Vietnam, which was under the leadership of Ngo Dinh Diem. The U.S. provided support to Diem's government despite his refusal to carry out the reforms that the U.S. demanded (Brokaw, 2007, p. 131). U.S. leaders supported South Vietnam because of the Cold War belief that the Soviet Union and China (which is just north of Vietnam) were involved in a joint effort to dominate the world (Chafe, 1999, p. 92). American policymakers had developed the "domino theory," in which it was argued that if South Vietnam was taken over by Communists, the other nations in the region would quickly follow (Chafe, 1999, p. 103). In order to prevent this from happening, U.S. leaders implemented a policy of "containment," which was concerned with stopping the spread of Communism to any nation where it did not already exist.
America's involvement in Vietnam increased substantially in August 1964, when North Vietnamese forces fired upon two U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. In response to this incident, President Johnson convinced Congress to give him the power to wage war against the North Vietnamese as well as the Communist rebels in South Vietnam. U.S. leaders believed that it would not take very long to win the war. However, they had to adopt a new attitude following the battles that occurred at Ia Drang in 1965. In these battles, the North Vietnamese troops were more disciplined and committed than American leaders had expected them to be. Hundreds of American soldiers were killed or wounded in four days of intense fighting. According to Michael Herr, a war correspondent who spent time covering events in Vietnam, one of the reasons for America's entry into the war was because the nation's leaders "thought it would be easy" (Herr, 1977, p. 95). As further noted by Herr (1977), "after the Ia Drang, that first arrogance sat less and less well about the shoulders of the Command" (p. 95).
Although the situation was more difficult than expect...