Involvement and Vietnam
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The problem with first steps is that it they don't seem like first steps at all, do not appear to be leading one in any particular direction. The first steps toward American involvement in what would become the Vietnam War did not at the time seem to be first steps toward a war at all but simply part of the deadly but courtly dance of the Cold War. As the United States finds itself involved in precisely the same sort of another vaguely defined but potentially horrific and drawn-out war - this time not the fight against Communism but the war on terrorism - the lesson of Vietnam should be kept close at hand. Or rather the lesson of the beginning of the war in Vietnam, for in reality there are a number of different lessons that might be learned from this conflict. But the analogous lesson, the lesson that comes from the beginning of the war (from the same point in time that the nation may at the moment be in), is that often a nation is marching to war while pretending to its allies and its people that it is not (Caputo 41; Kerry 21).American involvement in Vietnam war grew generally out of Cold War paranoia about Communism (as Goldman, 1982, describes) and specifically out of the Franco-Viet Minh conflict, which is now sometimes called the First Indochina War, a conflict that had lasted nearly for eight years and that the Vietnamese in many ways saw as being less about Communism than about colonialism. During this phase of the conflict, the Viet Minh forces established headqua
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The French could not defeat the Vietnamese, at least with the number of troops that they were willing to commit at the time. And the Viet Minh forces lacked the training, the strength of numbers, and the weaponry needed to defeat the French outright. But a war of attrition can almost never be won by invaders with so little stake in the invaded territory. This was the same lesson that the United States would have to learn in turn.
But in 1950 the U.S. government had not yet learned what the French already knew about Vietnam and, moreover, the U.S. government was becoming increasingly committed to a policy of containing Communism, especially in Asia. Thus, in 1950, the U.S. government began providing support to the French as they French continued to support the government of Bao Dai (which the U.S. also recognized). Without yet entering the war openly, the United States in providing support to the French and in siding with Bao Dai against ho Chi Minh was taking the steps that would inevitably lead the nation into a full-scale war (Logevall 16.
It was inevitable that, once the American began to provide assistance to the French and so indirectly to Bao Dai that the Viet Minh would in turn seek assistance from the newly established
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Approximate Word count = 1384
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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