[Dondilion]

Originally Posted by JCricket

From what I have read, Vietnam resulted as a country, and then later as a conflict, as a direct result of WWII. Originally a colony of France referred to Indochina. Germany captures France, Indochina becomes destabilized, the Japanese come in, France regains control, Indochina has broken down into four countries. Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand. Vietnam has declared their independence and has been recognized as a sovereign nation by both China and the Soviet union. The leader of Vietnam declares land owners as criminals and executes approximately 200,000(IIRC). Thus causing a civil war. We fear the red scare, the dominoe theory, and also want to help the people being execute.

Here is the problem. how do we help without declaring war on the Soviet union and China?

What a mess it turned out to be. I do believe the leaders(mostly anyway) at the time, Eisenhower, congress and the American people, had good intentions. Then the gulf of Tonken, LBJ, and the MIC got there teeth in it.

That is a very high level paraphrase, and I am not sure my details are accurate. As stated earlier, there are VOLUMES of material on this subject. Trying to sift through it and makes sense of it and to be sure it is accurate takes a lot of time, I think this is the jist of it though.

In all of this I believe we woefully underestimated the grit of Vietnamese people to rid themselves of foreign occupiers.

We looked and saw a thin, small guy in sandals and straw hat and said this
should be easy.