Asian America | Students

Home >>

Students >>

Asian America >> At the Dinner Table

1954-1965: America's Commitment to
the Vietnam War

After the close of World War II, France was in control of Vietnam as part of what was then known as Indochina. By 1946, however, Vietnamese forces led by communist Ho Chi Minh were fighting the French for independence in North Vietnam. After the defeat of French colonial rule at Dien Bien Phu and the signing of the Geneva Accords of 1954, the U.S. shifted its support to Ngo Dinh Diem, a conservative nationalist whose American friends included Senator John F. Kennedy and Vice President Nixon. As a Catholic in a Buddhist country, Diem needed a base of support in the south and found it in the large population of refugees (some 900,000) -- most of whom were Catholic -- who had left their homes in the north, aided and encouraged by the U.S.

Find Out More

1954-1965: America's Commitment to the Vietnam War

1965-1968: The United States Takes Charge

1968-1975: "Vietnamization" Policy

Today: Thoughts on the Vietnam War

Maps

Vietnam Political Map

Vietnam Elevation Map

Student Video:
At the Dinner Table

With the certainty of firm American backing, and this new domestic base, Diem refused to hold the elections agreed to at Geneva. Instead he organized a referendum that gave the people of the south a choice between himself as president or Bao Dai as an elective monarch. Diem won handily, getting more than 605,000 votes from Saigon's 405,000 registered voters.

In opposition to Diem's increasingly harsh and authoritarian rule, the National Liberation Front (NLF, later branded "Viet Cong") was formed in 1960. To reinforce Diem, the new American president, John F. Kennedy, dispatched Green Beret "advisers" in 1961 and provided increased military aid, including American-piloted armed helicopters, as the guerrilla war expanded. By spring of 1963, South Vietnamese opposition had reached the point that Buddhist monks were demonstrating dramatically against Diem's rule and the war by self-immolation. Diem lost the confidence of the Americans as well as his own people; and, with the Kennedy administration's encouragement, an army coup deposed Diem. On November 1, 1963, Diem was killed by the Vietnamese military who took over from him.

President Lyndon Johnson (following the assassination of President Kennedy -- eleven days after the shooting of President Diem) sought to sustain his domestic social programs (the "Great Society"), amidst ongoing worries about the international consequences of the "loss" of South Vietnam (the "domino theory"). Congress overwhelmingly passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on August 7, 1964, giving the president broad war-making powers; and, in February, 1965, the U.S. began strategic bombing of the north, believing that this could bring Hanoi to pressure the NLF to stop fighting in the south -- something Hanoi neither would nor could do.

The first U.S. Marines went ashore in a direct combat role at Danang on March 8, 1965. Soon thereafter, American civilian and military personnel came under frequent NLF/Viet Cong attacks. In January 1968 even the symbol of American power and presence, the U.S. Embassy, was besieged. President Johnson proposed a Mekong River development project as a nonmilitary continuation of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. At the same time he vowed not to be "the first [American] president to lose a war."

Read more...