests among the American citizenship increased rapidly especially within the young students of American college campuses. The pressure to bring the war to the end gained momentum day after the other with and after1968 the two embarked on search for a solution through diplomacy. In January of 1973, a consensus was arrived at for a complete removal of American soldiers. In return all American prisoners of war captured by the northern Vietnam forces were set free. This led to Southern Vietnam surrendering to Northern Vietnam and the two were united again as one nation. This was the longest war in the history of America which did cost close to 60,000 lives of American soldiers and about 2 million lives of Vietnamese.

This war had a lot of influence in shaping future politics and foreign policy of American government. Seven presidents, among them Truman, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, And ford were involved directly in this war. As of today there is still debate of whether this war was justified. The protests against this war led to formation of War Powers Act in 1973 that requires for the president to receive clear approval from congress before sending troops to war in foreign lands. These protests has left a big mark for the country and foot prints to learn from the mistakes of its administration.