Student Question
Was the US's involvement in the Vietnam War justified?
Quick answer:
The justification of the US's involvement in the Vietnam War remains controversial. Critics argue it was unjustified as the US intervened in a civil war that posed no direct threat, resulting in significant loss of life and increased foreign animosity. Supporters argue that the decision was based on the policy of containment, though many Americans at the time disagreed. Ultimately, the issue remains divisive, with valid arguments on both sides.
Absolutely not. America invaded Vietnam that was engaged in a civil war. What had the United States to do with a country's civil war? How was Vietnam a threat to the United States? The Conflict in Vietnam that cost tens of thousands of lives and innumerable cases of psychological injury was an abominable episode in American history. All it accomplished was the increase in foreign hatred toward the U.S.
Many of the posts above mention viewing from a historical rather than modern perspective which I agree with. However even if we look from a historical perspective there is much disagreement. The government made a decision based on the policy of containment. Many Americans, AT THAT TIME, disagreed with this decision and our presence in Vietnam. The fact that Americans who disagreed with the war took it out on our soldiers is the one thing I feel is...
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undisputably wrong. The soldiers in Vietnam were doing what they thought they needed to. What the government was telling them they had to. They should be judged as patriots and should have been given the homefront support all military deserve regardless of how one sees the war.
In this light we can argue either side. Clearly it is still a controversial issue 50 years later. The argument can be made for either view from a historical perspective though it would be more difficult to argue justification in hindsight.
I find it hard to look at this question objectively because of the toll that war had on my family. I am convinced that my father would be a completely different person if he had not been through that hell. You can use any reason to justify the war, but there is no justification for what the country did to our soldiers and how they treated them when they returned.
My father served in the Viet Nam war and he would tell us as children that we often can't see the whole picture enough to judge anything. While there, he felt like he was upholding his duty to his country by keeping wars out of America. Even today he says, "Wars will always happen. Do you want it here in America or somewhere else?" He told us a story about when he was stationed in Loc Nihn. He found out that there was going to be a huge number of troops coming in the morning to that town and that they were planning on killing everyone they saw, which meant men, women, and children. He said that all the men were gone to war, so there were only old men, women and children left. He called in an air strike and was able to save the town. Not only that, but he had my grandmother get together with her church group and send over thousands of needed clothing items for the children who had been running around naked. When our troops go out into the world to fight wars, they do more than just fight. Sadly, the bad stories get publicized and that makes all troops look bad. Most of the time, we don't see the wonderful and beautiful things that our troops do around the world to help others, so I'm proud of my dad and all of our soldiers who protect us and help the people around the world.
As a teacher I always try to warn my student about judging past events from our current perspective. Of course, as a historian it is your job, but I want them to try to see the situation from the historical perspective as well as their own.
From a historical perspective, the United States believed in Monolithic Communism, or the belief that all communist actions were being orchestrated through Moscow. To combat this, they held to a plan of containment, which would keep communism and its influence from spreading beyond its current sphere of influence. From that perspective, the Vietnam War was completely justified and perfectly in line with the best though of how to combat their ultimate enemy at the time.
As the first response illustrates, it's really necessary to view the events that led to the Vietnam conflict in their own historical context. The idea that communism was an inherently expansionary force, and, for that matter, that leaders like Ho Chi Minh were communists first and nationalists later, permeated US policy. It is always easy to judge based on hindsight, but we learn few lessons of importance in doing so. We can, perhaps, ask questions about American duplicity in the buildup to the war, as well as the morality of supporting brutal leaders like Diem, but in thinking about the overall strategic implications of the war, as well as the ideological justifications for it, we have to look at the information that policy-makers had available to them at the time, not what we know in hindsight.
You can pick either point of view on this, depending on your ideological leaning. In the light of history, our involvement pretty much came to nothing in terms of the long-term well-being of Vietnam. Did it help us slow the spread of communism internationally? Maybe. If it had been easy for the North Vietnamese to institute communism, perhaps other countries would have tried to do it too. It's all guesswork at this point.
Was the U.S. right to get involved in Vietnam?
If you examine the issues and opinions of the day, one would draw a different picture of the events leading to American involvement in Vietnam, than if you viewed them from just seeing the results of the war.
