Why did we go there?

If you're going to analyse it based on today's current impression of America then you're going to struggle. What a lot of people like to forget is that the US got a lot of heat for not getting involved in fighting National Socialism in Germany quicker. Now you had another Socialist movement arise which was seen as oppressive and authoritarian. For the reasons the West felt the rise of National Socialism should have been stopped sooner they tried to nip Communism in the bud.

Hey! You're not old enough to drink! Now go and die for your country!!!

SEATO - South Eastern Treaty Alliance.

Back in the day we honored treaties.

I was there twice. If we had fought the war to win, we could have been out of there in a year.

Mostly denying the Soviet Union southern porting facilities and staging areas.

SpiltPersonality

Henry Kissinger said they went to SE Asia to show the Soviets that we'd fight for our oil interests in the middle east. The reasoning being that if we'd fight a limited war over Vietnam, a country with no significance to us economically, imagine how we'd protect our OPEC markets. We like to think of it as a war of ideology, but it was just a war of economics by proxy.

I hope you come back and check, because I'm going to give you a little more historical context.

France colonized Indochina during the European colonial era. I think it was in 1785 that French priests took Catholicism to Viet Nam. Because Viet Nam had originally been split into as many as three kingdoms, and because North Vietnamese (tieng Ha Noi) was a significantly different dialect from South Vietnamese (tien Sai Gon) the French established two colonial provinces, Tonkin China centered on the Red River (Song Do) which ran through Ha Noi and Hai Phong and Cochin China centered on the Mekong River (Song Me Kong).

About 1825 a French priest developed a Latin based alphabet for both Vietnamese languages. I thank him very much that I did not need to memorize thousands of Chinese pictographs, even though I don't remember his name.

The French used Vietnam to establish mostly rice and rubber plantations. The Vietnamese wanted their freedom, but were not in a position to wrest it away from the French. In 1941, the French Vichy government relinquished control of Indochina, including Laos and Kampuchea to the Japanese. I think they remained nominally in power, but for certain the Japanese were in control. I don't know how long the Viet Minh (Vietnamese nationalist guerrilla faction) were active prior to WW2, but they were definitely active against the Japanese. One of my Vietnamese (Tieng Ha Noi) instructors was a member of the Viet Minh in those days and described some of his activities against the Japanese.

After WW2 the Japanese evacuated Indochina. The French were not willing to accept that the colonial era was over. They wanted to hold on to their foreign possessions. Nevertheless, those possessions began to fight and win their independence. Often the independence of the nation did not mean freedom for the people. Libya became a dictatorship under a series of despots. I know next to nothing about Tunisia, but I don't think it became a leading democracy. As for Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, Pham Van Dong, Vo Nguyen Giap and other Viet Minh leaders revealed that, while they were certainly nationalists pursuing a Viet Nam that was under control of the Viet Namese, they were also devout communists. Viet Nam would be controlled by them and Viet Namese Marxists that they trained. My teacher and many other Viet Minh quit the movement.

In 1954 the Cong San cua Nhan Zan Viet Nam (Vietnamese People's Communist Party) and its Quan Doi Nhan Zan (People's Army) defeated the French forces at Dien Bien Phu. The French negotiated a surrender with UN involvement. The communists agreed to a partition of the country along the 17th parallel with the communists in control in the north and a democratic republic in the south. The United States guaranteed the independence of the south.

The south Vietnamese government, the Republic of Vietnam was corrupt from the beginning. This was not an unusual development and has happened more often than not following the withdrawal of a colonial power. Still, a corrupt government that recognized the leadership of the United States was better in our eyes than a communist government. Viet Nam was scheduled to have free elections to choose a new government in (I think) 1956. The United States had zero confidence that the elections could be supervised to ensure a free vote. Even if it was a 'fair' election in the south, the communists would certainly control the vote in the north, so that a small fraction of the south going for the communists would guarantee a communist victory overall. The Republic of Vietnam, with the United States backing rejected the elections.

The communists from North Vietnam began infiltrating weapons and personnel down into South Vietnam to support a guerrilla war against the Republic of Vietnam. The United States sent advisers, weapons, then Special Forces, and eventually regular troops into the Republic of Vietnam to support the government. At the same time we tried to improve that government to overcome the corruption.

There were various reasons that various politicians gave for 'getting involved.' I don't think that there was only one reason. Dr. Kissinger may have been right as quoted by another poster, but in 1957 President Eisenhower threatened to destroy the British economy if they did not immediately cease and desist in their attempt with the French and Israelis in seizing the Suez Canal. That strongly undermines 'Middle East Oil' argument. There were certainly millions of Vietnamese that did not want to be communist. Over half a million Vietnamese fled North Vietnam in 1954 to South Vietnam in order to have a shot at freedom. Almost nobody in the south wanted to go north. Thousands of Vietnamese, both north and south fled the country on flimsy boats between 1975 (communist victory) and the late 20th Century. Tens of thousands have continued to leave the country and immigrate here since. The economic advance of Socialist Republic of Viet Nam has been very slow since the war. That they went to war in Kampuchea to take control of that country in 1978 and China invaded Vietnam in retaliation in 1979. Those wars didn't help.

You can study it the rest of your life and you may not find a definitive explanation for why we did what we did. You may not even find a complete resolution on why the Vietnamese have gone the way they have.

The best diplomat I know is a fully charged phaser bank.

My understanding is that America went for 2 reasons

1). They were allied with South Vietnam, they felt had to protect their own. Otherwise , they lose credibility in the world

2). The domino theory. Americans were concerned that if South Vietnam fell, then Loas, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and eventually India would fall to communism too. This big cluster of communist countries would then serve as a threat to the USA. When South Vietnam fell in 1975, Laos and Cambodia became communist, and that’s all: so there is reason to believe that the domino theory was BS (though admittedly, we also don’t know what might have happened if USA didn’t get involved. Would more countries have adopted communism?)