According to the website, www.ushistory.org, the beginning phases of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War “reached back into the Truman Administration.” President Truman made “promises and commitments to the people and [the] government of South Vietnam” to prevent forces such as the North Liberation Front from “overtaking them.” However, these tactics didn’t prove to be sufficient. The next U.S. president, Eisenhower, increased U.S. involvement by supplying “military advisers and CIA operatives in Vietnam.” These steps proved to be useful for both South Vietnam and the United States since the U.S. Government used the operatives to gather and report counterintelligence. The United States started sending troops to Vietnam under the John F. Kennedy administration. The Vietnam War, however, lasted longer than the Kennedy administration due to his horrifying assassination near the end of 1963. Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B Johnson, was the first president to order “the first real combat by American troops.” After President Johnson’s term, Richard …show more content…
While academic textbooks and encyclopedias provide an overview of the events in the Vietnam War, the historical information is not all-inclusive. When presenting an argument, the arguer must be able to provide a formal argument backed by credible sources while taking into consideration any counterargument that may arise. This same concept applies to history. History cannot be retold without considering all sources of information prior to publication or oration. If a historian knew about the history of the Vietnam War through sources of that were written by the U.S. Government, his or her information would likely contain bias. To hold a complete historical knowledge of the Vietnam War, a historian would gather information from a variety of sources before publishing his or her research. When Dr. Cabell recounted his memory of the Vietnam War, the information describing the major events aligned with the information provided by written sources; however, a few of the details that Dr. Cabell provided differed slightly from the written