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Get the facts about Vietnam

September 01, 2011

It amazes me that some people continue to insist that President John F. Kennedy began our involvement in Vietnam. He did not. That is simply untrue.

I urge and encourage these apparently uneducated people ignorant about how our involvement in Vietnam began to research the subject, as I have done. Facts cannot be disputed.

Fact: Since the end of World War II, American cold warriors had the view that under no circumstances could the U.S. lose control of Vietnam.

Fact: As early as 1952, a secret national security council memo stated bluntly, “Communist control of all of Southeast Asia would render the U.S. position in the Pacific offshore island chain precarious and would seriously jeopardize fundamental U.S. Security interests in the Far East.”

Fact: in 1954, after French troops surrendered to Ho Chi Minh’s forces at Dien Bien Phy, all the relevant powers, except the United States, signed the Geneva Accords temporarily separating the country along the 17th parallel until unification elections could be held. President Eisenhower, in effect, approved a permanent division of the country by canceling the scheduled elections and creating a separate government in South Vietnam. Eisenhower used military “advisors” to prop up a puppet dictatorship against Ho Chi Minh’s Forces from the north, and Viet Cong forces in the south.

Fact: In October 1963, seeing the U.S. bogged down in a no-win situation, President Kennedy instructed Defense Secretary Robert McNamara to withdraw immediately 1,000 American military advisers from Vietnam. An order that was quietly rescinded after his death.

Fact: Kennedy planned to withdraw all American forces from Vietnam. So, it was not President Kennedy who got the U.S. involved in Vietnam. Kennedy was not president in 1952, the year Eisenhower was elected to his first term.

Kennedy was not president in 1954. Eisenhower was. And, Kennedy did not send military advisers to Vietnam. Eisenhower did. These are indisputable facts. So I hope this resolves the argument as to who got us involved in Vietnam.

Roger D. Bowman
Danville

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