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From The Oxford Companion to American Military History. Ed. John Whiteclay Chambers II. New York: Oxford UP, 1999. Copyright © 1999 by Oxford UP.by David L Anderson "The Vietnam War was the longest deployment of U.S. forces in hostile action in the history of the American republic. Although there is no formal declaration of war from which to date U.S. entry, President John F. Kennedy's decision to send over 2,000 military advisers to South Vietnam in 1961 marked the beginning of twelve years of American military combat. U.S. unit combat began in 1965. The number of US. troops steadily increased until it reached a peak of 543,400 in April 1969. The total number of Americans who served in South Vietnam was 2.7 million. Of these, more than 58,000 died or remain missing, and 300,000 others were wounded. The US. government spent more than $140 billion on the war. Despite this enormous military effort, the United States failed to achieve its objective of preserving an independent, noncommunist state in South Vietnam. This failure has led to searching questions about why and how the war was fought and whether a better diplomatic and military outcome was possible for the United States. Escalation. By 1961, guerrilla warfare was widespread in South Vietnam. Communist-led troops of the National Liberation Front (NLF) of South Vietnam, commonly referred to as Vietcong, were initiating hundreds of terrorist and small unit attacks per month. Saigon’s military, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), was not able to contain this growing insurgency. During the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a small U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG), never numbering more than 740 uniformed soldiers, had provided training and logistics assistance to the ARVN. The Kennedy administration determined that the size and mission of the U.S. advisory effort must change if the U.S.-backed government of Ngo Dinh Diem in Saigon was to survive. Some of Kennedy's aides proposed a negotiated settlement in Vietnam similar to that which recognized Laos as a neutral country. Having just suffered international embarrassment in Cuba and Berlin, the president rejected compromise and chose to strengthen U.S. support of Saigon. In May 1961, Kennedy sent 400 U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Beret) troops into South Vietnam's Central Highlands to train Montagnard tribesmen in counterinsurgency tactics. He also tripled the level of aid to South Vietnam. A steady stream of airplanes, helicopters, armored personnel carriers (APCs), and other equipment poured into the South. By the end of 1962, there were 9,000 U.S. military advisers under the direction of a newly-created Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV), commanded by U.S. Army Gen. Paul Harkins. Under U.S. guidance, the Diem government also began construction of "strategic hamlets." These fortified villages were intended to insulate rural Vietnamese from Vietcong intimidation and propaganda. U.S. and South Vietnamese leaders were cautiously optimistic that increased U.S. assistance finally was enabling the Saigon government to defend itself...."

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As far as the "domestic" forces, and I am assuming you mean the troops not actively involved in RVN, we spent a lot of time training to fight the Soviet threat. The Korean peninsula heated up at the same time; it appeared the North Koreans were testing our resolve there.

On the home front, we trained, fought forest fires or whatever, and in my case I deployed to the city of Chicago twice, once during the Democratic National Convention (what I witnessed there caused me to change from being a conservative Democrat to a CONSERVATIVE and once after the assassination of MLK.

There was much going on in the world....I think you might want to narrow it down to one or two specific points and go from there.

Good luck.

"As far as the "domestic" forces, and I am assuming you mean the troops not actively involved in RVN, we spent a lot of time training to fight the Soviet threat. The Korean peninsula heated up at the same time; it appeared the North Koreans were testing our resolve there."

Good point. What many forget is that, less than 15 years before, the US had just emerged victorious from a bloody Pacific war in which tens-of-thousands of Americans (and British, Canadians and Australians)were killed or wounded. Does everyone think they detroyed Japanese imperialism in the Pacific just to walk away and let the commies take over? In spite of it all, the US will be shown to have been right in its VN involvement. Even though the war was lost by the US (or, really, it was one theatre in a global conflict. In this respect, it lost the battle, but won the war.), it demonstrated America's resolve, its attempts to keep its word to its allies, and kept enough Russian and Chinese resources busy to blunt the threat until the communist system was shown to be what it was: an unworkable Utopian idea, which lent itself all-too-easily(as most Utopian ideals) to dictatorship and btutal tyranny.