Explain why the USA became increasingly involved in the war in Vietnam?

         In 1960 the national liberation front was set up in the south of Vietnam were aiming to overthrow Diem by the gorilla warfare, they were also aiming to get rid of the Americans and trying to reunite north and south Vietnam. As a result of that John F. Kennedy became president so he increased the number of military advisers from 100 to 1600 by 1963 he also helped to equip the south Vietnamese army, because of that the strategic hamlet programme happened. This was where the peasants from the Vietcong, Diem had organised a system where the whole villages were moved into different camps known as fortified villages. This policy did not work, as the peasants did not want to be removed from this land. The policy played into the hands of the Viet-Cong who were promising the peasants more land once the communism have taken the root in the south, because of that Diem’s unpopularity was so good, the south Vietnamese army overthrow and killed him. In the south the confusion was at a political level and the abuse of the peasants rights within the south. Lydon Johnson who asked the military chiefs to formulate plans should a war start. Johnson wanted a more aggressive war against the communist but he did not think the south Vietnamese government was able to keep the north Vietnamese out of the south.

         In July 1964 the Tokin incident occurred when north Vietnamese gunboats attacked two American ships while they were on the ocean. In response to this the American senate gave Johnson the power to give armed support to any country that wanted help.  In March 1965 the first American ground troops landed in south Vietnam and by December 1965 there was 150,000 stationed in the country. The bombing of north Vietnam had started in February 1965; this bombing was called Operation Rolling Thunder. Lydon Johnson was now the president and he held elections but they did not happen because everybody was so worried about the communism spreading so he decided to have one later on.

        The biggest reason America became involved was because they didn’t like the thought of communist spreading. Even though it was never actually classed as a war, It probably could’ve been prevented or handled in a different way. A response that the war got from most people was “It was never meant to be, If people were designed with a threshold, it wasn’t meant to be exceeded”. Maybe if America didn’t get so involved, so many people wouldn’t have died but then again, maybe if America didn’t get involved, more countries around south-east Asia would fall to communism. Overall, the Vietnam war was very powerful, many people died and there were a lot of opinions on it. None of which you can say were right or wrong but America were very involved in Vietnam, Probably for many different reasons but mainly to stop the spread of communism.