ife in South Vietnam were for most of the 1950s of little concern to the American public. Indochina/Vietnam policy was not an issue in the presidential elections of 1952, 1956 or 1960. The first protests against the war in Vietnam in America did not occur until the early years of the administration of President John Kennedy. When the Indochina War briefly dominated the headlines during the spring of 1954, President Eisenhower quickly took steps to deflect public criticism. In relation to Vietnam, he is principally remembered as the President who refused to commit American forces to fighting in the jungles and rice paddies of Indochina. In doing so, he acted wisely, but he also removed Vietnam policy from the arena of domestic political debate for the rest of his administration, a dubious legacy.
It follows that if the policies of the Eisenhower administration toward Indochina and later Vietnam were later shown to have been misguided, that failure was primarily attributable to the policy perceptions and decisions of the President and his senior advisers. However, their attitudes and approach to the problems posed by Vietnam were not shaped in a vacuum. They were intimately related to and influenced by previous American experience vis-a-vis Southeast Asia.
Origins of American Policy toward Vietnam
According to Edmonds, "Vietnam was no more than a blip on the American consciousness prior to the closing days of World War II." The Vietnamese have a long history of resistance to foreign invaders, principally the Chinese, who controlled most of present day Vietnam, except for short intervals, between 111 B.C. and 939 A.D. By a series of steps between 1862 and 1893, the French took control of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, which together they called French Indochina. According to Hammer, Vietnamese nationalists "fought for independence from France as their ancestors had fought to oust the Chinese from Vietnam." Edmonds said "the Fre...