Cao Ky: The Vietnam War

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Reality

The Vietnam war was, like many other wars, a bloody and brutal fight. Vietnam used to be a territory of France until 1954 when they surrendered because they outnumbered in a battle. The Geneva Conference was then held to discuss the end of the war and due to that, North and South vietnam were split up because of the different leaders. China, the Soviet Union, and other communist countries were supportive of the North while the United States and anti-communist allies were supportive of the South. The leader for the North side was communist Ho Chi Minh and the South was ruled by anti-communist Ngo Dinh Diem. Ngo Dinh Diem starts off as prime minister in 1954 but eventually becomes president in 1955. The United States and others wanted to avoid the …show more content…

He started storming temples and by 1963 it got really out of hand. This change in character led the south and many people getting angered. The result of this anger led to the assassination of Diem. With Diem gone, Nguyen Van Thieu and Nguyen Cao Ky come into power. Only a few years later Nguyen Van Thieu is able to get Cao Ky out of the picture. There was a bit of shady business before Cao and Van took over. There was a claim that U.S. maddox was attacked by North Vietnamese. Days later there was another claim that an different U.S. vessel was attacked by North Vietnamese boats again. These attacks named the Gulf of Tonkin incidents really angered Congress and gave Lyndon B. Johnson a choice to officially initiate a war with Vietnam. Things were escalated and got to 500,000 U.S. troops. In 1968, congress told the people they were about to succeed and things seemed to be looking bright. That was until the viet cong coordinated a huge attack to South Vietnam called the “Tet Offensive”. The American people and Congress began to be suspicious of this because LBJ gave false hope on winning the war but then having the Viet Cong coordinate such a secret attack. The United States thought their soldiers could take a

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