Following World War 2, the United States followed a policy of containment regarding Communism. We tried to "contain" Communism to its current areas. However, a number of events worried the United States.
The Korean War of the early 1950s was viewed by us as an attempt by Communist forces to spread their influence. While this was going on, a democratic France was fighting a war in French Indo-China in an attempt to regain their colony lost to the Japanese during World War 2. Even though this involved the issue of colonialism, their opponent was a Communist force under Ho Chi Minh. President Eisenhower sent financial help to the French consistent with our containment strategy.
Eisenhower was replaced by Kennedy who committed ground troops as advisors, and his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, committed combat troops on a wide basis.
If you believe that Communism was a threat to the United States (which we did back then), and if you believed in the Domino Theory, which said if Vietnam were to fall, so would the rest of Southeast Asia like a row of dominoes, then the American involvement was probably justified.
If you see the issues of the Vietnam War as one between foreign rule over a small country, as Ho Chi Minh did, or sovereignty of your country, then perhaps the US involvement was questionable, at best.
One must also consider that getting involved didn't have to mean sending large numbers of troops to fight the war on the ground. There was the precedent of Korea, a war in which the US fought with somewhat limited objectives and had also limited its commitment in terms of combat troops and resources and appeared to come out with at least a palatable stalemate, and so the idea of a structured intervention was in vogue.
But those two wars were very different, as was the theater of operations. What I think really raises the possibility of the answer that it was very wrong to get involved was the lack of any serious research on the French experience there and learning from their mistakes as we repeated a number of them in our "involvement."
In hindsight, it doesn't seem a wise decision. We were a long way from home, in a country and culture we didn't understand, fighting against a nationalist independence drive much stronger than our own motivations.
But was it "right"? Depends in what sense. Was it right to want democracy for another country? Perhaps. Was it possible? Perhaps not. Was it right to drop as much napalm and bombs on what we knew to be civilians? Probably not. Was it worth it? Depends who you ask.
I think the Vietnam War was an unnecessary war, with ridiculous costs. Outside of containment, I can't think of a good reason for us to have fought there.
The Vietnam Conflict changed the way that Americans thought about and viewed war. There were many opposing opinions. For example, there was a lot of controversy regarding conscription in the Vietnam War. Conscription is when citizens are forced to serve in a war by their government. Many men were drafted during this war, many opposing it and many willing to serve their country with questioning it.
Many people also questioned the United States involvement in Vietnam altogether. The United States ended up withdrawing from the war in 1973. Whether or not the United States was right in getting involved in the Vietnam Conflict is really a matter of opinion.
Was U.S. involvement in Vietnam justified?
I'm going to take a different stand here, and argue that our involvement in Vietnam was the action of an empire, protecting its resources and trade routes rather than responding to a true security threat to the United States. Every empire acts in such a way, as it is the nature of empires, but I do not support such action currently, nor do I think it was justified then, especially, in hindsight, given the human, financial and environmental costs of such a war.
At the time, context and contingency becomes critical. The fear of Communism and the belief in the domino effect were both perceived as real and valid threats. In this light, protection and insulation against these threats were seen as justified. It is really difficult to be able to look past such contingencies when we are placed within the midst of these situations. In such a light, the case can be made that involvement in the war was justified. We now know better on many levels. We understand that the fight for the Vietnamese was not about Communism, but rather for independence. We also understand that Communism ended up fading away, but again, this is something that could not have been known at the time.
If you look at it given what we know now, then of course it was not. We can see this because the domino effect never really happened. We lost South Vietnam to the communists but really nothing bad happened internationally. Our allies in Asia were never really threatened. Today, we do a lot of trading with communist Vietnam and it's no big deal. Today we know that the Russians and the Chinese were'nt really together in a plot to dominate the world and we know that the Vietnamese did not just let those two big countries control them.
But it you look at it from the perspective of the time in which the decision to get involved was made, it's a lot harder to say that we should not have gotten involved. The domino theory made a lot of sense if you just thought about it. Smart people believed it was true. Sure, some people didn't, but it would have been a heck of a gamble to just discount the idea of the domino theory and potentially risk letting the Soviet Union dominate all of Asia.