Vietnam War evaluations

Essay by staceytHigh School, 12th gradeA, October 2013

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Evaluation -

My research into the Vietnam War focused on the American Involvement and the reasons for the US' engagement in the country. This investigation aimed to develop a deeper understanding of what actions America took while it was involved in Vietnam. In addition this researched explored how successive US Presidents responded to the Vietnam War.

1. Why did the American government become involved in Vietnam?

2. What were the steps/stages of America's involvement? What happened?

3. How did successive Presidents respond to the war in Vietnam?

The successes of my research into the Vietnam War included the abundance of primary sources relating to focus question three with the President's actions of Johnson, Kennedy and Nixon specifically. I was able to find relevant speeches made by those US Presidents from the timeframe of the Vietnam War from sites such as http://vietnamvassar.edu/overview/doc14.html, http://lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/speeches and http://www.vietnamwar.net/VWdocuments.html. Consequentially I was able to develop a comprehensive understanding of the actions of these three US Presidents and how they responded to the Vietnam War.

Further successes of my research into the war in Vietnam included the consistency of information. I found while annotating primary and secondary sources there was a similar answer for each of the focusing questions across each source. For example when conducting inquiries into focus question one, "Why did the American government become involved in Vietnam?" I found each source contained the same information; that America had become involved to prevent the "Domino Effect" spread of communism. Therefore I was assured of the reliability of the primary and secondary sources gathered.

Strengths of my research process into the US' involvement in the Vietnam War came from my strong background knowledge of the Vietnam War topic. Having completed Level 2 History in 2011, I had extensive understanding of the...