In the 1950's, America sent troops to Vietnam. During the next twenty five years that followed, the ensuing war created some of the strongest tensions in America’s history. In the war, almost three million men and women from America were forcefully sent thousands of miles away to Vietnam to fight for a very questionable cause that a lot of them did not believe in. It is estimated that over two million people were killed on both sides. During this war, which proved to be the most controversial war in American history, the American public reactions and opinions of the Vietnamese conflict differed and changed greatly throughout the 1950s and 1960s.
Fearing the entire region would soon be communist, America grew increasingly wary of the progress of Ho Chi Minh and the Vietcong. With the expansion of the Soviet rule in Eastern Europe, Cuba and Korea, the Americans were very determined to stop communism from spreading any further.
At the beginning of the war, most of the public in America did not know much about the war or the situation in Vietnam. The public saw it as a very minor conflict. At the time, America was an extremely confident country. They were very confident that no-one could threaten America in any way. They thought this for a few reasons. One was that they had never lost a war that they had been in. Another was that it had infinite military resources and another was that it was a very big country with very high technology. If you compare this to Vietnam who had a low GNP, wasn’t very big and had low technology. As a result of this they automatically assumed that their massive army would be victorious within months. Over the course of the twentieth century, America became increasingly concerned about Communism and by the late 1940s an anti-Communist network was in established. Because of this, and other memorable events like the McCarthy trials, the American public were very familiar with communism. They also believed the ‘Domino Theory’ in which all the neighbouring countries of a country would become communist countries if that one country did. As a result, most had positive feelings about military action in Vietnam and did not at this point oppose it. At this point, most of the public believed that “outsiders” where to blame for communism. “Outsiders” included foreigners and members of religious and racial minorities. Black people, Catholics, immigrants and Native Americans all, at one time or another had been politicized and increasingly identified with communism. The ‘Gulf of Tonkin Resolution’ of 1964, illustrated how people felt about military action. The Gulf of Tonkin is a body of water situated to the east of North Vietnam and the west of the island Hainan. This place is where the North Vietnamese sunk the Destroyer, “Maddox”. Because of this attack, there was a resolution. The resolution stipulated that the President could "take all necessary measures to repel armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression." In congress, everyone except two people voted for Johnson to have free rein in Indo China which is a clear indication that they were keen to get involved in the war.
