The Vietnam War was a war that changed America forever. It was a long and costly war between communist North Vietnam, with help from the Viet Cong, and capitalist South Vietnam, aided by the United States. It was a controversial war at the time, but today it remains ingrained in American history as an unforgettable war. The reasons for the Vietnam War took place long before the war even began. For years, the Vietnamese were under French colonial rule. But when the communist revolutionary Ho Chi Minh returned to Vietnam, he created a group called Viet Minh, whose goal was to remove all French occupation of Vietnam. Fighting then began and Ho Chi Minh attempted to gain support from the United States. But, faithful to its containment policy, the United States began to support France. America's thoughts on the potential growth of communism can be summed up in one basic idea: the domino theory. This theory stated that if one country in one region fell to communism, surrounding countries would soon follow. For this reason, the United States was committed to containing the North Vietnamese once the French withdrew from Vietnam. But what really pushed the United States to send troops to Vietnam was the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. On August 2 and 4, 1964, the North Vietnamese fired on two American ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. Following this, Congress approved the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on August 7, 1964, which gave the president the authority to send military troops to Vietnam without declaring war. So President Johnson sent troops to Vietnam, which had already broken out into civil war, to help the South Vietnamese. After Vietnam erupted into civil war, both sides began to employ clever tactics and new...... middle of paper ....communism, Laos and Cambodia made even. When North Vietnam took Saigon, the city was renamed Ho Chi Minh City. And, most importantly, the loss of the Vietnam War shattered America's sense of invincibility. The Vietnam War had both good and bad effects on America. We can ridicule it, we can deny it, we can say it was for the best, we can say we shouldn't have even gotten involved, but the one thing we can't do is ignore it . Because it has become an unforgettable part of history and we all need to remember Vietnam.BibliographyThe Vietnam War. (nd). Accessed 05/14/2014 on About.com: http://history1900s.about.com/od/vietnamwar/a/vietnamwar.htmVietnam War. (nd). Retrieved 05/14/2014 from Wikipedia.org: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_WarVietnam War. (nd). Accessed 05/14/2014 on History.com: http://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war