Vietnam is 9000 miles away from the United States. Yet America felt that it wasin it’s best interest to protect the peace in south Asia and stop the spread of communism.Therefore, America thought that the establishment of the “Iron Curtain” of Europe mustbe stopped from happening in Asia. The communist take over of China, the Korean Warand the communist victory over the French in Vietnam led many Americans to fear thatthe communists were taking over the world and America must dispatch force to stop theirexpansion. At that time, most American believed in the “Domino Theory”, suggestingthat if one Asian country fell to the Communist the others would quickly follow. TheU.S. government believed that by helping the South Vietnamese government to resist theinvasion of the North Vietnamese would prevent the spread of communism throughoutthe world. After W.W.II, the US government considered that the communists posed agreat threat to world peace, for example, communist easily established a so called “IronCurtain” in east Europe and overthrew the Chang regime in China as well as drove outthe French from Vietnam. Meanwhile, American presidents had done enough to avoidcharge as “who lost Vietnam to the communists.” In 1954, instead of keeping the promiseof Geneva to hold free elections in order to elect a leader to rule the united Vietnam,America assisted Nyo Dinb Diem gain the presidency and established an American-stylegovernment in southern Vietnam. By the mid-1950s, the Vietcong posed a great threatagainst South Vietnam, and the North began to pump weapons, advisors, and otherresource into the southern cadres, which were reorganized as the National LiberationFront in 1958. Therefore, in the late 1950’s the U.S. government dispatched hundreds ofspecial “advisers” (later in war the numbers was up to thousands) to assist the SouthVietnamese military to fight the Vietcong...
