Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was the longest war ever fought by the US. The war lasted 15 years, from 1959 to 1975. Many people say this was the first war that the US "lost". They started fighting in Vietnam because they wanted to stop the spread of communism. Communism is to many, a depraved way of living because the government has a lot of control. The Americans tried to glean as much information from Vietnam about converting to communism. The US did not want communism to spread in Southeast Asia. They believed that the communist forces would gain control of Vietnam. The US strongly opposes Communism because they feel it is not right. Before this "Vietnam had been split in half in 1954, after fighting a war to gain independence from France. When French forces withdrew, Vietnamese Communists gained control of North Vietnam" (Wiki answers, 2012). The southern part of Vietnam was weak and so that's where we Americans came in. In the beginning we were only giving them military and money support but then that grew into something more. We never did declare war on Northern Vietnam but we did bomb them more then we bombed people in World War 2. We went in also to stop the domino theory.  The domino theory is “which held that if one country fell under communist influence or control, its neighboring countries would soon follow" (Cold war, containment, 2012). In the end we lost the war basically and Vietnam became a communist country. The climate was very murky and hard for the soldiers who fought. Almost 60,000 US soldiers died. Also, Many American's did not support the war for various reasons. 

cited: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_did_the_US_become_involved_in_Vietnam and http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1965.html