Vietnam 1962-1969 - Essay Example

Vietnam 1962-1969 America’s involvement in Vietnam affairs traces as far back as 1941. This year h US military intelligence agency Office of Strategic Services (OSS) secretly smuggled Communist activist Ho Chi Minh to Vietnam to have him fighting Japanese which had just occupied French Indochina dependency. Four years later Ho Chi Minh proclaims Vietnamese independence. Furthermore Vietnamese Declaration of Independence quoted almost word by word United States Declaration of Independence. Nevertheless as soon as World War II was over the roads of Vietnamese communists and OSS divided.

Over a fortnight after Ho Chi Minh plagiarized American Declaration of Independence the first American dies on Vietnamese soil. An OSS officer Lt. Col. A. Peter Dewey was killed by Vietminh guerrillas mistaken for French officer. Ironically Dewey had submitted a report on crisis in Vietnam stating that America "ought to clear out of Southeast Asia." On 26 July, 1956 US government assigns $15 million in military aid to the French in order to deter the spread of “Communist threat”. That year lots of American military advisors followed American millions to Vietnam.

To aid French to struggle against «monolithic world Communism" Americans establish Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) in South Vietnam. Twelve years later this Agency was replaced by the United States Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV). 1962 thus becomes the year of the beginning of the full-scale Vietnam War as we know it so far. In 1964 Southeast Asia Resolution as well as Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was passed. The documents authorized to apply conventional warfare in Indochina region.

This very year America elected Lyndon Johnson her new president who announced his Great Society program. As any great society America needed a great victorious war so the president announces that his society “can never again stand aside, prideful in isolation”. During the next five years “the land of the free and the home of the brave” “proudly failed” to establish itself as a military superpower. Works Cited The Vietnam War. The History Place. http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/vietnam/index-1945.

html Vietnam Timeline. 29 March 2011. http://www.historyinfilm.com/jacket/timeline.htm