In 1955, the United States began to help South Vietnam, and for ten years, spent billions of dollars in war equipment and economic aid. But the Vietcong, aided by North Vietnam, remained a constant threat to the government in the south. In 1965, President Johnson sent the first American combat troops to South Vietnam, and at that point, it became an American War.
When the first American troops went to war in Vietnam, Americans went to war at home. Hawks, people in support of the war, believe that our support of non-Communist South Vietnam was necessary to prevent the expansion of Communisim in Southeast Asia. They thought that if North Vietnam took over South Vietnam and other southeast Asian countries, they would "all fall over like dominoes" with communism.
Opponenets of the war, Doves, steadily protested. They thought the United States should have never been fighting a war in Asia, a war that made troops travel halfway across the world. They believed Americans had no business interfering in a Vietnamese matter.
If the United States' involvement in the war had lasted a short time, these different views might not have been so harsh. But the war wasn't short. It became the longes and most painful war in American history.
The number of troops increased as each year went by. At the end of 1965, 200 thousand Amercian troops were fighting. By the end of 1967, there were half a million. Many began to believe it was a war we would not and could not win.
In 1973, a cease-fire agreement was signed in Paris, France. Most troops came hom. But in 1975, the North Vietnam Army invaded South Vietnam, ignoring the agreement. The troops and personnel that were still there mad a last-minute getaway. The war was finally over.
