US History: Vietnam according to Reader's Digest - Essay Example

The Vietnam War has hazy motivations at best: an abstract worry about a governmental change in countries on the other side of the planet, summed up by the American leadership as the “domino theory” – the idea that if one country became Communist, so would the next, and the next, until the whole world (except the United States) was run by what Americans saw as the oppression of socialism (Barron and Paul 1977). The war in Vietnam was different from most of the other conflicts in American history.

There was not a clear point of entry into the conflict – a stark contrast with the horrific night of Pearl Harbor, for example. The rationale behind United States involvement lacked the hearty sentiments of Manifest Destiny or the hated enemies Kaiser Bill or Adolf Hitler. It may have been these murky beginnings that made the war such an unpopular one, and a topic that enervated rather than energized the American public. It may have been this lack of unity regarding the Vietnam conflict that offended President Johnson, who sought to turn the conflict around and make it a positive factor in American society.

This American adjustment in strategy led to a change in the Communist strategy as well. Because the Communists knew that the American government did not have a specific vision behind its military intervention in Vietnam, they believed that they would be able to defeat the technologically and numerically superior American forces by drawing the war out, and getting the United States into a slow, bogged-down conflict that would wear away at public opinion and political will. At the same time, the South Vietnamese became increasingly unreliable allies.

After the coup that toppled Diem, the South Vietnamese government changed over and over. Rather than admit that the United States was supporting a government that had only the shakiest claims of being a stable democracy, however, President Johnson listened to the shrill claims of