9781422278994

The Escalation of American Involvement in the Vietnam War

.quite quickly begun to reconsider the suitability of this U.S. move, largely as a result of his increasing perception of the Diem administration’s corruption and abuse of civil rights, in combination with the South Vietnamese forces’ revealed incompetence and steadfast refusal even to consider ways of redressing the situation. Just before his assassination, Kennedy had begun to reduce the number of U.S. advisers, but Johnson believed that it was essential for the USA to challenge what was perceived to be the latest stage in Soviet expansionism, and therefore supported the growth of U.S. involvement in Vietnam to prevent the domino effect from gaining momentum. As far as the Gulf of Tonkin was concerned, this was the area in which a program of clandestine attacks on North Vietnam had been initiated during 1961 as Operation 34A. The program was initially supervised by

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