longest, cost fifty-eight thousand American lives. Only the Civil War

and the two world wars were deadlier for Americans. During the decade

of Vietnam beginning in 1964, the U.S Treasury spent over $140 billion

on the war, enough money to fund urban renewal projects in every major

American city. Despite these enormous costs and their accompanying

public and private trauma for the American people, the United States

failed, for the first time in its history, to achieve its stated war

aims. The goal was to preserve a separate, independent, noncommunist

government in South Vietnam, but after April 1975, the communist

Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) ruled the entire nation.

The initial reasons for U.S. involvement in Vietnam seemed logical and

compelling to American leaders. Following its success in World War II,

the United States faced the future with a sense of moral rectitude and

material confidence. From Washington's perspective, the principal

threat to U.S. security and world peace was monolithic, dictatorial

communism emanating from he Soviet Union. Any communist anywhere, at

home or abroad, was, by definition, and enem

Kissinger acknowledged that the arrangement provided primarily for a

escalated U.S. involvement but that stopped short of an all-out

States sought to assist. Furthermore, U.S. leaders underestimated the

deposed Bao Dai in October 1955, resisted holding an election on the

President John F. Kennedy concurred with his predecessor's domino

Vietnamese attacks on U.S. Navy vessels in the Gulf of Tonkin in August

reunification of Vietnam. Despite over $1 billion of U.S. aid between

of a military clash with China. Using as a provocation alleged North

country of the Japanese and then, after 1945, to prevent France from

Because American policy makers failed to appreciate the amount of

any sign of communist aggression must be met quickly and forcefully by

administrations from 1950 through the 1960s into a firm anticommunist

tenacity of the enemy. For the Vietnamese communists, the struggle was

Eisenhower and Kennedy policies of helping Vietnamese forces fight the

Some common words found in the essay are:
North Vietnam, North Vietnamese, South Vietnamese, Civil War, South Vietnam, William Westmoreland, Vietnam Washington, Vietnamese War, Asia Subsequent, Soviet Union, north vietnam, south vietnam, world war ii, war ii, world war, involvement vietnam, north vietnamese, south vietnamese, american leaders, soviet union, tet offensive, reasons involvement vietnam,
Approximate Word count = 1689
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)