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Originally Posted by OnyxCougar
Weren't we asked by South Vietnam to come help repel invasion from North Vietnam?
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Read David Halberstam's "Making of a Quagmire". In particular is the battle of Ap Bac in December 1962. The S Vietnamese government's #1 fear was not communist insurgents (the Viet Cong). It was an coup d'etat by their own people. If a unit commander lost equipment while fighting communists, he could even be reprimmanded. Equipment that was stationed first and foremost to protect the S Vietname government from its own people.
Those who saw Vietnam in black and white never understood what David Halbersham warned in his 1964 book. Halberstam turned out to be right - in spades. But few even read the Pentagon Papers. To the ill informed, Vietnam was about stopping communism. Not really - at least from the perspective of the S Vietnamese government. For if it was true, then why was the Vietnam Declaration of Independence an exact copy of the US Declaration of Independence. For if it was true, then why did Ho Chi Minh send five letters to the US president asking that Vietnam be made a protectorate of the US - just like Philippines.
Those who see the world in simplist terms never really understood why America wasted so many lives in Vietnam. Making of a Quagmire is a lexicon of American culture because of this book. The domino theory was how politicans promoted their agenda to an American public who finally comprehended the real problem after 1972.