Vietnam - Kennedy's Move

Kennedy's move

The year was 1961 and Kennedy who had just taken office and did not think Vietnam was an issue at the time. He was thinking about the more important things at hand, like the Cold War. Vietnam rose to the top of concerns for him when the civil war broke out in Laos. Vice President Johnson was sent over to Vietnam to get a feel for its need of U.S interdiction, upon his return he asked Kennedy to strongly consider entering into the conflict. Kennedy's response was not to send a full barrage of troops but rather send Military Assistance Command of Vietnam (MACV), military advisors and Special Forces troops. They would work close with the ARVN (Army Republic of Vietnam) to train and advise them. Once on ground the military advisors to Kennedy would report that the ARVN was weak and things over here were becoming very serious. This news was seemingly hard to swallow, Kennedy wasn't ready to send any troops over and instead he would send more advisors and increase the aid. The number of advisors went from 900-15,000. The U.S. government would maintain that these "military advisors" were not "military forces" per se; the line quickly became quite blurred.

One major slap in the face of the U.S. was that many of the aid (weapons) that were sent over and distributed to the ARVN that year would end up in the hands of the Viet Cong. The truth is many of the ARVN soldiers were in fact secretly working for the National Liberation Front. Thus in turn not only did we train our enemy but we also supplied them with the weapons to kills us.

The Strategic Hamlet

The U.S. came up with the new plan in 1962 called the Strategic Hamlet program (1962) This plan was developed because of the concerns of the NLF (National Liberation Front) having a heavy influence on the pheasants. To prevent the NLF from doing this they moved the pheasants into villages that were guarded by the South Vietnamese army. These villages had stockades that were built around them with guards patrolling the outside.

This would ultimately back fire for one reason, and that was the pheasants felt like they were in a prison type atmosphere being in a fortified structure. They worked for no pay to dig moats, implant bamboo stakes, and erect fences against an enemy that didn't threaten them This would increase the hate that the pheasant had dramatically and cause them to join the NLF. They put their sights on the government officials for this happening to them. For the most part the majority of the peasants did not want to move to these (new villages), this would cause for the South Vietnamese army to do so with force. This would increase their hostility towards the Ngo Dinh Diem government. The pheasants believed that it was important to live and farm where their ancestors were buried. They resented the fact that