Questions on Vietnam?

The Vietnam war was the first living room war. The news showed graphic images nightly causing Americans to sway their opinions on the war.

Communism really was not the issue, though the press made it seem like that.

The U.S. involvement in 'Nam, unlike today's middle-east issue, was not warranted in any way.

The whole thing started when the French couldn't hold on to their "property".

From 1946 until 1954, the Vietnamese struggled for their independence from France during the First Indochina War. At the end of this war, the country was temporarily divided into North and South Vietnam. North Vietnam came under the control of the Vietnamese Communists who had opposed France and who aimed for a unified Vietnam under Communist rule. The South was controlled by Vietnamese who had collaborated with the French. In 1965 the United States sent in troops to prevent the South Vietnamese government from collapse.

The entire thing from the mid '50s was driven by what came to be known as the "military-industrial complex", a conglomeration of supercorporations with stooges in the GAO, high ranking military officers, the Pentagon, and the U.S. Congress.

It was a rich time for the companies and a bloody time for everyone else.

That war was over money and nothing else. There was no danger of the "domino effect" causing the U.S. to become communist since socialism was already deeply entrenched in the legislative bodies of the land.

That is why we fought against that war so fervently. That is why so many of us ended in jail or killed in the streets of our own cities and on our own college campus'.

The war in 'Nam was a travesty which cost 60,000 or more U.S. soldiers their lives and 2,000,000 or more Vietnamese lives.

Note: The war in 'Nam was supported by both Democrats and Republicans from the first U.S. involvement which began in 1941 under Franklin D. Roosevelt.

After Japanese troops occupy Vietnam during World War II, the U.S. military intelligence agency Office of Strategic Services (OSS) allies with Ho Chi Minh and his Viet Minh guerrillas.

Notice that the U.S. had allied itself with a future "deadly enemy".

Americans never really held the war in Vietnam in high esteem. After many years of the cold war, no one really wanted to continue with the war on Communism.