TammyM > wrote in
:

> Wasn't it the Eisenhower administration that initially sent "advisers"
> to Vietnam? Maybe I'm misremembering that, it's early and I haven't
> yet had my coffee.

Technically speaking the "Vietnam War" was the third panel (as it were)
in the Indochina triptych, the first (which saw US advisors on the
ground) being from 1945 (see below) to 1954 (Dien-Bien-Phu and the
stillborn vote, kiboshed by the Eisenhower administration because Ho Chi
Minh would have won), then on to 1965 (US ramps up military presence) and
from then on to 1975. By the time the US actually stepped in it, the
Indochina civil war had been going on for more than twenty years in one
form or another, if you include the anti-Japanese operations.

Oddly enough, the entire process was kicked off on April 30 1945 when
Major Archimedes Patti of the OSS met secretly with "the General", later
better known as Ho Chi Minh, somewhere along the China-Indochina border
with a view to cementing an alliance, and ended on April 30 1975 when
the last helicopter lifted off the roof of the US embassy in Saigon.
Thirty years exactly, to the day. Michael Maclear called it The Ten
Thousand Day War (more accurately the 10 957 day war, including the
extra day for 7 leap years during that time).

But the groundwork was laid down during WWII when Roosevelt refused to
allow the French back into IndoChina and wanted to give it to the
British instead (they didn't want it). It was all part of a
decolonizatiom policy he had elaborated to prevent the same old powers
from starting all over again. There was also the issue of Japanese
presence in Indochina.

Roosevelt figured the Vietnamese would come to the side of the US
willingly in the issue of decolonization because, as he put it, they
were "a small and peaceable people". The history of the next thirty
years seems to indicate that someone must have ticked them off in a
major way.

So, to conclude, Democratic and the Republican administrations played a
part in escalating the hostilities. It has recently been revealed that
Robert McNamara knowingly misrepresented the extent of the Haiphong
harbour incident to Kennedy. So it appears the entire "Vietnam War"
could have been avoided.

--

Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest
of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest
good of everyone. - John Maynard Keynes