Vietnam War, Invasion of South Vietnam Options

[insurrection]

I'm confused about something... does anyone know why the US invaded South Vietnam in 1962?

[yabasta]

In world war 2 the average age of the combat soldier was 26, in Vietnam it was 19.

[Fred]

well they dint invaded as i understand it they went to hep the south

fred

[insurrection]

well they dint invaded as i understand it they went to hep the south

fred
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seems that it was the usual reason... the "red scare."
but anyway, let me give some context as this is an unpopular view. here's more of that "Chomskyism" Grimer was talking about. i prefer to call it being honest about history, but you can call it what you like.

...
Consider the following facts. In 1962, the United States attacked South Vietnam. In that year, President John F. Kennedy sent the U.S. Air Force to attack rural South Vietnam, where more than 80 percent of the population lived. This was part of a program intended to drive several million people into concentration camps (called "strategic hamlets") where they would be surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards. This would "protect" these people from the guerrillas whom, we conceded, they were largely supporting.

The direct U.S. attack against South Vietnam followed our support for the French attempt to reconquer their former colony, our disruption of the 1954 "peace process," and a terrorist war against the South Vietnamese population. This terror had already left some 75,000 dead while evoking domestic resistance, supported from the northern half of the country after 1959, that threatened to bring down the regime that the U.S. had established. In the following years, the U.S. continued to resist every attempt at peaceful settlement, and in 1964 began to plan the ground invasion of South Vietnam. The land assault took place in early 1965, accompanied by the bombing of North Vietnam and an intensification of the bombing of the south, at triple the level of the more publicized bombing of the north. The U.S. also extended the war to Laos and Cambodia.
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This isn't the full essay, and in fact the situation has an interesting tie-in to the complicity of the media, but I left that part out as it didn't seem very relevant to the discussion.
full text is here: http://www.chomsky.info/articles/198912--.htm

[defiance]

Durign WWII the Japanese invaded Vietnam, which was then part of the French colony of Indochina, which also included modern-day Cambodia and Laos. After the war the French re-instituted colonial rule, and the Vietnamese people, under the leadership of the nationalist army called the Viet Mihn, which was led by Ho Chi Mihn (who was also the leader of the Indochiense Communist Party), revolted against the French and won their independence. But in the peace deal that was signed, the Vietnamese had agreed to a temporary partition of the country between North and South Vietnam (with the North under the Viet Mihn), after which elections would be held for a unified national government. Well the Southern government, under dictator Ngo Dihn Diem, which was allied to the US and France, refused to re-unite with the North and hold national elections (in which Ho Chia Mihn, the Communist, was destined to win, having been the main leader of the revolution and being extremely popular as a result), saying they would never live under a Communist regime.

That's when the US became involved, as it began sending financial and military aid the Diem government in order to keep the Communists from taking over the South. In response the Mihn government, with weapons provided by Russia and Chian or captured from the French during the first war, sent supplies and soldiers into the South to aid the Viet Cong geurrillas in overthrowing Diem so the country could be re-unified (under a Communist government of course). Finally, when Diem couldn't defeat the guerrillas or get most of the people to support him, the Americans instigated a coup against him and set up a military junta. Finally President Johnson ordered the US military to begin begin major operations in South Vietnam after US patrol boats off the North Vietnamese shore were supposedly harrassed by Vietnamese torpedoes. That's how we got involved. War was never officially declared.

[DestinedtoFall]

what i dont understand is why we actually thought we can stop a communist country from continuing communism..

[insurrection]

Durign WWII the Japanese invaded Vietnam, which was then part of the French colony of Indochina, which also included modern-day Cambodia and Laos. After the war the French re-instituted colonial rule, and the Vietnamese people, under the leadership of the nationalist army called the Viet Mihn, which was led by Ho Chi Mihn (who was also the leader of the Indochiense Communist Party), revolted against the French and won their independence. But in the peace deal that was signed, the Vietnamese had agreed to a temporary partition of the country between North and South Vietnam (with the North under the Viet Mihn), after which elections would be held for a unified national government. Well the Southern government, under dictator Ngo Dihn Diem, which was allied to the US and France, refused to re-unite with the North and hold national elections (in which Ho Chia Mihn, the Communist, was destined to win, having been the main leader of the revolution and being extremely popular as a result), saying they would never live under a Communist regime.

That's when the US became involved, as it began sending financial and military aid the Diem government in order to keep the Communists from taking over the South. In response the Mihn government, with weapons provided by Russia and Chian or captured from the French during the first war, sent supplies and soldiers into the South to aid the Viet Cong geurrillas in overthrowing Diem so the country could be re-unified (under a Communist government of course). Finally, when Diem couldn't defeat the guerrillas or get most of the people to support him, the Americans instigated a coup against him and set up a military junta. Finally President Johnson ordered the US military to begin begin major operations in South Vietnam after US patrol boats off the North Vietnamese shore were supposedly harrassed by Vietnamese torpedoes. That's how we got involved. War was never officially declared.
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Well it was if you consider the Gulf of Tonkin resolution to be a declaration of war.... which it was, in effect.
The article at the Wikipedia is pretty informative: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_Incident
I'm glad you posted that, because it reminded me about this Incident and the Resolution following it. One section (Chomsky again) sticks out with regard to the answer to my question:

Contradicted Claims
...
According to the official description, increased U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War came in 1964. This constituted a program of covert South Vietnamese operations, designed to impose "progressively escalating pressure" upon the North.initiated on a small and essentially ineffective scale in February. The active U.S. role in the few covert operations that were carried out was limited essentially to planning, equipping, and training of the South Vietnamese forces involved. However, U.S. responsibility for the launching and conduct of these activities was unequivocal and carried with it an implicit symbolic and psychological intensification of the U.S. commitment.

Many dispute the above sequence of events, including dissident intellectual Noam Chomsky, among others. They contend that active military involvement on the part of the US actually began as early as 1961 (with operations beginning in 1962) and that the August 4 incident was in fact a fabrication crafted by the Johnson administration. It is their assertion that the reason for this was to enable the US to claim, for the benefit of the American public, that it was in fact the North Vietnamese that initiated the open hostilities. Although information obtained well after the fact indicates that there was actually no North Vietnamese attack that night, U.S. authorities say they were convinced at the time that an attack had taken place. As a result, planes from the carriers Ticonderoga and Constellation were sent to hit North Vietnamese torpedo boat bases and fuel facilities.
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