General Discussion

No. I'm not old enough to remember the beginnings. But, a lot of Americans are unaware of how the US and British armed and fought with the Viet Minh against the Japanese during WWII and then the British re-armed Japanese POWs to disarm the Viet Minh so that the French could come back and re-claim their colonial territory. The Vietnamese had been promised their independence if they helped fight the Japanese.

This betrayal led them to turn to the Chinese and the Russians for help in fighting the French. From the end of WWII until 1954 when the Vietnamese defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu, the US paid 70% of France's military expenses in Vietnam. The UN brokered Geneva accord partitioned the country into a Communist North and a US backed South Vietnam that the US supported with 900 advisors until beginning escalation in 1960 when the number of advisors increased to 16,000 to support South Vietnam against the Viet Cong.

The escalation continued with Combat troops being committed in 1964 after the Tonkin Gulf incident and more troops kept being committed until we had 500000 troops in Vietnam in 1968.