There was a very important debate going on in the White House in the 1940s and 1950s. Should the president send U.S. troops into Vietnam to intervene in the Vietnam War? To answer this question, let us go back to the Geneva Accords agreement. This agreement stated that the fighting had to stop, and Vietnam was to be split temporarily along the 17th parallel. The United States began moving into Vietnam soon after the French left. Powerful American officials believed that the United States could form a strong noncommunist state in South Vietnam. While he was president, Kennedy had not supported the U.S. intervening in the war. In 1956 however, Kennedy changed his mind.
After Kennedy was assassinated, Lyndon B. Johnson became the new president. He believed that the communists had to be stopped, so he decided to increase U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war. After an alleged attack on an American destroyer, Johnson ordered air strikes against naval bases in North Vietnam. Two days later, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. This allowed the president to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression. It gave the president permission to expand U.S. role in the conflict.
Beginning in 1965, the United States took over fighting the Vietnam War. From then on, the South Vietnamese could only support the war, not fight in it.
This was a very important decision for the United States at the time because it was also during the Cold War, and there was still tension between them and the Soviet Union. Since North Vietnam was supported by the Soviets and South was supported by the Americans, if they started the attack on North Vietnam, this could have turned into WWIII. This is why they had to be very cautious in their intervention.
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