What was the original intent of the war in Vietnam?
1 Answer
There are a number of possible answers to this question.
Explanation:
Firstly what stage of the Vietnam war are we talking about? The intent of the Vietnamese from the 30's until the defeat of the French in 1954 was to liberate themselves from French colonialism.
As far as the Americans were concerned ostensibly it was to support a democratic government in the South threatened by a communist opposition in the shape of the Vietminh/Vietcong and North Vietnamese.
This in turn was part of the US domino theory which argued that if one country fell to communism then other countries would follow like a row of dominoes.
Such commitment was clear in Kennedy's inaugural speech in 1961.
Critics of such a policy would argue that it was an attempt to extend and maintain US foreign policy in South-East Asia, based on lies, e.g. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and The Pentagon Papers.
The Americans through the CIA were also instrumental in the assassination of President Diem in 1963 and his replacement by the military, hardly a democratic move.
Finally there is the issue of heroin. Some critics argue that the real purpose of the Vietnam War was for the mafia to secure heroin from that area particularly the Golden Triangle smuggled through US army customs, often in the bodies of dead American soldiers.
