The Pace of War

The Pace of War

The Vietnam War was a struggle between nationalist forces who attempted to unify the country of Vietnam under a communist government and the United States who attempted to prevent the spread of communism. The Vietnam War was a long costly war for the united states that lasted from 1955-1975. Because of the length of the war, there was four different presidents who took office during the war: Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. However, I am going to talk about Eisenhower and Kennedy, the first two United States presidents involved in the war, and the decisions that they made.

Eisenhower was the first president to go headfirst into the Vietnam conflicts. Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969), a Republican, was the popular 34th President of the United States, who served two terms from 1953 to 1961. Prior to his presidency, Eisenhower was a military man, commanding the D-Day invasion while serving as Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during World War II. In February 1954, President Eisenhower refused to commit American troops to the Franco-Vietnamese War. In a press conference he stated, "I cannot conceive of a greater tragedy for America than to get heavily involved now in an all-out war in any of those regions." However, by April, he sent no U.S. troops to the region, he authorized military aid to the French. After France surrendered to the Vietnamese, Eisenhower's administration aided anti-communist leader Ngo Dinh Diem (south Vietnam) in consolidating power in Saigon. Throughout his second term as president, Eisenhower remained committed to Diem's often-tyrannical regime.

President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) was the 35th president of the United States. Elected in 1960 at the age of 43, he became the youngest person ever to be voted into the White House. Kennedy served from 1961 until his assassination in November 1963. In 1961, he had a new team to investigate the conditions in South Vietnam. This investigation was known as the “December 1961 White Papers”. The content in the white paper was basically a cry for more aid to Vietnam. Kennedy decided to send more advisors and machinery but would not send troops. During his years as president, Kennedy tripled the amount of American economic and military aid to the South Vietnamese and increased the number of U.S. military advisors in Indochina. He refused to withdraw from the quickly rising conflict in Vietnam. In 1963 Kennedy put his support into a coup. Then, on November 2, 1963, Diem and his brother were brutally assassinated. Three weeks later Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963.

Since Eisenhower and Kennedy were the first two presidents of the war, the decisions that they made effected the pace of the war and essentially the outcome of the war. Think about it... How different would the war have been if it were not for their decisions? Would have Kennedy died the way that he did? Possibly. Could have the war been shorter or longer? Absolutely.