越南战争-肯尼迪

In Kennedy’s inaugural address, he made an ambitious pledge to..

In 1961, Kennedy faced threecrisis...

These crises made Kennedy believe that another failure would damage U.S. credibility and his own reputation. He was thus determined to defeat communism in Vietnam.

He told The New York Times immediately after his Vienna meeting with Khrushchev...

There was this Domino theory...

They use this as an excuse to send more troops, in 1957...

But Kennedy was actually not that willing to order a full-scale deployment, thinking that Diệm had to defeat the guerrillas[gə'rɪləs] on his own.

The quality of the South Vietnamese military, however, remained poor. Whereas the NLF grew stronger...

In a series of government "White Papers," They called NLF...

a derogatory and slang term

The NLF, on the other hand, argued that it was autonomous and independent and that it was made up mostly of non-Communists.

The report, known as the "December 1961 White Paper," argued for... And contained..

The US would provide...

And here comes the Strategic Hamlet Program. In late 1961...

This joint U.S.&South Vietnamese program attempted to resettle the rural population into fortified camps to prevent peasants from Communist insurgency.

They hoped these new communities would provide security and strengthen the tie between villagers and the central government rather than the NLF. However, itfailed and officially ended in 1964.

U.S. officials began discussing the possibility of a regime change during the middle of 1963. The United States Department of State was generally in favor of encouraging a coup, while the Defense Department still favored Diệm.

At that time, an incident occurred...

The pictures of the monks engulfed[ɪn'gʌlf] in flames became world headlines..

The Buddhist protest had created such mess in the south that...

Both America and the new South Vietnam thought that they might win the war now.

But only chaos rose. One military government replaced another quickly in the South.Hanoi took advantage of the situation and increased its

support for the guerrillas.Increasingly, each new regime was viewed as a puppet of the Americans.

Kennedy told his National Security Advisor that...

Kennedy had signed National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 263, dated October 11, which ordered the withdrawal of 1,000 military personnel by the end of the year. Obviously, Kennedy was moving in a less hawkish direction.

He could be a perfect president, except from his messy sexual life. He was a charming leader as well as the top 5 favourite presidents in the American history. He made many great decisions, and Vietnam war seems the Achilles’s heel to him. Vietnam was the only problem handed off by Kennedy to his successor in no better but a worsesituation" Anyway...

After Kennedy's assassination, President Johnson reversed Kennedy's decision immediately. He thought more aggressive action was needed.

After reading those materials, I felt very sorry that Kennedy could never had the opportunity to correct his one last fault. The Vietnam War could have ended earlier, but this was just a guess and another if for Historians.