Vietnam+Path+to+War



America and Southeast Asia have been mad at each other for a while now,and with more dilemmas occurring between them; things got more heated up. The US wanted to stop vietnam from ruling southeast asia so they gathered a group of fighters called the Viet Minh which was lead by Ho Chi Mihn, the leader of North Vietnam at the time. The Viet Mihn, with their help from the US, got much land from Northern Vietnam. After Japan surrendered to end WWII, a few people saw this as an opportunity to kick out the french from Vietnam, after all they have ruled Vietnam for about 100 years as a colonial power. Harry Truman, president of the US, began to worry about the power the Soviet Union now had. The Soviets started creating communist governments all over Europe, which threatened the US. The US and France saw each other as allies during the time period when they were trying to put an end to communism. Since Kennedy was elected to the US as president, the US became more involved in Vietnam. Kennedy soon saw that South Vietnam was their only hope for helping them end communism. Soon after, Kennedy was assassinated and Johnson became president. Johnson believed the Domino theory and he didn’t want South Vietnam to become communist. Ngo Dinh Diem, who was the leader in South Vietnam, all of his hopes were decreasing. Diem showed that he liked catholics more then buddhists and buddhists started to burn themselves in protest of Diem. Diem started to arrest and kill anyone who didn’t follow his rules, communist or not. Kennedy soon realizes that he couldn’t get support from South Vietnam with Diem as their leader. Later on, a US ship was observing North Vietnam in the Gulf of Tonkin and suddenly got attacked by torpedoes. The boat reported a couple days later that it was under attack again. Johnson soon ordered air strikes against North Vietnam. Johnson then ordered Congress to made the Gulf of Tonkin resolution which provided president with permission to do anything necessary to defend themselves from North Vietnam. Then came rolling thunder, a mission created by president Johnson. This was intense bombing against North Vietnam; his goal with this was that North Vietnam would decide to talk it out and to resolve their problems. Rolling thunder was not a success.