The French described Diem as,
"Not only incapable but mad"
It was also known by the USA that there was no intention of Diem holding a general election in 1956 furthermore the USA also knew he was very dishonest. But however the US sill supported him from 1954 onwards. The reason why USA supported him was because he was a strong anti-Communist; furthermore the USA’s worst fear was that Vietnam would become a communist country. They believed in the domino theory; the domino theory was that if one country became communist then it will spread to another until the USA was left with very few allies if the communists decided to attack.
In 1960 President Kennedy made a statement which said,
"If South Vietnam became a communist state, the whole of the non-communist world would be at risk. If South Vietnam fell, Laos, Cambodia, Burma, Philippines, New-Zealand and Australia would follow"
In June 1954 President Eisenhower sent a small group of ‘Military advisors’ to South Vietnam to help prevent it becoming a communist state. The Military advisors were a mix of intelligent agents and American soldiers; their occupation was to persuade the population not to vote for the communist in the upcoming elections. To gain success in their aim they used a variety of methods, these included: distributing fake documents that claimed the government in North Vietnam was killing thousands of innocent lives, and the hiring of armed forces to perform acts of sabotage in North Vietnam, this was known as operation 34A. The advisors also promoted President Diem; they did this by manipulating the facts about the South Vietnamese economy. Approximately $270 million were given to South Vietnam by the USA in to help train the South Vietnamese army in modern fighting tactics. Even though the USA helped South of Vietnam, it still didn’t change the populations mind about President Diem, they still hated him.
One major reason why President Diem was unpopular and why the US felt he was no longer a proficient leader was because of the continuing success of the National Liberation Front in other words the NLF. The NLF or National Liberation Front was another armed resistance force directed against President Diem, and it was given aid by Ho Chi Minh and North Vietnam. The NLF’s aim was to replace the Diem administration with a government that “represented all social classes and religions”.
The NLF took land from the rich people in South Vietnam and gave it to the poor peasants; they did this to get the poor peasants on their side. This proved to be extremely successful as the peasants hated working for the landowners.
President Kennedy, America’s new president was very concerned about the events in South Vietnam so he sent 100 more ‘Military advisors’, and furthermore he gave South Vietnam the money to increase its army by an extra 20,000. The USA realized that the NLF were winning the hearts and minds battle, so in mid 1963 they decided that Diem was no longer worth supporting. To defeat Diem they plotted a plan of helping a military coup, he then was replaced by a more popular leader; this took place in November 1963, soon after Kennedy himself was assassinated.
Another strong believer of the domino theory was President Johnson, he strongly felt that the USA should continue, and even increase its involvement in Vietnam. President Johnson gave a statement which said,
"If we quit Vietnam, tomorrow we'll be fighting in Hawaii and next week we'll have to fight in San Francisco”
Instead of sending troops into Vietnam, which President Johnson knew would be very unpopular with the American people; he advised that the USA should bomb North Vietnam as he believed that the North Vietnamese would cut off supplies to NLF. Without these supplied the NLF would not be able to continue fighting in South Vietnam. But the USA could not simply just start bombing North Vietnam as they feared about the criticism they would face, so therefore Johnson gave permission for a plan to be put into operation that would eventually allow the USA to bomb North Vietnam. At this time Operation 34A was still continuing, and not it was decided to send destroyers to acquire information on the North Vietnamese naval defenses. In 1964 the US destroyer ‘Maddox’ was attacked by three North Vietnamese torpedo boats, the Maddox returned fire and sank one boat. The ship was soon ordered back after retreating, when it reached the North Vietnamese waters the captain of the boat reported that he was under attack. Johnson finally found a reason to bomb North Vietnam; he went on TV and made a speech to the American Public, the Speech he said was,
"Repeated acts of violence against the armed forces of the United States must be met not only with alert defense but a positive reply. That reply is being given as I speak tonight.”
The ‘Maddox’ captain sent a second report, this report said that he doubted the attack and that it was due to the weather conditions and his crews’ paranoia. Johnson ignored this report from the ‘Maddox’ captain; the parliament approved President Johnson’s verdict, this gave Johnson the power to take any action against North Vietnam and the NLF. The US began an operation called ‘Rolling Thunder’ in 1965, this involved frequent bombing of North Vietnam and the NLF territory in South Vietnam with the aim to get rid of the North Vietnam economy, so they could no longer support the NLF. This was believed to last for about 8 weeks, but however this ended up lasing for 3 years, in this time 1 million bombs were dropped. The NLF's answer to this was to concentrate its attacks on the US air bases in South Vietnam. This began to become a problem for the US, as the General in charge of US ‘advisors; adequately defend the bases. Johnson took the only route which was possible for him, and on 8th March he sent 3,500 US marines to South Vietnam.
In conclusion I think that the USA became increasingly involved in Vietnam was because of the fear and hatred of communism spreading all over the world. At first America was indirectly a part of the war as they only gave financial help and equipments to the French in their battle with Vietminh. They increasingly became involved when they felt that communism would spread all over the world, this was knows as the domino theory. In 1955 the US prevented elections from taking place because they feared the communists would win. In 1960-1965, America got militarily involved because the North Vietnamese attacked the ‘Maddox’. Even though President Johnson knew that the North Vietnamese didn’t have anything to do with the attack on the boat he still ignored that fact as he wanted war against the North Vietnamese and he realized that this was the best way.
