Part one of term paper
Robert S. McNamara, appointed by John F. Kennedy to the position of U.S. Secretary of Defense in 1961, said about the Vietnam War, “It is important to recognize it’s a South Vietnamese war. It will be won or lost depending upon what they do. We can advise and help, but they are responsible for the final results, and it remains t ...

Part two of term paper
... North Vietnamese as the U.S. escalated its commitment in Vietnam infinitely greater than it had ever intended. After World War II, France returned to Vietnam to reclaim their Indochinese colonies after the Ho Chi Minh had declared Vietnamese independence in 1945 (Goldstein 3). The U.S. had just ended a war started by German conquest in Europe, and now was being asked to help France conquer the colonies it lost control of during the war. The Vietnam Nationalists, the same ones who had supported th ...