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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 wha ....

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... 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 the U.S. in the war against the Japanese not more than a year previous, sought only to peacefully gain their independence from France (Chant 25). In January of 1950, the Viet Minh gained recognition by the governments of the USSR and China, who supplied weapons and places to train (Chant 25). Because the two Communist superpowers reco ...