16.+Path+to+Vietnam

=**VIETNAM - THE PATH TO WAR **=

You all know that the United States was involved in a major military conflict in Vietnam during the Cold War ... but why? What was America's "path to war"? Using the resources below and __Creating America__, your task this evening is to write a description in YOUR OWN WORDS of the causes of American involvement in Southeast Asia. Pretend you are writing it as a summary for on online encyclopedia or textbook. Your description should ...
 * be between two and four complete, well written paragraphs
 * contain the following terms - France, Ho Chi Minh, communism, Ngo Dinh Diem, military advisors, Gulf of Tonkin, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Rolling Thunder
 * be IN YOUR OWN WORDS (remember, it's easy to check this online)
 * contain two images THAT RELATE TO YOUR WRITING
 * Should end with the first Marines landing in Vietnam in 1965

Need some help? How about ... //Creating America// [|This cool animation] [|Into Vietnam (Overview)] from ABC-CLIO [|Timeline of the Vietnam War] [|Vietnam Online Timeline] Causes of the Vietnam War video below:

and this voicethread, made by your favorite 8th grade American history teacher that you have this year (I like to limit my competition)

Paragraphs: There were many reasons for the cause of the US entering the war in Vietnam. To start off, the French fought in a battle called Dien Bien Phu and when they lost they had to own up to the fact they were defeated. Truman also sent supplies to the French so they could keep part of their colonies in Vietnam in the Truman Doctrine. After this, the US kind of took sides like in the Korean war. Again, it was the north with the leader Ho Chi Minh against the south with Ngo Dinh Diem in charge. The difference was that the north was run my communists who won in the election of 1956 which was not good for the US. Since the US supported the French, they also supported the south and Ngo Dinh Diem, who had to ask for military to back him up in Vietnam. This made the war get more intense and president Eisenhower sent 900 military advisors to help out. After Kennedy was elected, he had sent 11,000 by 1962!

The war was not doing much better when the government in the south under Diem crumbled because it was so corrupt. This was very scary for the US because many were convinced that communism was going to take over in Vietnam because it was so messed up. The US thought that the whole world would fall to communism too if this happened, which would be terrible. Also, controversy took place on whether the US should get involved or not, like in many other wars in the past, as WWI and WWII. The US was not supposed to fight in Vietnam because it was not declared by Congress. But anyways, in 1964 President Johnson staged an attack of the USS Maddox on the North Vietnamese in the Golf of Tonkin. Congress told him they could do anything to defend the US and now, we are not so sure about what happened. We know only one attack happened, but not much else. The first plan was called Rolling Thunder and planes were sent over Vietnam and dropped a lot of bombs, even more bombs than used in Germany in WWII. After this, in 1965 Marines were sent in, about 3,500 joined the ones already there. This made the war become quite bigger and more intense than what we thought. This is a map of Vietnam which hows the two sides of the war and the Golf of Tonkin

This is the Vietnam Memorial which speaks for itself how symbolic it is to the effect it had on the US and how many people we lost.