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Why Are We Here?When Are We Going Home

Why we here? Why are we going home?

The Vietnam War was the longest and most expensive war in American History. The toll we paid wasn't just financial, it cost the people involved greatly, physically and mentally. This war caused great distress and sadness, as well as national confusion. Everyone had that one burning question being why? Why were we even there? The other question being why did America withdrawal from Vietnam. The purpose of this paper is to answer these two burning questions, and perhaps add some clarity to the confusion American was experiencing.
The Truman doctrine was to stop the spread of communism and it was used to stop the south part of Vietnam becoming communists like the north So America sent in money and all the help they could to stop Vietnam becoming a communist country. Vietnam was part of the French empire. However, during World War 2 the Japanese took over .The Vietnamese communist movement Vietminh was formed to resist the Japanese. France tried to repossess Vietnam at the end of the war but the Vietminh fought back. With the United States lending its financial support to France, when the Japanese defeated France, the United States sent money and military consultants to the non-communist government of South Vietnam. ~ Other advisors however doubted that such an action could reverse the disastrous course of the war and warned the president that it could lead inevitably to deeper involvement in an Asian land war the United States couldn't win. (The Debate over Vietnam Page, 30)
By 1960 the American troops were sent in to fight a war that cost; Fifty-eight thousand Americans lost their lives. The losses to the Vietnamese people were appalling. The financial cost to the United States comes to something over $150 billion dollars. Direct American involvement began in 1955 with the arrival of the first advisors. The first combat troops arrived in 1965 and we fought the war until the cease-fire of January 1973.
The...